Preferred vendor / carrier / TPA directory (legacy)

What this directory is

The Programs page's Explore row carries three tiles: Preferred Vendors, Preferred Carriers, and Preferred TPAs. Each opens a tiered directory of partners HQ has designated: a list you add names to, tier them, and optionally leave a note on. It predates the Programs primitive described in Programs: how HQ codifies what the network adopts and the Programs catalog, and it is kept in place, not because it is the recommended way to set up a new preferred-partner relationship, but because a handful of other surfaces still read from it: the badge an operator sees on a vendor card in IQ, and the quarterly network review report HQ generates.

This directory used to render as a table below the row stack with its own tab switcher. It now follows the platform's standard shape: secondary content is reached by clicking a tile in a row, and opens as an overlay card over the page.

Where to find it

Open Programs from the HQ sidebar at hq.verinode.ai/programs and find the Explore row, which sits just under Take Action and above the Active, Drafts, and Sunset rows. It follows the type-filter tabs: with Carriers selected only Preferred Carriers shows, and on a type with no partner directory (Co-op, Training) the row is hidden. Click any of the three tiles to open the directory; it opens on the tab matching the tile you clicked, and you can swipe or use the arrows to move between Vendors, Carriers, and TPAs without closing it. Press Escape or click outside to dismiss. Everyone with access to the Programs page can see it; only group admins can add to it.

What the tiles show

Each tile shows the number of partners of that kind, and underneath it either the average adoption across them, the count designated Required, or "Awaiting adoption data" when the snapshot job hasn't reported yet. A tile reading "—" with "None yet" means nothing has been added for that kind. The small bar on the tile is the tier mix: required, preferred, and approved as proportions of the whole.

Inside the overlay: the partner list

Each tab lists that kind's partners, one row each:

• Name. The vendor, carrier, or TPA's display name, taken from the network's canonical entity catalog at the moment it was added.
• Notes. Whatever internal note was left when the row was added.
• Tier and adoption. Underneath each row: Approved, Preferred, or Required, then the adoption percentage and how many locations it covers once measured. Tier is the strength of the designation, not a status: all three tiers are active picks, they differ only in how binding HQ intends the relationship to be for franchisees. Adoption is not something you set when you add a row; it is filled in later by a background snapshot job that measures how much of the network is actually using that partner. No percentage means the snapshot hasn't run for that party yet, not that adoption is zero.

If you are an admin, an add button sits at the top of each tab, its label matching that tab: Add vendor, Add carrier, or Add TPA. Non-admins don't see this button at all.

Empty state. Each tab explains itself when nothing has been added yet: preferred partners of that kind appear as HQ adds them, and each pick becomes a badge on the matching partner card in every member's IQ.

Adding a preferred vendor, carrier, or TPA

1. 1Open the tab you want (Vendors, Carriers, or TPAs), then click the add button at the top of it (Add vendor, Add carrier, or Add TPA). A modal opens titled "Add Preferred Vendor," "Add Preferred Carrier," or "Add Preferred TPA."
2. 2Type at least two characters into Search Catalog (placeholder: "Type at least 2 characters…"). After a short pause, Verinode searches the network's canonical entity catalog for matches. While the search runs the list reads "Searching…"; under two characters it reads "Start typing to search the catalog."; if nothing matches it reads "No matches yet." Vendor-tab searches also surface catalog entries classified as products alongside vendors, so a manufacturer's product line can turn up here too.
3. 3Click a result to select it. The modal shows the chosen name (and its domain, if the catalog has one) in a small confirmation box, with a Change link if you picked the wrong one.
4. 4Set the Tier: Approved, Preferred, or Required. Preferred is selected by default when the modal opens.
5. 5Optionally add Notes, an internal, free-text field (placeholder: "Internal notes (optional)").
6. 6Click Add. The button reads "Saving…" while the write is in flight. On success the modal closes and the page refreshes, so the new row and the updated tile count both appear without a reload. On failure, a toast shows the specific error, or "Save failed" if none was returned.

If you add an entity that is already on the list for that tab, Verinode updates its existing row (tier and notes included) instead of creating a duplicate. There is no separate edit or remove control on this screen itself: once a row is added, changing its tier or notes means adding it again with the new values, and removing a designation entirely is not exposed from this particular list.

How this relates to the Programs primitive

This directory looks and behaves like a standalone legacy list, but under the hood it now reads and writes the same underlying rows as the Programs catalog on the page behind it: one the network data row per (network, type), holding an approved-party list of the network data rows. Adding a vendor here creates or reuses a program named "Preferred Vendors" (or "Preferred Carriers," "Preferred TPAs"), set to an approved-list enrollment model with an annual audit cadence for vendors and a quarterly cadence for carriers and TPAs, exactly like a Vendor approval, Carrier, or TPA program created through the Publish a program tile. The tier you pick here, and the notes you leave, are stored inside that approved-party row's terms, alongside the same negotiated-rate field a full vendor-approval program uses, see Approved parties on a program for how that data is structured on the primitive side.

What makes this directory "legacy," then, is not its data model anymore, it is its purpose: it exists purely to keep the older consumers below working while they get migrated over, not as the place to start a new preferred-partner relationship.

Where these picks show up

Two places outside the Programs page still read from this data:

• Operator badges. When a franchisee's vendor card in IQ matches a canonical entity that appears on any of their HQ networks' preferred lists, IQ shows a Steel Blue "Network Preferred" badge on it, tagged with the tier and which network designated it. If a franchisee belongs to more than one network and both have an opinion on the same vendor, the stronger tier wins on the badge. This is a soft nudge only: it never blocks a franchisee from using a vendor that isn't on the list. Carrier and TPA badges are wired on the data side but don't yet render on the operator-facing card, that surface is still being built out.
• The quarterly network review report. The PDF and spreadsheet HQ generates each quarter includes a line naming how many preferred vendors and preferred TPAs exist across the network, drawn from the same counts this directory manages. See Report library for the rest of what that report covers.

The privacy boundary

Adoption in this directory is a network-wide aggregate, the share of franchisees using that vendor, carrier, or TPA, not a list of which specific franchisees do or don't. Nothing on this screen exposes an individual franchisee's actual spend, contract terms, or usage; it stays an aggregate percentage the same way every other adoption figure on the Programs page does. See Network privacy boundary for how that boundary holds everywhere on HQ.

Related

• Programs: how HQ codifies what the network adopts: the full Programs page whose Explore row opens this directory.
• The Programs catalog: the hero, tabs, and Active/Drafts/Sunset rows on the page behind it.
• Approved parties on a program: how a vendor, carrier, or TPA's qualification, tier, and negotiated rate live on the new primitive.
• Vendors: negotiated rate and rate drift: what a negotiated rate captured here or on a program feeds into.
• Vendors participating in a program: how a vendor's own detail page shows which programs it's on.
• Compliance: where program-level audits and violations roll up network-wide.
• Network privacy boundary: the rule that keeps this directory's numbers at the aggregate level.