Cannot share roles across multiple Channels in Multi-Vendor setups

[dlhck]

Problem Description

In the current Vendure architecture, roles are tightly coupled with channel assignments, making it impossible to share role definitions across multiple channels in multi-vendor marketplace scenarios. This creates significant administrative overhead and limitations for marketplace operators.

Current Behavior

• Each role contains both permissions AND the channels where those permissions apply
• Users are assigned roles directly, which means they inherit both the permissions and channel access from those roles
• In a multi-vendor setup, if vendors need the same permissions (e.g., "Product Manager", "Order Fulfillment"), separate roles must be created for each vendor's channel
• This leads to role proliferation (e.g., "VendorA_ProductManager", "VendorB_ProductManager", etc.)

Impact

This limitation causes several problems:

1. Role Management Overhead: Marketplace operators must create and maintain duplicate roles for each vendor/channel
2. Lack of Isolation: When users share roles, they can potentially see each other's channels, breaking vendor isolation
3. Scalability Issues: As the number of vendors grows, the number of roles grows multiplicatively
4. Maintenance Complexity: Updating permissions requires changes across multiple duplicate roles

Expected Behavior

• Roles should define permissions independently of channel assignments
• Users should be able to have the same role applied to different channels
• Vendors should be able to share role definitions without seeing each other's data
• Channel-specific permissions should be managed through a separate association

Use Case Example

A marketplace with 50 vendors where each vendor needs:

• Product Manager role
• Order Fulfillment role
• Customer Service role

Current approach requires: 50 × 3 = 150 separate role definitions
Desired approach: 3 shared role definitions, with channel-specific assignments

Proposed Solution

Introduce a bridge entity (ChannelRole) that associates Users, Roles, and Channels separately, allowing:

• Shared role definitions across the marketplace
• Channel-specific permission assignments
• Proper vendor isolation while maintaining role consistency
• Simplified role management at scale

This would enable marketplace operators to define roles once and assign them to users on a per-channel basis, significantly reducing complexity in multi-vendor scenarios.

The PR #3222 introduces a PoC.

This is a summary of dev interviews and conversation in the issue #3095