Discover all possible ways external contacts can be added to your Gatekeeper environment!
The Vendor Portal is a Vendor management solution that allows you to collaborate with your vendors in a secure online environment. This article describes how GK Users can invite a Vendor User to the Vendor Portal.
Inviting Manually
If you already have a Vendor record and want to add a new user for them, you can do this manually:
- Navigate to your chosen Vendor record & hit Add > Vendor User
2. In the Add Vendor User screen, populate the below details
Mandatory
- First Name
- Last Name
- Role
- Administrator: This vendor user can add and edit Vendor information in the Portal for approval and add other vendor users for their organisation.
- Editor: This Vendor user can upload and edit Vendor information in the Portal for approval.
- Collaborator: This vendor user can respond to Messages and complete Events assigned to them but cannot add or edit vendor information.
Optional
- Job Title - this is useful to populate if you wish to send documents for eSign
- Landline
- Mobile
- Profile Picture
3. To provide access for the user to log into the Vendor Portal, you must tick the ☑️ Invite into Gatekeeper option
If you are not ready to begin collaborating with this user yet, you can leave this option unchecked and hit ✅ Save to store the user details.
You can then come back and edit this user to invite them in later!
When inviting the vendor user, you will see a preview of the message which will be sent to the user within their invitation email:
It is possible to edit this message text in the preview box (in case there is any additional context & guidance you wish to provide)
A better way to configure this message text is to set a new custom default Vendor Portal Invitation message. More information can be found within the article Configuring the Vendor Portal.
4. When you have ticked the ☑️ Invite into Gatekeeper option, hit ✅ Save to send this invitation to the user
This will change the profile status to "Pending" until they have accepted the invitation. Once they accept the invitation & log in, the status will be updated to "Active"
💡 Pro Tip: You can use this Invitation action to trigger a workflow process. Once the Vendor User accepts their invitation, the trigger will fire, creating a workflow card for them to complete
See also: 📖 Configuring Workflow Triggers
Self Registration
In Vendor Portal Settings, you can enable Self Registration.
Switching on this module setting means you can share the Vendor Portal link with users to either Log In (if they have already been added) or Register, creating a User Profile & Vendor Record:
💡 Pro Tip: You can use this Self Registration action to trigger a workflow process
Once the Vendor User completes the above 2-part registration form, the trigger will fire, creating a workflow card for them to continue the rest of your onboarding process
See also: 📖 Configuring Workflow Triggers
Honorable Mention - Touchless Contracts
Touchless Contract Workflows Forms do allow vendors to self-register their own company record and user profile
However, this functionality is not aimed at Vendor-orientated processes but is preferably utilised for getting Contracts generated & eSigned
Upon registering, they will not be automatically invited to the vendor portal (unless you leverage the Workflow Functionality to automatically invite suppliers to the portal)
Vendors Adding Colleagues
If a Vendor User has been granted the Role of Administrator, they will be able to add other users to the portal themselves by hitting Manage Contacts from within their Vendor Portal:
NB. When these additional users are added, if they should be allowed to collaborate on workflow forms, the Form Access setting will need to be set to "All Vendor Users"
Workflows
For adding users within a workflow form, see Adding Vendor Users on a Workflow
What happens next?
Once the Vendor User has been created they will receive the below email. Included is the message you composed in the previous steps with a green Activate Account button. The new vendor user must click this button to activate their account, they will be redirected to a GK page where they will be asked to set a password.
Once the account is activated the Internal Gatekeeper user who created the account will receive a notification email advising that the Vendor User has accepted the invitation.
The vendor user can now login to the Vendor Portal.
For more information on the Vendor Portal see the Vendor Portal Overview
Other Vendor User Interactions (outside the Vendor Portal)
eNegotiate
See Configuring eNegotiate to see how you can involve Vendor Users in your contract drafting processes
eSign
See eSigning a Document & Delegating eSign for information on how vendors can interact via Gatekeeper's eSign solution
Events
See Event Emails for information on how notifications can be sent to external users