Discover how to add & invite external users to collaborate on Workflows via the Supplier Portal
A key use case for the Supplier portal is assessing new organisations during onboarding & collaborating with your contacts to gather key documentation & data to support any decisions.
Especially for new suppliers, a part of this process will be adding & inviting contacts to the supplier portal.
There are several ways to do this (see Inviting Supplier Users) but the most streamlined way is to invite them on the very same workflow where you are performing your supplier onboarding reviews!
Following the below steps, you can configure a supplier user to be added & invited while moving a supplier onboarding form through a workflow so they are instantly invited to collaborate with you as soon as you need their input!
Configuration
NB. these configuration steps are listed out to indicate what steps you need to take to get the Supplier user invited
They can be interwoven with your existing workflow reviews. All that matters is that the below settings are configured in the order laid out.
Part 1 - Configuring the Form
To add a Supplier & Supplier User on a workflow, you will need to add the Predefined Supplier Data Section to your workflow form:
The key field to leverage for this action is the Supplier Contact field
Once you have this section in your form, you need to ensure that - at SOME point - the Supplier Contact field will be populated before a workflow card arrives at the phases in Part 2 & 3.
The failsafe way to do this is to make the field Mandatory
The simplest place to make it mandatory is in the initial request form; but technically it doesn't matter who populates it or when, as long as it gets populated before Part 2
See below example where the onus will not fall on the requestor in the 📩 Start Form 📩, but on Procurement during their ✅ Review ✅ to ensure that a Supplier Contact has been provided:
Part 2 - Creating/Updating the Supplier
Once this Supplier & Supplier User exist on the form, you need to make sure they are turned into records in your Gatekeeper Repository
If this is NEW supplier request, you can utilise the Create Supplier action (or to Automate this step, ⚙️AutoAction | Create Supplier)
NB. If your Supplier has already been created and the Supplier User is populated in the form afterwards, you will need to perform an UPDATE action to ensure this new user is linked as an owner back to the record in the repository!
Just populating it on the workflow form is not enough
Part 3 - Configuring the Invitation Action Phase
Once you have a Supplier Record with a Supplier Owner, you can leverage the below action to invite them to the portal
Step 1) Set the Form Access to "Supplier Portal" & "Supplier | Owner" then hit ✅ Save
Step 2) Enable the Action "Invite/Notify Card Owner to the Portal"
Step 3) Since this is the phase your Supplier contact will access, you should also enable the relevant Form "Editable" settings for sections where you require their input
Additional Steps
Amending the Default Invitation Email
When the invitation email from the above action is sent, your Supplier users will receive an email like this:
This below wording is just the default message and should definitely be changed so your supplier contacts have proper context as to what the invitation means
Changing the default wording from:
Hi
Welcome to a better way to manage your Suppliers and Contracts with Gatekeeper.
to the below format:
To our new vendor,
Welcome to COMPANY NAME Vendor Portal!
From here you can collaborate & complete our onboarding forms, manage agreements, eSign documents and communicate with your key stakeholders at COMPANY NAME.
<i>Here we've prepared a brief video to show how our processes work: <strong><a href="https://fast.wistia.com/embed/channel/kc0mvbzaep?wchannelid=kc0mvbzaep&wmediaid=j140l6sb5l">Quick Intro</a></strong></i>
Regards,
COMPANY NAME Procurement Team<hr><i>If you have queries about this email, please email your contact at COMPANY NAME or <strong>SupplierMgmt@CompanyName.com</strong> and we will be in touch with you</i>
...will give the Supplier user much more context & guidance to accompany the account activation button!
The html tags in the above text also help to make the email easier to read, like below:
Amend the default wording below:
Testing
Once you've configured this, it is recommended to add a test Supplier & Supplier User record where YOU are the Supplier user so you can validate that (a) the workflow has been set up properly, and (b) the Supplier's experience runs smoothly
See Testing Gatekeeper for more guidance on adding dummy users