Testing Vendor Portal

This article will describe the process for being able to test the Vendor Portal

Logging in as a Supplier User is a key aspect of testing how workflow interactions will take place between your Vendors and Internal users of the Gatekeeper application.

Below, we will quickly show how to add a dummy vendor user for testing purposes:

Points to note

You cannot log in to the Vendor Portal using an internal user profile
When adding a profile for a Vendor user, it will need to be a unique email address. i.e. it cannot have been used for another user within Gatekeeper
When logging in as this vendor user, it is wise to use a different browser since Gatekeeper will only allow one user to be logged in at a time per session (incognito/private mode can also be used for this)

Methods for getting a unique email account

There are several ways to get a usable unique email address for testing purposes.

Using your own personal email

Your main Gatekeeper login will likely be that of your organisation

Therefore, to quickly test the Gatekeeper experience as someone outside your organisation, you could simply use your own gmail/yahoo/outlook/iCloud email as a dummy vendor user!

The email+ address

For g-suite accounts, a simple method is to instantly setup unlimited aliases is to use your email address and add the '+' character followed by some more text to distinguish the account:

This works because Google will disregard the +[text] but Gatekeeper will not

Therefore, your main google inbox will receive al notifications, but Gatekeeper will consider each email address as a different & distinct user account!

In the above example, all emails sent to the address with a +someText will be directed to the main inbox.
Therefore all emails sent to john.smith+TestSupplier@gatekeeperhq.com will be received by john.smith@gatekeeperhq.com

Email Aliases

If you have admin control over your email account, you can create some aliases for your email address.
In Gmail, these can be found at

Google Account > Personal Info > Contact Info > Email > Alternative emails

Every address you add here will be able to receive mail and direct it to your inbox but can be used as a separate login for Gatekeeper

Your company's IT department may manage this so please get in contact with them if you cannot do it yourself

Temporary inboxes

There are some online services which can create temporary custom inboxes for free
One such service is mailinator.com

After typing a string into their "Check any Inbox!" text box, you will have an inbox with the address [your string]@mailinator.com created for 24 hours:

Your company's IT department may have a block on using this sort of service. Please check your IT policies and seek the necessary approval when using this method

Logging in

Once you have your new unique email address, you can use it to sign up a vendor user and "Invite to Gatekeeper" will allow you to log in with their invitation email

See this article for the full instructions on creating & inviting vendor users

Vendor Portal Features you should test

Once you have created your Vendor login and have accessed the Portal, you can then test the processes which will involve their interaction, such as:

Receiving a workflow notification email
Reviewing/accessing a workflow form
Submitting a form on a workflow
Messaging internal users
Adding additional colleagues as Vendor Portal Users