⚡️ Vendor Portal Expert - Leveraging SLA Deadlines ⚡️

Discover how to use SLA timers to set expectations, improve automation and measure performance

 

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Sections in this Article

Introduction

Configuration

Setting SLA Deadlines

Notification Emails

SLA Transitions

Reviewing SLAs: Tracking, History & Performance

Example Content Resources

 

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Introduction

Chasing suppliers for updates, sending reminders about upcoming deadlines and needing to respond to internal queries like "How long til we can get xyz services up and running?" are frustrating and time-draining activities

In our article Supplier Portal Expert: Phase Reminder Emails, we cover how to automate some of these

But avoiding these issues & tasks entirely would be preferable by far!

 

SLA timers can be configured on your Supplier Portal workflow phases so that you can set deadlines with your vendors, automate the direction of your process, review performance & identify bottlenecks

 

What are SLAs?

SLA is an acronym for "Service Level Agreement"

In Gatekeeper terms, these function as a "countdown timers" for the Phases of a workflow

They begin counting down from the moment a card lands on a new phase

 

 

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🛠 Configuration 🛠

 

Setting SLAs ⏳

 

Step 1) For the Supplier Portal phase of your Workflow, hit edit & navigate to the SLA tab

Step 2) Enter a numerical value followed by a setting of Hours or Days to capture the SLA timer

Step 3) Hit ✅ Save

 

 

SLAs in Notification Emails 📩

 

Step 1) For the Supplier Portal phase of your Workflow, hit edit & navigate to the Form Access (or Notifications) tab

Step 2) Hit the Email Template edit icon

Step 3) Within this email, make reference to the SLA deadline

⬇️ Jump to the end of article for the text of our example email ⬇️

Step 4) Hit ✅ Update then ✅ Save to store your new email content

 

SLAs Transitions ➡️

 

This is an optional setting where you can use the expiration of these deadlines to automatically move the card to another phase in the workflow

Hopefully the threat of this escalation motivates your Vendor users to complete their tasks in good time....But if you want to keep things moving & avoid bottlenecks, setting up automated transitions will help you manage your overall processes better

 

Step 1) For the Supplier Portal phase of your Workflow, hit edit & navigate to the Transitions tab

Step 2) If not already set, change the Transition types from "Simple" to "Conditional"

Step 3) Hit ➕ADD TRANSITION

Step 4) Configure the settings for your new transition rule:

• • • Transition Name: "SLA Expiration"
    • Transition To Phase: [Escalation phase of your choice]
    • Hit ➕ Add  to use one of the below Conditions
      • SLA Deadline Expiry + is Expired or
      • SLA Deadline Expiry + is expired by + [number of days]
    • Transition Status: "Live"

 

The above configuration steps demonstrate a use case where a Gatekeeper escalates a late Vendor Onboarding phase back to the Card Creator to decide whether to continue with the onboarding or whether the supplier should be disengaged

 

SLA Archiving 🗄

If you don't plan on using SLA "Escalations" with your Supplier Forms, you could still leverage this setting as a sort of "AutoArchive" setting

Taking this approach, you can still set a reasonable deadline (e.g. "7 Days"), but if a form has clearly been disregarded or abandoned, you could decide to automatically remove it from your kanban board

This will avoid clutter and manual effort to tidy up your workflow kanban board

Step 1) Add a new "Done" phase - this can be named something like "Onboarding Form Abandoned"

Step 2) Repeat all of the above config steps, with the below changes:

• Set the Transition To Phase  to your new "Done" phase from Step 1

• Instead of using "SLA Deadline Expiry + is Expired" for your transition, use:

SLA Deadline Expiry + is expired by + 90 Days

 

NB. Similar to the above Notification Configuration which mentions a deadline; if you plan to use an SLA Transition, you should inform your Vendors that if they miss this deadline, the opportunity to submit their form may be lost

 

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Reviewing SLAs: Tracking, History & Performance

 

Form Level

When opening a workflow form, user will be able to see the SLA deadline in a banner at the top of the card

 

Kanban Level

SLA Icon

When an SLA has been applied to a card, an icon will display on the card showing the days/hours until the deadline. This can be hovered over to show an exact deadline

 

See our Workflow Icons article for a full breakdown of the image-based information present on a kanban board

 

Side Note, when this SLA timer is expired (if you are not using SLA Transitions to automatically move the card) Gatekeeper will highlight the whole card in red so it can be addressed more urgently

 

SLA List View

When using the Workflow List view, SLA can be selected as a configurable column:

You can also save this view if you plan on regularly reviewing SLA Deadlines

 

SLA Expired Filter

In either the List view or the Kanban view, it is possible to use SLA Expired field to filter by cards which have passed their SLA deadline

 

Card Age report

When using SLAs, the Card Age workflow report will display these on your workflow summary graph as a benchmark to compare against the "Average Days on Phase" calculation

 

Card History (Transitions)

If you have configured an SLA Transition, you will be able to view in the Card History when one of these transitions has been applied:

 

 

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Other Articles in this Series ⚡️

• Coming Soon: Supplier Portal Branding
• Best Practice: Invitation Emails
• Best Practice: Workflow Phase Notifications
• Best Practice: Workflow Reminder Emails
• Best Practice: Phase Instructions

 

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Resources

 

⬆️ Back to Configuration ⬆️

 

Email text SLA being mentioned:

{{ recipient.full_name }},

You are invited to complete an onboarding form for <strong>GATEKEEPER</strong> on behalf of {{ card.name }}

This is a key part of our process to ensure that the setup & management of our supply chain/contractual obligations runs smoothly! ✅

If you have any queries about the process, you can reach out to <strong>[xyz team/person]</strong> via email or by <i>@-tagging</i> them in the onboarding form <strong>Messages</strong> tab

Many Thanks,

GATEKEEPER Procurement Team
<hr><i>You will receive an automated reminder every <strong>3 days</strong> until a submission is received. Please aim to complete this form by <strong>{{ enter_phase.sla_due_date }}</strong> to avoid any delays</i>

Email Appearance:

⬆️ Back to Configuration ⬆️