Produce - Vendor Send Forms (updated)

Introduction

The Vendor Send Forms feature enhances the Send Assets to Vendors functionality by allowing company admins to create custom forms tailored to each vendor’s specific requirements. This enables users to include essential details such as print sizes, pricing, or publication dates when sending assets to different types of vendors like printers, newspapers or digital distributors. It ensures more structured communication and reduces the risk of missing critical information. Note that the email sharing functionality must be enabled for the company as outlined in the documentation.

Requirements

In order to manage vendor you need to have sufficient access right, most often also referred to as Administrator rights
 

Activating the feature 

To add Vendors to Produce, follow these steps: 

• Go to Produce
• Click Settings in the upper right corner (you need to have sufficient access for this button to appear)
• Click on Vendors. 

• 

  Click on + Create new as seen below:

  

   A new window will open that looks like this:

  

  General information

  Add the following General information about the vendor in the new window:

  • Name - Name of the vendor
  • Email - Email address of the vendor
  • Cc email - To send a copy of the order emails to a shared order email address
  • Type - The type of documents that the users can send to the vendor
  • Currency - To be used if pricing information is used
  • Instructions for sending - Add any specific instructions that the sender (user) needs to be aware of before using this vendor. 

  • Click Create, or continue with the other tabs/settings in the dialog

    (You have now crated a vendor. To start using the vendor, see the instructions below)
     

    Custom Properties 

  If more fields are wanted to send as information to the specific vendor, you click on "Custom properties" tab, and click on the button shown below: 
  
   

  This opens up a new dialog where you add information about the Name, Label (this is the name that will be seen in the form), Type (can be either “text”, “number” or "dropdown" field), Usage (can be “Optional”, “Mandatory” or “Fixed”), and selecting the default value if wanted. Once entered, you click the ‘Save’ button. 
  
  

  Tip! If you want a fixed title on all your order emails, you create a custom property with the exact name "subject", and add a Default value. If you want the users not be able to edit this title, you also select the usage "Fixed" of this custom property.
   

• Back on the “Edit vendor” dialog, you find the new property at the bottom of the page. All new properties will be added below, and it’s possible to change the order by drag and drop. You also have the option to ‘Edit’ or ‘Delete’ the property by Actions buttons to the right.
  
   

   

• After the properties have been added and saved to the vendor selected, they will automatically show in the Send to vendor dialog. 

  Tip! It is also possible to Duplicate an already existing vendor to quickly create a new vendor that might have a lot of similar custom properties - instead of creating it new from scratch. 
   

• The added information from this form will show in the email sent to the specific vendor, with one line per custom property showing the 'Name' of the property and by end user provided information connected to it.
   

  Products

• The next and final tab enabled the admin to add information about certain product types that are possible to print from this specific Vendor, and their prices (optional). You start by clicking "Add product":
  
  
   
• This opens up the dialog where you can add a new product, and select which pricing it should have - either a flat unit price, a tiered pricing, or no pricing information:
  
  
• When selecting Tiered pricing, you may add the quantity levels and their specific pricing. If you for example only have a min- and max number of copies that the end user can order it can be added as just one line (without any more tiers). 
  
  

• The overview of the product and pricing may look like this once added: 

  

  Using Vendors on templates

  Once all the settings have been applied to your vendor the next step is to apply the vendor to be used on a template. This makes it possible to direct which documents that should be possible to order to certain vendors in the system. 

  The vendors that may be used by the specific template are added to the "Vendor" tab found in the Template settings dialog:

  
   

  If a Vendor has one or multiple products added, the template admin may also select one or multiple product types that are possible to create and order from this template: 
   

  

  The admin can then select to toggle ON/OFF certain product types: 

  

  
  The content creator will find the information about which vendor/s they can use for ordering material created by a certain template by looking at the tab "Vendors" in the Template detail view. Here they also see the pricing information if that has been setup: 

  

  When the content creator has created a document and click on "Share" the Vendor Send Form will show in a dialog for them to fill out, and the fields in this view depends on the setting made by the admin in the Vendor setup: 

  

  If a product with an attached price model is in use, the field "Quantity" will automatically be added. A total cost is calculated by the value entered in this field multiplied with the Unit price. 

  When the user has added all needed information in the form and clicked on "Send" the receiver will shortly see the order email in their inbox, and a copy is sent to the end user (if this setting is enabled by the admin).
  
  The email received will apart from the filled in information include an Order ID in the header by default and inside the email itself, for easier communication around the order between the sender and vendor.