On July 11, 2018 at 19:45, imt said...
Submitting the order via Portal is what many are hung up with. The other day I took an old proposal and said to make an order. When you create an order from a proposal it takes ALL the items from ALL vendors and makes an order. So if you have a project where you need certain items now but then will order other parts later in the project, there was no way to just select specific items on that order to send and keep the rest for later. You can "delete" them off. But then I guess when you want to order the rest you have to manually add or go back into the proposal and create a new order and then delete off all the parts you already ordered? Not sure.
Hey, IMT, this is indeed a shortcoming. We are going to update it very soon. You may have noticed that the new version of our site now allows you to "select" items in the proposal and then a bulk action toolbar appears at the top. We just need to add the "Order" option. We'll start working on that towards the end of next month.
With portal in the middle of lets say Snap, since that is your go to, I am not sure how the ordering process works and how quickly orders are sent. I know I can submit an order at 6:55pm and have it shipped out that day on Snap's site. No idea what cutoff times are and if orders are submitted and entered same day. Do confirms come only from Portal or do you receive normal confirms and tracking from Snap? What happens if you proposal has the normal price for an item but at the time you place the order, the item is on special/promo at the time you order? Is it adjusted? You would only know if you were on Snaps site to see what the current price happens to be. There are only 2 options listed for shipping on Portal, etc. I watched the videos but still unclear on the things I thought about above. Wonder if these are some of the same that have kept those integrators on the sidelines.
Snap is one of the most responsive suppliers on our site. They very reliably open and confirm orders. We are working with them to eventually tie our systems together for real-time integration. Currently we update their pricing daily so it would be very rare for a price change to happen and not be updated on our site. That being said, they can view and edit the price upon confirmation. For example, you could write in the note section "please apply my credit of X, or promo price of Y" and they can do that. Perhaps it's best to remind everyone how our ordering tool was designed...
We designed our order delivery so that it could be accepted by every supplier, so we chose email since it was the lowest common denominator and required zero integration. It's a more sophisticated version of an order you would normally type up an email to your rep. So when the supplier receives it, they manually enter into their system. We don't just put the details of the order in the email though, we send the supplier a link which takes them to a secure page inside our site. This allows us to show you they opened it and then we require them to "confirm" the order. In the example of SnapAV, you'll get a confirmation from us, but then you will also get the same confirmation emails from them, as if you had emailed them the order.
