Supplier Collaboration Portal

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Supplier Collaboration Portal

    The ServiceNow® Supplier Collaboration Portal provides supplier contacts with a unified, self-service employee portal experience. It enables suppliers to resolve inquiries, manage their own data, and accelerate case resolution by completing tasks and uploading prerequisite documents. Suppliers must self-register to access the portal.

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    The portal is mobile-friendly and accessible via a mobile browser by appending /supplier to the instance URL.

    Supplier Collaboration Portal Header

    • My Company: Opens the Supplier Profile page to view and request updates to supplier details. From the December 2024 Xanadu release onward, suppliers linked to a contact via M2M mapping are selectable here.
    • Tasks: Visible only to the primary contact; includes My Tasks (tasks assigned to the logged-in user) and All Tasks (all tasks assigned to the supplier). Secondary contacts can see only My Tasks.
    • My Requests: Shows all requests assigned to the logged-in supplier contact.
    • Raise a Request: Allows suppliers to submit new requests through the General category in the Supplier catalog.

    Supplier Collaboration Portal Widgets

    The portal includes various widgets that help suppliers manage and track their activities:

    • How can we help? Search tool for finding information quickly.
    • My Active Items: Displays tiles for different item types such as Tasks, Requests, Surveys, Issues, Risk Assessments, Contracts, Supplier Products, Purchase Orders, Shipments, and Invoices. The visibility of these tiles depends on installed plugins (e.g., Third-party Risk Management, Sourcing and Purchasing Automation).
    • My Tasks: Lists tasks assigned to the user with direct access to work on them.
    • My Requests: Lists submitted cases with quick navigation to manage them.
    • Quick Links: Provides fast access to internal and external resources relevant to supplier departments.
    • My Company: Displays key company info such as number of employees, founding year, industry, relationship manager, and onboarding date, with access to detailed company data.
    • My Contacts: Shows team members with options to call or email directly and, for primary contacts and administrators, to invite new members to the portal.
    • Most Viewed Articles: Lists popular knowledge articles to assist suppliers.

    Important Configuration Notes

    • Data for My Active Items and My Tasks widgets is sourced from the Activity Configurations and To-dos Configurations tables respectively. Permissions (ACLs) must be explicitly configured for new custom records.
    • User criteria can be set to restrict data visibility within the My Active Items widget.
    • Only primary supplier contacts and supplier administrators have the ability to invite new members to the portal.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This portal streamlines supplier interactions by providing suppliers with self-service tools to manage their data, access case information, and complete assigned tasks efficiently. It supports improved data quality and quicker case resolution, reducing internal workload and enhancing supplier collaboration. The mobile support and role-based access ensure flexibility and security in supplier engagement.

    The ServiceNow® Supplier Collaboration Portal application provides a seamless unified employee portal experience for supplier contacts.

    Supplier Collaboration Portal enables you to do the following:
    • Resolve supplier inquiries using self-service and Knowledge articles
    • Improve supplier data quality by enabling suppliers to manage their own data
    • Accelerate case resolution by enabling suppliers to complete tasks and upload required prerequisite documents

    As a supplier contact, you must first self-register to access the Supplier Collaboration Portal. For more information, see Self-register to the Supplier Collaboration Portal.

    In the Supplier Collaboration Portal, you can view the requests assigned to you, open to-dos, and Knowledge articles.

    Note:
    The Supplier Collaboration Portal is supported on mobile devices. To access the Supplier Collaboration Portal on a mobile device, open a mobile browser, and then navigate to your instance URL and append the /supplier suffix to the end of the URL. For example, https://example.com/supplier.

    For more information about installing the Supplier Collaboration Portal, see Install Supplier Collaboration Portal.

    Supplier Collaboration Portal header

    The portal header contains the following options:

    Table 1. Options on the Supplier Collaboration Portal header
    Option Description
    My Company Opens the Supplier Profile page, which shows the supplier details. You can submit a request to update the details by selecting Request Change.

    For more information, see Update company profile using the supplier catalog.

    Important:
    From Xanadu December 2024 release onwards, after enabling M2M mapping between supplier contact and suppliers, the list of suppliers linked with the contact are displayed on clicking My Company. You can select a supplier from the list which opens the company-specific Supplier Profile page.
    Tasks Contains the following submenus.
    Note:
    Only the primary contact can see the Tasks menu and its submenus in the portal header.
    • My Tasks: Opens the My To-dos page, which lists all the tasks that are assigned to the logged-in user.
      Note:
      The secondary contact can view only the My Tasks option in the portal header.
    • All Tasks: Opens the Supplier Task List page, which lists all the tasks that are assigned to the supplier.

      For more information, see Viewing supplier contact tasks from the Supplier Collaboration Portal.
    My Requests Opens the My Requests page, which lists all the requests assigned to you.

    For more information, see View all your requests from the Supplier Collaboration Portal.
    Raise a request Option that enables you to raise a request by navigating to the General category in the Supplier catalog.

    For more information, see Raising requests from the Supplier Collaboration Portal.

    Supplier Collaboration Portal widgets

    The Supplier Collaboration Portal contains the following widgets.
    Table 2. Supplier Collaboration Portal widgets
    Widget Description
    How can we help? Lets you search for any information that you're looking for.
    My active items
    As a supplier contact, you can view and work on specific items. The information that is displayed in the tiles depends on the plugins that you have installed. Selecting a tile in the widget opens the page that provides more information about it.
    • Tasks
    • Requests
    • Surveys
    • Issues
    • Risk Assessments
    • Contracts
    • Supplier Products
    • Purchase Orders
    • Shipments
    • Invoices

    The Risk Assessments tile is displayed if you have installed the Third-party Risk Management plugin.

    The Contracts, Supplier Products, Purchase Orders, Shipments, and Invoices tiles are displayed if you have installed the Sourcing and Purchasing Automation (com.snc.sn_pr) and Source-to-Pay Common Architecture (com.snc.sn_shop) plugins.

    Important:

    The data for My active items is sourced from the Activity Configurations table. For all the new custom records added to Activity Configurations that need to be shown in My active items, the corresponding ACLs for sn_slm_contact must also be explicitly added.

    Also, for restricting the data appearing in My active items, you can configure the user criteria by updating the Activity Access list of the Activity Configurations table.

    My tasks Displays a list of supplier tasks assigned to you. Selecting a task directly opens it on the My To-dos page so that you can work on that task. Select View All to view a list of all the tasks assigned to you.
    Important:
    The data for My tasks is sourced from the To-dos Configurations table. For all the new custom records added to To-dos Configurations that need to be shown in My tasks, the corresponding ACLs for sn_slm_contact must also be explicitly added.
    My requests Displays a list of cases that you have submitted. Selecting a case directly opens the My Cases page so that you can work on that case. Select View All to view a list of all the cases that you have submitted.
    Quick links Enables the supplier to quickly access internal and external resources related to specific departments within your organization.
    My company This section has the following fields:
    • Number of employees: The number of people employed by the company.
    • Founded: The year the company was founded.
    • Industry: The type of industry the company belongs to.
    • Relationship manager: The name of the relationship manager for your company.
    • Onboarded date: The date your company was onboarded.

    Select Details to view details, contact information, payment information, and locations of your company.
    My contacts Displays a list of members on your team. You can call a member directly or send an email to a member by selecting the phone icon (Phone icon.) or the email icon (Email icon.) respectively, next to that team member's name. You can also invite new members to register to by selecting Invite.
    Note:
    The Invite option is available only to the primary supplier contact and the supplier administrator. Only the primary supplier contact and the supplier administrator can invite new members to access the Supplier Collaboration Portal. For more information, see Invite a member to access the Supplier Collaboration Portal.
    Most viewed articles Displays a list of the most viewed articles.

    For more information about using the Supplier Collaboration Portal, see Using Supplier Collaboration Portal.