Home is a one-stop shop for everything related to your procurement and contract management, providing a central entry point as well as a place for staff to go to access advice and key documentation. It is the entry point to the VendorPanel platform, allowing users to easily and quickly navigate to the solution or process they require.
The Home page is broken down into the following sections, which are all manageable by System Administrators:
- Sentence Builder – helps users to get to the right part of the system for the action they wish to take.
- Announcements – where the system administrators can add messages they want their users to see.
- Actions – where users can see their outstanding actions or alerts from the various VendorPanel modules.
- Module tiles – where the users can see tiles that link them to the different VendorPanel modules as well as to external systems.
- Documents and links – where system administrators can add links to important documents or webpages.
System Administrators will find a 'Manage' button alongside the Sentence Builder Prompts, Announcement and Links sections. These links will all take you to the specific section in the System Settings. There is a button in the bottom right corner of the Home page that you take to the 'System Settings' which has an individual tab for each manageable item on the 'Home' page as well as a 'Misc' section for other system-wide settings.
Please see below for details on how you can manage each section. Be sure to Save any changes at the bottom of the page before navigating away from the screen.
Announcements
Announcements can be used to share information with your user base. To create a new announcement, click on the + (plus) button on the right of the table. This will open up a pop-up with a preview of the new blank announcement. Select the 'Switch to Edit Mode' button in the top right.
From here you can start building your announcement with the following fields:
- Announcement Type: select from the available options
- Title: give the announcement a title that will be visible to users on the Home page
-
Visible period: select a 'from' and 'to' date for which the announcement will be visible on the Home page.
- You can also check the 'hide' box if you need the announcement to be hidden during the visible period.
- Content: Use the textbox to build out the body of your announcement. There are various formatting options you can use to customise the text.
Below the 'Content' textbox there will be buttons to Delete the announcement from the system, add Attachments to the announcement that will be downloadable by users when viewing it and to Save Changes.
Once you've made your changes you can select the 'Switch to Read Mode' button to see what it will look like for users. Once you're done, you can select the 'Save and Close' button.
The Announcement will then be listed in the table and you can go in at any time and make changes to it. You can also have multiple active announcements at the same time.
Below the table there is a selectable setting that you can choose when to show announcements on the Home page from the below options:
- Always (always visible on the Home page, even if there are no active announcements)
- Only if there are 1 or more active announcements
- Never (if you don't plan on using the feature)
Modules
VendorPanel sets up the modules that are available on the Home page on your behalf. As a System Administrator, you can determine which groups of users will have access to each module on the Homepage using the dropdown list against each module.
If no restrictions need to apply then the 'Everyone' group should be selected to give all users access to the module. You may want to select just the 'Administrators' to have access to a module.
Links
Here is where you can add multiple links to any addresses that will be visible at the bottom of the Home page. When creating links you'll need to set the following:
- Link text: the text that will appear on the screen that users can select.
- URL: the address of the link (can be a link to a page in VendorPanel, can be an external webpage, can be an internal intranet page, can be a link to a document management system file, etc).
- Visible to: select from the list which groups you want the link to be visible to (select 'Everyone' for it to be visible to all users).
- Open in: select whether the links open in a 'new' or the 'same' tab in the user's browser.
Misc
There are various sections under the Misc tab which relate to the system as a whole.
Logo
Here is where you can determine the logo that appears at the top of the Home page and adjust the size.
The system logo is saved in the Control Panel and you can use the link provided to navigate to that section. There you can upload a new logo if required.
You can also adjust the size using the options provided.
Document Management
Here you can determine how your users will be able to provide documents and files against records in the system. You can select the following:
- If you use a Document Management System internally to store and access your documents, you can check the box provided. This will enable a field where a user can add a link whenever it's possible for them to upload a document against a record.
- If you enable this, then you should enter the name of the system in the textbox provided. The name will be displayed in sections where users are requested to provide links to documents.
- You can also enable or disable the ability for users to upload documents directly into the system.
- Please note that file size limits do apply to any documents being uploaded.
You can choose to enable only one or both methods above.
Here is how this looks in-system:
Default Tax Percenrafe
Also in this section, you will be able to adjust the 'Default Tax Percentage'. This will impact any areas in the system where a value is being specified and the applicable tax is selected.
Bulk Record Reassignment
This is a tool that can be used to reassign records in bulk from one person to another for a specific module by clicking the 'Reassign Records' button. This is useful when you have a user who has left your business or moved teams and their assigned Contracts and Procurement Plans should be overtaken by another user.
You can find information on how to use this tool here: Bulk Record Reassignment.
Template Actions
Actions can be created and assigned to users against Contracts, Procurement Plans and Evaluations. This section allows you to create and manage templates of actions that can be used when creating new actions by all users.
Click the 'Create new' button to start. In the pop-up window you can set the following:
- A 'name' for the action
- The 'details' of the action
- Set the frequency to be a 'once-off' or 'reoccurring'
- If 'reoccurring' is selected then you will also need to set the creation frequency
Then, select 'Save and Close' in the top right-hand corner to save your template. This will then be a usable template whenever a new action is being created against a record.
You can edit the details of any template action by clicking on the item in the table.
Home settings
You can include a message in the 'Welcome text' field which will be visible on the Home page under your logo at the top. This is optional to include.
You can also enable the 'Action Summary Tile' to display a section on the homepage listing the logged-in user's summary of pending actions. Actions can be created and assigned to users against Contracts, Plans and Evaluations.
Here is how the welcome text will display on the Home page:
Here is how the Action Summary will display on the Home page:
Front Page video
You can include an embedded video on the Home page that will appear below the module tiles. It will need to be a video that's been uploaded to either YouTube or Vimeo.
You will first need to check the box against the 'Video Tile Visible' setting to enable the section. You can include a heading that will appear above the video in the field provided. Finally, you need to enter the URL of the video, as per the format listed below.
Here is how the video will appear on the Home page:
GTM Categories
This section is only relevant for Compare CoOps users and not VendorPanel users.
Front page images / Carousel
You can use this to add an image carousel that will appear on the homepage if you wish.
Sentence Builder
Here is where you can review and choose to enable/disable the default prompts and create your own prompts that will appear in the sentence builder at the top of the Home page.
At the top of this section, you can first choose whether you'd like this feature to appear on the Home page or not. Below that will be a table with all of the default prompts.
These are not editable, but you can choose to disable any you don't want to use by selecting the prompt in the table to open up the settings in a pop-up window, and against 'Prompt enabled' you can select 'No'
To create a new prompt, click on the + (plus) button on the right of the table. This will open up a pop-up window where you can configure the prompt using the below:
- Prompt enabled: selecting whether to enable the prompt or not
- Prompt editable by: leave this as 'Administrators'
- Prompt: there are fields for a 'first' (what the user first selects) and a 'second' prompt (a selectable option after the first prompt is selected. Ideally, the first prompt should be something that is being used for multiple prompts (eg. 'find', 'learn', 'start')
- URL: this is where the user will be directed to when selecting the first and second prompt and then hitting the 'Go' button,
- Access type: you can choose to determine who sees this prompt based on either the group the user is in (eg. 'Everyone' or 'Administrators') or based on the modules they have access to (eg. 'Go To Market', 'Contracts Management'. Whichever option you select will then determine the field below where you either select 'groups' or a 'module'.
Once completed, click on the 'Save' button and the new prompt will be added to the table.