I am in the process of creating an RFQ app that will be used across multiple work groups. Work group 1 will create an Opportunity which will consist of a unique Opportunity #, Customer name, Job location, Start date, and details. I have set up a parent table to capture this information. The Opportunity will also consists of one or more products that are captured in my child table, that will be sent out to obtain pricing and availability. Work group 2 will open the Opportunity, assign it to themselves, and then select one or more vendors to submit the RFQ to. I need to be able to send out 1 or more products to 1 or more vendors in one concise email for each vendor with all products selected to go to that specific vendor. I have tried GPT as well as Gemini, and neither seem to be able to help me with this issue. Does anyone have experience with this, as it relates to sending out RFQs? I am a newbie and am running out of lifelines, please help!!!
This is very doable. You can setup a bot to send these emails with dynamic content to each of your vendors.
I am able to generate the email to multiple vendors when there is 1 product on the RFQ. However, when there are more than 1 products going to one or more vendors I am unable to have 1 email per vendor with the multiple products included. I have only been able to have 1 product included in the email to each vendor.
This requires a re-thinking of HOW you go about building the Bot.
Since the Bot is for sending emails AND you wish to send emails to vendors separately, then the Bot MUST iterate over the vendors in some way.
I think the way I would handle this is to have a Quote Vendors table that is a child of the Quotes table. Insert a row for each Quote/Vendor combination. This provides you the ability to list the products for each vendor and any other vendor related details!
When ready, set a trigger/flag column for each Quote Vendor row to send the email. This could be an action button on the Quote itself.
I hope this helps!
So would i need a new table for this or would I be able to utilize the child table? My child table for the Opportunities consist of a vendors to send to column (which is a vendor number/numbers that references the vendor email address) along with all the details needed to send to each vendor for the quote. Currently I can select one or more vendors to send the Opportunity to, and I assign a vendor/vendors to each product for a specific Opportunity number. After all products have been assigned vendors, I select a send to vendors action and that works if it’s one item, it’s just when I have multiple products that need to be split out where I am having issues. When there are multiple products, the email going to each vendor is only sending one product instead of combining products selected to go to the same vendor. Do I need to create a totally new table, that compiles this same data but with a 1 vendor number for 1 product per line basis? Sorry, I am very new to this and am not the best at explaining.
I don’t know your data structure well enough to make a suggestion. The main goal is to get a Vendor list that can be used to trigger a Bot and generate an email for each Vendor separately.
I’ll start from the beginning with what I do know. This is how I would construct the app.
I would have three main tables (there could be others these are just the main ones for this discussion):
- Opportunities
- Opportunity Vendors
- Vendor Products
Opportunities in the parent of Opportunity Vendors and Opportunity Vendors is the parent Of Vendor Products.
The idea is you would create an Opportunity record which would show an Inline table for Vendors. Tapping Add on that Inline table opens an Opportunity Vendor row to add the Vendor. In this Opportunity Vendor Form View you would have an Inline table for the Vendor Products from which you would assign the products for that vendor.
With this structure in this order, you would end up with a [Related Vendor Products] list column that automatically shows under the Opportunity Vendor row. This can be used directly in the generated email to insert the list of products
Once done editing the Opportunity, you would tap a button which would update a [Send] flag on each of the Opportunity Vendor rows that would be used to trigger your Email Bot for each vendor. Because of the data structure, you would have the list of Products for that Vendor already specified in a column and you would need to do is have your Email Bot us that list to update the email body for that Vendor.
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Alternative Option
Now, I am understanding from your description that you wish to select the products first and then assign the Vendors to that product. You CAN organize your tables this way and still make things work. Just reverse the order of table 2 and 3 above. When the button is tapped to send an email, you would still update the flag on the Opportunity Vendors rows. However, when it comes to producing the email body for the vendor, you would need to introduce some templating logic in the form of a START/END block in the email body to gather the Product list for the Vendor and iterate over that computed list. Still very doable just a little more effort to gather the data.
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If you are not locked in on the order in which you add Vendors and Products to the Opportunity, then I’d go with the initial order described above. It will help simplify things.
Otherwise, use the Alternative Option.
You will no doubt have question later - so ask away!!!