Supplier Engagement Module
The supplier engagement module is now in Public preview and ready to meet the world!
So let's digest what it's all about!
Next Gen Vendor Collaboration
Ever since AX 2012 (passed on to F&O), there has been a feature called Vendor Collaboration. That feature has mainly been about adding your vendors as external users to your Entra ID and assigning them a restricted security role in F&O so they can log in, see, and work with data associated with their vendor record. Like Purchase orders and RFQ bids.
One of the issues with this approach has been that an ERP system is not super easy to orient yourself in if you're not working with it on a daily basis. Another, and maybe the most problematic, issue has been that if a vendor works across several legal entities of your organisation, they have had to keep track of which legal entity they are working against and jump between them, just as any other user.
When Microsoft built the Supplier Engagement module, they had all of these concerns in their mind!
Technical Base
The Supplier Engagement module consists of the following apps:
- Backoffice App: This is the usual F&O Interface/APP
- Supplier Engagement App: A model-driven Power App
Used by internal workers to administrate and handle relationships with vendors - Supplier Portal: A Power Page site
Where the vendors log in and interact with their data
As with many other apps being built these days, Microsoft leverages virtual entities to share data between F&O and Dataverse.
Global Vendor
The key instrument of getting away from the legal entity issues that vendor collaboration has is the concept of the Global Vendor. The Global vendor is an object mainly existing within Dataverse, which is meant to be one record per vendor, regardless of how many legal entities you work with that vendor in. The vendor can then be released into the different legal entities. Once released into a legal entity, the F&O vendor is created for that vendor.
The global vendor concept also gives you the possibility to get a 360- view of all communication and activities regarding this particular vendor, regardless of where they're happening in the company. That the global vendor lives within dataverse also gives you the extra dimension of tracking emails, appointments and team meeting data from Outlook just as a classic old CRM account. And, of course, the capability to send emails directly from the record is also there.
Global Vendor creation & onboarding
There are 4 different paths that a vendor can be created from:
- Vendor Registration Request
That is when you publish an open site where anyone can go and register as a vendor, saying, "I want to become a vendor for you!"
This step could be compared to a “lead” in the sales process, and you do need to go in and approve it, and then it will create a Global vendor in the status of Prospect. (Just as lead to account in sales)
2. Global vendor — Vendor onboarding
In this process, you create the Global Vendor record (in a prospect status) in the Supplier Engagement app and then send an invitation to the supplier that needs to log in and fill in an onboarding form and detail its capabilities. Once this is done, it can be Qualified (from Prospect vendor to Qualified vendor), and then you can start releasing it to your legal entities.
3. Global vendor — Manual onboarding
This process is very similar to the one just described, with the only difference that the vendor does not have to do the onboarding you fill it all out for them yourself and qualify them directly and release them to the legal entities.
4. Converting existing F&O vendors
If you, for example, already are running a F&O installation and want to convert your existing Vendors to global vendors, this feature comes in handy. You just access your vendor in F&O press Global vendor in Set up
Then you will come to a wizard which also checks if it can find any related vendors in any of the other legal entities that should be merged
Supplier engagement portal
Once the Vendor is onboarded and the invitation has been sent, all necessary security roles are automatically assigned to the vendor. From here, the vendor can now access and interact via the Supplier portal:
And the data the vendor sees is a collection from all the legal entities for which it has data.
As of right now, there are 4 main processes that you run from within here:
- RFQ (Request for Quotation)
- Purchase Orders
- Invoices
- Consignment Inventory
If you have previous experience from Vendor Collaboration, you will, when going into the processes, probably recognise a lot of steps that are being executed in the backoffice app/F&O
RFQ Process
The RFQ process is about needing to purchase something and reaching out to several vendors to get proposals on delivery times and prices for that item or procurement category
Start by going into “All requests for quotations” in F&O and create a new one.
Define one or several items or procurement categories that it should involve.
Define which vendors are allowed to bid on this.
Add other relevant stuff to the bid, like questionnaires, building buidance etc
Then press “Send all lines”
This pushes the RFQs to each vendor's Supplier portal so they can see and interact with them.
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The vendor can then choose to bid or to decline from the portal:
Once in the bid, the vendor can change delivery dates, quantities and prices. They can also fill in the questionnaires etc and finally submit it.
Once submitted, it goes back to you to the customer, and you can review the different responses in the backend app/F&O.
You will then accept or reject each response that you received to the bid.
One's accepting it (depending on the Purchase type for the RFQ), a follow-up item will be created. If the Purchase type is “Purchase order”, a purchase order will be created.
Purchase Order Process
The Purchase Order process involves creating Purchase Orders and sending them for approval to the Vendor via the portal. Once in the portal, the vendor can accept, reject, or modify the Purchase order.
You start by creating a Purchase order in F&O (or having it created in other ways, like the RFQ process). Then you press “Send for confirmation”
Then it appears in the Supplier Portal for the vendor:
The vendor can then accept or reject the entire purchase order or individual lines. They can also suggest changes
If the vendor suggests changes, they can split deliveries, change quantities, change confirmed delivery dates, or propose a substitute.
Once done, the vendor submits it back to you as a customer.
You can then go into the purchase order and press “View response on the latest sent Order”, and you will see in bold the changes (if any) that have been made.
For some changes, like Quantity changes and changes of delivery date, you can then just mark the line and press “Process to PO” and the purchase order gets updated.
For other changes, such as split delivery or line rejections, you unfortunately need to update them manually on the Purchase Order.
Ones updated the lines (if needed), you, as the customer, go in and press “Confirm” on the Purchase order, and then it ends up as a Confirmed Purchase order in the portal for the vendor.
Invoices Process
Invoices can be created from several different places. Manually in F&O, via Invoice Capture, via EDI, but the portal also allows the vendors to create invoices from within it.
As soon as the invoice exists within F&O as a Pending vendor invoice (or in later stages), it will be visible for the vendor regardless of the original source. Both the PO invoice and the Cost Invoices are visible.
The possibility is then there to create an invoice directly from the portal.
You will then get the option to either create it from a Purchase order or create it as a cost invoice (Start from Scratch).
Consignent Inventory
The Consignment Inventory parts are for vendors viewing only. A vendor can't add or change any data from the Supplier Portal.
What they can see is the stock of the items where the vendor is still set as the owner.
The items for which there have been owner transfers on(picked from the Consignment stock).
And the purchase orders connected to the Owner transfers.
What's more?
Obviously, there are many details in this module that I haven't been able to cover in this post, especially how you work with the global vendor on Assessments, Risk management, Certifications, etc.
There is also rich functionality for working with vendor access management. Different contacts from the vendor may have different access levels. Some might only have access to work with some of your legal entities, and others might have access to it all. The same goes for the internal workers in your company. Some might have access to all vendors in all legal entities, others just to some, or even just to specific vendors in some specific legal entities.
Also checkout:
André Arnaud de Calavons post on the feature: https://dynamicspedia.com/2026/08/reinventing-vendor-collaboration-with-dynamics-365-supplier-engagement/
Or the Microsoft Learn Artical on it:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/supply-chain/supplier-engagement/supplier-engagement-overview?WT.mc_id=DX-MVP-5000413
