[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]
The Supplier Communications Agent helps you identify and follow up on purchase orders that vendors haven't yet confirmed, or that delivery is late for. For each order that it finds, the agent automatically generates a draft email that is addressed to the relevant vendor.
The Supplier Communications Agent helps you perform the following actions:
- Create queries to find purchase orders that require follow-up. Queries are unique for each user. Therefore, you can create and adjust them to meet your specific business needs. Two default queries are provided. One is used to follow up on unconfirmed purchase orders, and the other is used to follow up on late deliveries. You can modify or delete these default queries as required to meet your business needs.
- Configure how emails are generated for each query.
- Review the draft emails that the agent generates. After you review each message, you can modify it, copy it to your email client, and/or send it. To generate the emails, the agent uses data from the purchase order lines and/or related tables.
By default, the system provides two premade queries that you can use to find purchase orders that require action:
Unconfirmed purchase orders – This query finds purchase orders that are assigned to you, that have a delivery date within the next 60 days, but that haven't yet been confirmed by the vendor (that is, the confirmed delivery date is blank). The query uses the following specific criteria:
- The Confirmed delivery date field is blank.
- The Owner field is set to your user account (the current user).
- The Deliver remainder field is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
Delayed purchase orders – This query finds purchase orders that are assigned to you, and that are delayed (that is, the confirmed delivery date was one or more days ago). The query uses the following specific criteria:
- The Confirmed delivery date field is set to a date that is earlier than the current date.
- The Owner field is set to your user account (the current user).
- The Deliver remainder field is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
Configure query criteria and email settings
The following procedure explains how to set up queries to find purchase orders that require follow-up. It also explains how to configure the way that Copilot generates vendor email content for each query.
Open the (Preview) Follow-up emails page by following one of these steps:
- Go to Procurement and Sourcing > (Preview) Supplier Communications Agent > (Preview) Follow-up emails.
- Open the Purchase order receipt and follow-up workspace. A tile that is named (Preview) Follow-up emails indicates the number of emails that require review. Select the tile.
Follow one of these steps:
- To edit an existing query, select it in the list, and then select Edit.
- To delete an existing query, select it in the list, and then select Delete.
- To create a new query, select Configure agents. Then, under Library, select Send follow-up emails with Supplier Communications Agent.
Edit the name of the query as required. (The default name is Draft follow-up emails for purchase orders.)
Select whether you want the query to find unconfirmed purchase order or delayed purchase orders.
Modify the criteria to define which purchase orders require follow-up. For example, you might want the query to find orders for the next two months that haven't been confirmed, orders that were created more than three days ago, or orders that were sent but not confirmed.
If you selected to have the query find delayed purchase orders, the following default criteria are used:
- The Deliver remainder field on the line is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
- The Confirmed receipt date field on the line is set to a date that is between 60 days and 1 day before the current date.
- The Orderer field on the header is set to your user account (the current user).
If you selected to have the query find unconfirmed purchase orders, the following default criteria are used:
- The Deliver remainder field on the line is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
- The Confirmed receipt date field on the line is blank.
- The Orderer field on the header is set to your user account (the current user).
- The Document status field on the header is set to a value other than None.
Select the fields that should be included in the email, such as the delivery dates or the address.
To add a signature, select Signature, and enter the desired text. You can also add an email footer that has the text, "This email was written with the help of AI."
Important
If your system is set up to send emails automatically, the email footer is mandatory.
Select the tone of the emails (Casual or Formal, or Urgent or Non-urgent).
Examples
Here are some examples of other queries that you might set up:
To generate emails for orders that were created fewer than three days ago, and that aren't yet confirmed, specify the following criteria:
- The Deliver remainder field on the line is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
- The Confirmed receipt date field on the line is blank.
- The Created date field is set to a date that is between three days before the current date and current date.
- The Orderer field on the header is set to your user account (the current user).
To generate emails for orders for vendor group A that were created fewer than three days ago, and that aren't yet confirmed, specify the following criteria:
- The Deliver remainder field on the line is set to a value other than 0 (zero).
- The Confirmed receipt date field on the line is blank.
- The Created date field is set to a date that is between three days before the current date and current date.
- The Orderer field on the header is set to your user account (the current user).
- The Vendor (group) field is set to A.
Configure the address that emails are sent from
Learn how to view and set the address that the emails are sent from in Configure and send email.
You can change the sending email address for individual email messages before you send them.
Review and send drafted emails
To review the emails that were previously created for the various configurations, go to Procurement and Sourcing > (Preview) Supplier Communications Agent > (Preview) Follow-up emails. Configurations are shown on the left, and the emails for each configuration are shown on the right.
Edit each message as required, and then select Send to send it to the vendor.
Automatically send follow-up emails
If emails should be sent automatically, without user review, an administrator must use Feature management to turn on the (Preview) Send follow-up emails to vendors with Supplier Communications Agent - automatically sending emails feature. This feature is optional and is turned off by default. Learn more in Set up and configure the Supplier Communications Agent.
When the feature is turned on, the email address of the administrator who set up the agent is used as the sender for each email that the system automatically sends.
Learn more in Configure and send email.