Request Information from Suppliers

Ask your suppliers for the product and organization data you need, at scale. You can ask a question inside a single passport, send a request to many suppliers at once, invite new suppliers into the network as you ask, and then review and accept what comes back. All requests are sent and answered through Product Passports.

Ask for information in a passport

For a quick question or a single document, work directly in the passport you share with a supplier.

Open the passport for the product you're collaborating on.
Click the entity in the value chain you have a question about to see more detail about that supplier.
Open the conversation for that entity and ask your question or request a document. Once you send it, your supplier receives your comment.
When your supplier responds, you'll get a notification on your home page that takes you straight to the passport. Open the passport to view the conversation and any attached document.

You collaborate directly with your Tier 1 supplier inside a passport. You can still ask them for information about suppliers deeper in their value chain, and a document or response stays in the passport until you accept it into your Catalog.

Send a request to multiple suppliers

When you need the same information from several suppliers, send a single request to all of them. You select exactly what you need, so responses come back in a consistent, Catalog-ready format.

Go to Requests and create a new request, then give it a name.
Add the information you want from suppliers: fields, documents, value chain information, and any custom questions for anything not covered by standard fields. You can also set how far upstream the request reaches (Tier 2, Tier 3, or all tiers; the default is all value chain information).
Choose the products the request applies to.
Review the passports you'll collaborate within. Any passports that don't exist yet are previewed for you. When it looks right, send the request.

You can request organization-level information the same way. Instead of data about the product, ask for fields and documents about the supplier's organization, such as facility addresses and certifications. When you later accept that information, Altana keeps a record of which collaborator provided it, so you always know where it came from.

Invite new suppliers as you request

When you build a request, you can invite suppliers who aren't on Altana yet, from the same flow. The invitation and the request go out together.

Start a request as usual.
When you select suppliers, if a supplier doesn't have an Altana account, you'll be prompted to enter their contact information. Add one or more email addresses for that organization.
Complete and send the request. Existing Altana users receive it immediately. Invited suppliers receive an email invitation to join Altana, and once they've joined they can respond to your request in the platform.

Contact information you enter during this flow is saved to that organization's profile for future use.

Track your outbound requests

Keep an eye on what you've sent and what's still outstanding from your home page activity hub, which shows the count of requests awaiting a response. See Monitor Collaboration Activity.

Review what comes back

To review supplier responses, open Requests and find the request under your sent requests. Because requests are tracked per passport, each shows a completion status:

Green: all questions for that passport have been answered.
Yellow: the questions have been partially answered.
Gray: no questions have been answered yet.

Open a request to see the suppliers and product passports it covers, then open a passport to view the responses. Responses are stored within the passport. If a supplier leaves a comment asking for more information, open the comment to reply and add any context they need.

Accept changes into your Catalog

Responses stay in the passport until you accept them. Nothing changes in your Catalog without your action.

Open the passport where a supplier has shared updates with you and review the new information.
Select Review Updates to compare the incoming changes against your existing data.
If everything looks right, accept the changes. The updates become part of your Catalog.
To confirm, open the product in your Catalog and view its value chain. It now includes the information your supplier shared.

To accept responses across many passports at once, see Process Passports in Bulk.

Key details

All requests are sent and answered through Product Passports.
Requests currently support fields and documents for the subject product of a passport. Requesting data for upstream products is not yet available.
You can request organization-level fields and documents in the same request; requesting them one item at a time is not yet available.
Invited suppliers can log in to Altana and respond for free.
No response enters your Catalog until you review and accept it.