The development of the material request functionality from the Technical Portal is one of iGEO’s major developments, allowing for improved communication flow between technical colleagues and office staff.
Below, you will find the necessary steps to apply this in your company from now on. Let’s get started!
Configuring material request permissions
To give technicians the authority to request materials, you need to access the technician’s profile and activate the appropriate permission.
If you activate the first box, the technician can make the request without needing to be validated by office colleagues.
If we want to add a level of security, we can activate the second box, and the request will need to be validated by the office.
Important: The technician must have a designated warehouse from which the material will be deducted so that when the order is accepted, the requested quantity is correctly and automatically deducted.
How does the technician make a material request?
From the Technical Portal, they will find the «Product» menu. At the top, they will find the «Material request» tab and see that there are two options: «Material request» or «Material request for pending orders».
Material request
On this screen, the technician will need to indicate the material and quantity they want to request. Finally, they will specify the source and destination warehouse.
With this very simple data to indicate, they will be able to make the material request directly from the Technical Portal. By clicking «Send request», a number will be assigned to the request for thorough tracking.
Decision on the request made from the Office Portal
Remember, as we explained previously, that this directly depends on the permissions assigned to the technician.
If they only have the first permission, no one from the office needs to validate their request.
If the request needs to be validated from the office, follow these steps
If someone from the office needs to validate the request, they should follow these steps.
Access the Catalog module, and within the «Material request» section, a list of all «accepted», «rejected», and «pending» requests will appear.
If the request includes multiple products, a line for each product will appear in the request table.
In this table, office colleagues will have all the data they need to make a decision. By selecting one or more lines, you can accept or reject the request through the Actions button, located at the top right.
Finally, you will need to verify that the data is correct or modify some if necessary.
To verify that the product movement has been carried out correctly, we can check if the movement has been registered in the source warehouse.
To see it in detail, simply click on the eye icon.
How can the technician know which requests are approved or rejected?
By accessing the «Products» menu and the «Material request» tab, at the top, you will find the «Rejected», «Accepted», and «Pending» options.
How to manage material requests for pending work orders?
From the Technical Portal, you must access the «Products» section, and in the «Material request» tab, you will find at the bottom the «Material request for pending orders» button.
By clicking here, you must enter a date range for the work orders planned between those dates.
Thus, we will see a list of all the products suggested in those work orders, and we will simply need to check the box on the left and request these materials.
Then the technician will need to provide the other information explained previously (deadline date and time, source and destination warehouse, observations, etc.). The procedure to follow is exactly the same.
With these steps, you can already speed up the material request process from the Technical Portal.
If you want to stay up to date with other iGEO news and developments, check out our blog.
