When you are creating a supplier survey, you might need to ask for a variety of different data fields that apply to different parts of the product. For example, if you are surveying on a caster, you might want your supplier to give you the part name and weight for each part in the caster, but then also give you the chemical make-up for each component, like below.
If so, read on to be able to request various fields at different levels of information. This article will cover how to request that data in the BOM Content fields of the survey with various fields required for each level.
If not and you are looking to collect data only about a list of chemical content, follow the instructions for surveys here: supplier-surveys.
Levels of Data
Its very important to understand the levels of data to decide which fields you want to make required for which levels. In sending surveys, we have defined three types of levels at which you can make fields required.
Summary Row: The overall component/part/material that the survey is completed about.
Intermediate Rows: Any number of levels between the summary row and the lowest-level rows. This often defines the sub-parts or sub-materials. There can be as many intermediate levels as the supplier needs.
Lowest-level Rows: the most detailed data provided about the component or material. Most commonly, this will be chemical data.
Take our caster example that we talked about in the introduction. Below labels which row types each of the rows are.
Each content field that is included in the survey is required either for all row levels, one of the level types, in two of the level types or is optional.
Selecting Required Fields
As you are drafting your survey, you will be required to select which content fields you want to include in your survey. To survey about component data and require fields at different levels, you must include the Level field in your survey.
First, set up your survey follow the instructions in our overall survey article here.
Next, select the fields you'd like to ask for.
Make sure the Level field is required. (first row under 'Columns').
Once you've selected all the fields you want to survey about, you'll want to check that they are required for the level types you want. For the caster example we used above, we will want Level to be the only field required at every level. By clicking the dropdown next to required, you can define which level types the field is required for.
For Part Name, you likely want that required in the intermediate rows only. It defaults to being required for intermediate rows only.
For Chemical Registry Number and Role, you likely will only want that required in the lowest-level rows where suppliers enter chemical data. It defaults to be being required for lowest-level rows.
For weight fields, there are a lot of different successful combinations. It all depends on what data you want back from the supplier. The simplest approach is to request the Material % by Weight in both intermediate rows and lowest-level rows. However, maybe you want Weight for the intermediate rows and Material % by Weight for the lowest-level rows. Or maybe you want Unit Weight in the summary row and the Material % by Weight for all other rows. This is completely configurable to your needs.
Finally, Recycled Content fields can be requested at only the summary row or in the summary and intermediate rows.
Any other fields can be added to your survey and then marked as required for each level type, or as an optional field.
Supplier View
When the supplier receives the survey, they will be notified of which fields are required at which levels.
Then they will be prompted to complete the data. If they click done, any required fields that have not been completed will be highlighted for them to complete, like below:
Then they can either save their data and return to complete it later, or be redirected to complete the fields later.
Once all required fields are complete, they will be able to submit the survey.
Getting Help
If you have questions about using 3E Exchange or the material covered in this help article, reach out in chat in the bottom right-hand corner or email support@3eco.com.