Intake is the very beginning of the Source to Contract workflow, enabling stakeholders in the business to engage easily with sourcing and procurement teams for their needs. Company Admins can configure Intake forms, which act as request forms. A stakeholder populates the relevant information that they have and submits the request for a Sourcing Manager to take action on. Common types of intake forms include Request for RFX, or Request for New Supplier Onboarding.

Stakeholders can access intake forms in a few different ways. You can choose from these access options:

• A direct link to the request form, hosted externally from Strategic Sourcing (often on your internal site).
• The Create Project button, on the Pipeline page, is available when signing into Strategic Sourcing.
• The Workday Strategic Sourcing tile on your corporate authentication page (that is Okta, Azure) that links directly to an intake form.
• Through a link on the Business Purchase Table in Strategic Sourcing. 

Once an Intake form is submitted, stakeholders can access Pipeline to view their requests and submit a new one. 

When implementing Intake, we recommend you consider some configuration options:

• One Intake Form or Multiple Forms: 
  • Having multiple project types available through intake enables stakeholders to request sourcing events, supplier onboarding, or supplier performance requests directly. 
  • Some customers prefer to create 1 intake form for their organization’s request needs. Once the request is submitted, the Sourcing Manager can change the project type or create a related project/contract to indicate what work is being done. 
• Intake Routing to Either Pipeline or Contracts Workbench
  • Some prefer to have all request types be funneled through pipeline, meaning all intake requests begin as projects. Then for contract requests, a related contract can be created from the original project request.
• Intake Routing to Individuals or Teams
  • Determine per intake request whether routing should assign one or multiple Sourcing Managers to a request form. 
  • Requests can only have 1 Sourcing Owner but ownership can be edited as needed.

Configuring the Intake Form 

When configuring intake forms, consider the stakeholder point of view when creating fields and only ask for information when truly necessary. To make it simple and quick for stakeholders to fill out and submit a form, we recommend during setup:

• Keep fields on the intake form minimal.
• Use the flexibility of conditional fields.
  • Conditional fields are custom fields that are configured to display or hide based on the answer to another field. 
• When an intake form has a small number of custom fields, we recommend that those fields live in the Project Details/Contract Summary section of the request. This reduces the necessary clicks to complete the form. 

Forms can be configured to ask any information you'd like. We commonly see these fields:

• General Information
  • Example: What type of good or service are you purchasing? When does your project need to be completed? Do you need help with finding a supplier or do you already have one in mind? Do you have a new contract that needs negotiation support?
• Security/Risk Screening: A stakeholder might need to be asked more questions if the request impacts elements related to privacy and security at the organization (that is, a new supplier that will have data access).
  • Example: Will the supplier have access to any customer or employee data? Will the supplier have an integration with any other systems?
• Request Routing: Data that will help to route to a specific owner and purchasing path.
  • Example: What type of good or service are you purchasing? What is your estimated annual budget for this purchase? Which country or region is requesting this purchase? 

Further Setup Considerations and Recommendations are contained in the Workday Administrator Guide.

Business Purchase Table

One of the key features of Intake is the Business Purchase Table. The Business Purchase Table simplifies and improves the business purchase process by providing a more guided experience for stakeholders. It also enables stakeholders to access the links, sites, and processes for making requests to the procurement team at your organization. Instructions for how to set up the Business Purchase Table can be found in the Workday Administrator Guide.

The Business Purchase table isn’t required for stakeholders to submit intake forms. However, it's highly recommended when an organization has many varying options and processes for their stakeholders to engage with Procurement. Examples we've seen customers set up tables for: 

• Specific intake requests forms.
• The organization's Amazon business account.
• Requests for new Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

For Workday Procurement users, the table can also be configured to direct a stakeholder into Workday’s Internal Catalog, Supplier Website, or a Requisition. Note which pages in Workday the user will be brought to if these are selected in the table:

• Requisition: Opens in Workday to the Requisitions Worklet.
• Internal Catalog: Opens in Workday to the Search Catalog task page.
• Supplier Website: Opens in Workday to the Connect to Supplier Website task page.

Important Information to know: 

• Once the Business Purchase table feature flag is enabled, it becomes the home page for all users. This occurs even if no selection options are enabled. We always recommend that you configure and test the table in your Sandbox environment before configuring in Production. If you're already live in Production, we recommend enabling the business purchase table during nonworking hours so as to avoid confusion from stakeholders.
• If both the Business Purchase table and the milestone home page features are enabled in your environment, the milestone home page is the default home page for all users.
• Users who don’t want to have the Business Purchase table as their home page can change their default home page in their User Profile.