This article applies to:
Admins and Managers
Premium Procurement
Estimated time: Less than 5 mins
What are Request Categories?
Request categories exist in Vendr so you can build procurement automation workflows that ask different questions and collect different data for SaaS and non-SaaS purchases.
Your Vendr account comes with 10 request categories out of the box.
Using Request Categories in Workflow Templates
Request categories are most useful when using Vendr's Procurement platform to build out your procurement workflows. They help you collect data on what your team is buying and build out specific conditional logic for different categories of purchase.
Add the request category question to your intake to start collecting data on what your team is purchasing. The list of request categories you've defined will appear as a list of categories your requesters can select when filling out their intakes.
Additionally, if you'd like to ask a question specific to hardware purchases that don't apply to software purchases, you can do that using request categories.
To use request categories to power your conditional logic in intake questions,
In the left-hand navigation, click Admin > Workflow Templates
Click on the template you want to edit
Click on the Intake Form in your template
Click Add question and choose Request category from the list of questions. Move the question to anywhere you'd like in the intake form.
[Optional] Click into another question in your intake form. On the right hand side, toggle show this question to "if the answer to".
[Optional] Choose the request category question What type of new purchase? from the dropdown. Select the answer you want to build the conditional logic off of, which in this example is hardware.
This question will now only show in the intake if the answer to the request category question is hardware.
You can also use the request category question when building conditional logic within your workflow template. For example, you may want the workflow to follow a different path when the purchase is for hardware than when it is for software.
To use request categories to power your conditional logic in your workflow template,
In the left-hand navigation, click Admin > Workflow Templates
Click on the template you want to edit
Click the + button on your workflow template and click Conditional to add a conditional logic step
Select the request category question in the if the answer to box of the logic builder
Select the answer you would like your workflow template to branch on. In the example below, the template will follow the true branch if the user chose hardware in the intake. If the user didn't choose hardware, the template will follow the false branch.
Editing Request Categories
To view and edit Request Categories, navigate to Admin > Request Categories.
Your Vendr account comes with 10 request categories out of the box. You can customize or remove the name and description any of the 10 provided categories by clicking the 3 dots "..." under the Action column in the list.
You can also add your own custom categories by clicking Create a request category at the top of the page. Write the name and description of the category you'd like to add and click Add.