Creating a Vendor Directory & Choosing What Documents & Folders to Display

In the age of information technology, every organization uses and handles digital documents. Over the years, these documents, files, and folders start to pile up. Hence, it is of utmost importance that a document database is maintained, organized, and properly systematized. The goal is to empower employees to save time and effort, while searching for the much-needed information inside the database.

One of the most critical scenarios in many organizations is managing documentation that is specific to different vendors – price books, quotes, offering presentations. Combining BindTuning Filters and BindTuning Documents, you can create a filtered vendor directory, linking to vendor-specific pages, in which you can display vendor specific information. 

A) Using BindTuning Filters, create a vendor directory with links to individual vendor pages

1. Review the article ‘’How to Filter your Organization’s Employees Based on Their Skills, Qualifications & Expertise?’’ to build a vendor directory. 
• As a Source List, use a list of your vendors and add custom columns with information that will enable you to filter them (eg.: service provided, contact person, contract start date, rating)
• To create a Template list, follow the steps in the article
2. Create new pages or site collections for each individual vendor.
3. In your Vendor List (your Source list in BindTuning Filters) create a new column of the type ''Hyperlink'' - and name it VendorPages. Copy the link of each vendor's page into the VendorPages column.
4. Edit the template list that you have created for the Filters web part, clicking on “Manage templates”: 

1. Click on the pencil icon:
2. In the ''Setup a Link'' section, type {{VendorPages}}
3. Hit save!

Tip! You can also choose to open the Vendor Page in the same window, a new window or a modal.

B) Display documents specific to each vendor using BindTuning Documents and a unique document library

Now it’s time to populate your individual vendor pages. Use different BindTuning Web Parts to organize relevant information: 

• Image Gallery – to display pictures for products/services offered.
• Alerts – to notify your team of new updates or actions needed in relation to that supplier.
• Accordion – to organize FAQs in relation to that vendor products or services.
• Documents – to display, filter and search all documents specific to 1 vendor.

To display vendor specific documentation in each vendor page, you could:

• Create one document library per vendor.
• Use one single document library for all Vendor documents and use target folders or views to organize data

In this article we will use one single document library for all vendor documentation and walk you through two alternative configuration of the BindTuning Documents Web Part:

• Option 1) Group documents in folders and use BindTuning Documents ‘’Target Folder’’ feature
• Option 2) Leverage SharePoint list views and use these to filter content being displayed in each web part (Recommended)

Option 1) Target Folder:

1. Create one document library and within it, one folder for each vendor (eg.: add documents relative to Vendor A to a folder named “Vendor A”)
2. Add one new BindTuning Documents web part to each vendor page – link each web part to the same document library
3. For each individual Documents web part, in each individual vendor page, open the web part settings panel and click on ''Manage Documents''. In the field ''Target Folder'' write the name of each specific vendor folder. This will display only the documents inside each folder

Disclaimer: In this method, all the documents for each vendor must be in one folder. If you have folders inside a folder, they won't appear. The ‘'Target Folder'' feature only allows to display files (not folders) within folders and only content from one folder at a time. 

 Option 2) Leverage SharePoint list views and use these to filter content being displayed in each web part (Recommended)

Tip! With this option, you can display both files and folders.

1. Create one document library with all files and folders on the same level
2. To differentiate which document belongs to a certain vendor, create a new column in the document library and call it ‘’VendorName’’
3. Edit in grid view and write the name of the vendor respective to each file or folder, such as the following:
4. From the VendorName column, select “Filter by”. Select which vendor’s documents and folders you would like to display (eg.:‘’VendorA’’)
5. Click on “All documents” and select ‘’Save view as’’ to save this view as ‘’VendorA’’
6. Go back to an individual vendor page(eg.: Vendor A)
7. Edit the BindTuning Documents web part and from the web part settings panel, click on ‘’Manage Documents’’.
8. In “Filtering Options” choose the view ‘’VendorA’’:
9. Hit the floppy disk icon.
10. Save the new settings

With both options, you will be able to link different instances of the BindTuning Documents Web Parts to a single Document Library, making its configuration easier and more sustainable in the long run. The main difference between both options is this document library setup and organization – in vendor specific folders (Option A) or in 1 single level with views (Option 2) 

Hopefully, by now your Vendor Directory is all set and ready!

More information on configuring the Filters Web Part available at BindTuning Help Center