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Configure Supplier Engagement elements in Power Platform (preview)

[This article is prerelease documentation and is subject to change.]

After you install the Supplier Engagement components, align the Power Platform environment with your portal, communication, and automation requirements. This article covers the configuration tasks to complete before broad onboarding or production validation, including environment variables, email templates, mailbox activation, cloud flows, and duplicate detection rules. These tasks make sure that users receive the right links, cloud flows can run, and duplicate vendor data is detected before it causes problems.

Prerequisites

Before you configure Supplier Engagement elements in Power Platform, complete the prerequisites listed in Supplier Engagement deployment overview, prerequisites, and licensing.

Customize supplier invitation and notification emails

You can customize the email template text that Supplier Engagement sends to suppliers, including invitation and notification emails. This setup is useful when you want to align system-generated emails with your organization's tone, branding, and onboarding guidance.

Important

The Supplier Engagement invitation email template must include a link to your supplier portal. Update that link before you go live.

Tip

Learn more in Create templates for email.

To customize supplier invitation and notification emails, follow these steps.

  1. Sign in to the Power Platform admin center as a system administrator and open your environment.

  2. Select the link under Environment URL to open the environment in a new browser tab.

  3. Do one of the following steps:

    • If a list of apps opens, select the Power Platform Environment Settings app.
    • If the environment opens directly to an app, select the app name on the app header bar at the top to open the list of published apps, and then select Power Platform Environment Settings.

  4. On the navigation pane, go to Templates > Email Templates.

  5. Supplier Engagement uses the following templates. Open the template that you want to customize.

    • Supplier Engagement contact portal access
    • Supplier Engagement invitation
    • Supplier Engagement registration status

  6. Make the following changes to the selected email template:

    • Update the subject and body text as needed.
    • If the message includes a portal action, verify that the link points to the correct supplier portal URL for your environment. By default, the Supplier Engagement invitation email template includes a placeholder for your supplier portal URL and you must update it before going live with the solution.

  7. Select Save.

  8. Inspect and update the other templates as needed.

Enable a mailbox for cloud flow notifications

Cloud flows, which are part of Microsoft Power Automate, automate business processes and ensure timely communication across platforms such as Supply Chain Management and Microsoft Teams. To maximize the effectiveness of these flows—especially those that send notifications—you must enable a mailbox for the flow owner or service account. This setup allows the flow to send email notifications reliably, which ensures that users and stakeholders receive critical updates, alerts, and approvals directly in their inbox.

To enable a mailbox for cloud flow notifications, follow these steps.

  1. Open the Power Platform Environment Settings app in the Power Platform admin center as described previously.
  2. On the navigation pane, go to Email Configuration > Mailboxes.
  3. Select the mailbox to activate.
  4. On the command bar, select Activate. In the Confirm Mailbox Activation dialog, select Activate.
  5. On the command bar, select Approve Email. In the Approve Primary Email dialog, select OK.
  6. On the command bar, select Test and Enable Mailboxes. In the Test Email Configuration dialog, select OK.

Note

These mailboxes are used both for automated notifications and to send updates from cloud flows. Choose mailboxes for valid service accounts or non-personal accounts that are permanent and unaffected by organizational changes. This approach helps maintain stable, long-term automation and avoids unnecessary interruptions in workflow.

Note

Power Automate can also work with on-premises Exchange through the appropriate connectors and gateway configuration. Learn more in Manage an on-premises data gateway in Power Automate.

Enable supporting cloud flows

Cloud flows automate key business processes and ensure integration between the Supplier Engagement app, supplier portal, and Supply Chain Management. These flows streamline notifications, synchronize data, and automate approvals to help reduce manual effort and minimize errors.

Connection references act as secure bridges between your Power Platform environment and external services such as Dataverse, Outlook, Teams, and Power Apps. By establishing these references, you ensure that cloud flows and integrations can authenticate and interact with the necessary data sources and applications. Proper configuration of connection references enables automated workflows that synchronize supplier data and support collaboration across the Supplier Engagement app, supplier portal, and Supply Chain Management.

Although the cloud flows are already present in the system after installation, they're inactive by default and don't run until you enable them. After you configure the necessary connection references, activate the cloud flows in your environment so that all related functionalities become operational.

To create the required connection references and activate the cloud flows, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Power Apps maker portal and select your environment.

  2. On the navigation pane, select More > Connections.

  3. On the command bar, select New connection.

  4. A list of services opens. Add connections for the Microsoft Dataverse service by using the + in the Actions column.

  5. Add a second connection for the Microsoft Teams service.

  6. On the navigation pane, select Solutions.

  7. Find and open the solution that has a Display name of Default solution.

  8. On the navigation pane, go to Objects > Connection References.

  9. Use your browser's on-page search function to find connection references that include the text SupplierEngagement (in other words, use Ctrl + F to do an on-page search, don't use the filter provided by the site). There should be three of them:

    • Microsoft Dataverse MicrosoftSupplierEngagement-77aa1
    • Microsoft Dataverse msdyn_SupplierEngagementBase-abf2e
    • Microsoft Teams MicrosoftSupplierEngagement-0e21b

  10. For Microsoft Dataverse MicrosoftSupplierEngagement-77aa1, open the Commands (three dots) menu, select Edit, set Connection to the Microsoft Dataverse connection that you created, and then select Save.

  11. For Microsoft Dataverse msdyn_SupplierEngagementBase-abf2e, open the Commands menu, select Edit, set Connection to the Microsoft Dataverse connection that you created, and then select Save.

  12. For Microsoft Teams MicrosoftSupplierEngagement-0e21b, open the Commands menu, select Edit, set Connection to the Microsoft Teams connection that you created, and then select Save.

  13. On the navigation pane, select Back to solutions.

  14. On the Solutions page, open the Managed tab.

  15. Find and open the solution that has a Display name of Supplier Engagement Core.

  16. On the navigation pane, go to Objects > Cloud flows.

  17. Turn on each cloud flow that shows a Status of Off. To turn on a flow, select it and then select Turn on on the command bar.

  18. Repeat the previous steps to turn on all the cloud flows in the Supplier Engagement Portal solution.

Enable duplicate detection rules

Duplicate detection rules help maintain clean and consistent vendor data within the Supplier Engagement solution. These rules prevent the creation of duplicate global vendor records by automatically identifying potential matches based on key fields such as name, email address, phone number, and website. By configuring and activating duplicate detection, you ensure data integrity, streamline vendor management processes, and reduce the risk of errors caused by redundant or conflicting records.

Set up rules to detect duplicate global vendor records by making sure that none of the following fields have values that match those of an existing global vendor:

  • Primary phone number – Use an exact match comparison and include blank values in the evaluation.
  • Email address – Use an exact match comparison and ignore blank values.
  • Name – Compare the first five characters by using a same-first-characters matching rule and ignore blank values.
  • Primary URL – Use an exact match comparison and ignore blank values.

To enable the duplicate detection rules in the Supplier Engagement solution, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Power Platform Environment Settings app in the Power Platform admin center as described previously.

  2. On the navigation pane, go to Data Management > Duplicate Detection Rules.

  3. Select the check box for each of the following rules, and then select Publish on the command bar:

    • Global vendor with same primary phone number
    • Global vendor with same email address
    • Global vendor with same name
    • Global vendor with same primary URL

  4. Confirm that each rule now shows a Status Reason of Published.

Learn more in Set up duplicate detection rules to keep your data clean.

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