Building Supplier PO Confirmation Portal with Unique Links + BC Integration

1. You can’t do this with Airtable’s forms, but you can very easily do all of this with Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.
   
   I demonstrate how to do much of this on this Airtable podcast episode:
   • Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
   
   Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to update Airtable records using a form, create custom PDF files from a form submission, accept payments on forms, display Airtable lookup fields on forms, create new linked records on a form, and much more.
    

   I also demonstrate some other advanced features of Fillout on this Airtable podcast episode:
   • Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.

2. Alternatively, if you want a “non-form” way of doing this (e.g. using email only), then you can also do this by using Make’s custom webhooks.
   
   I demonstrate how to take this approach on this Airtable podcast episode:
   • Custom Inline Email Actions for Approval
    

   If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one of the ways that you could instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

3. The 2 solutions above will work well for you, because you were specifically asking about “one-time approval links”.
   
   However, if you end up needing MORE than a one-time approval link — such as a way for your customers to see their entire history of POs — then you would need to use a customer portal for that.
   
   Airtable has its own built-in portals feature, which is very easy to setup but extraordinarily expensive. There are also 3rd-party customer portals that are much cheaper, such as Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, MiniExtensions, and Glide. I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.​​​​

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Hey ​@TobiasKornerup,

As mentioned by Scott above, you’ll want to use Fillout probably.

If you need any help setting this up, or if you have additional questions, I’d be happy to show you around on a quick call. Feel free to grab a slot using this link.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel 

Best way to generate secure unique form links in Airtable?

How to pre-fill form data from Airtable records automatically?

Link expires after confirmation or set timeframe

Airtable forms doesn’t handle line items for the PO nor the ability to close the submission at this time I’m afraid

If I were you I’d try Fillout for this (https://www.fillout.com/), comes with 1k submissions on the free plan. The expiry after timeframe / confirmation bit I reckon I’d handle with a formula field and visibility rules in Fillout

The only other clean alternative I can think of for this would be using a portal tool of some sort, which seems overengineered for this

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Recommended automation tools for BC integration (considering Activepieces vs Make.com)?

Hm, can’t speak for Activepieces, but I use Make a lot and it works fine

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How to handle PO line splits where one PO becomes multiple shipments?

Hmm, do you currently track Shipment Line items as well?  It sounds like you’ve got:

1. Purchase Orders with multiple line items
2. PO line items that can then get split into multiple shipments

If so, your table structure seems like it’d be:

1. POs - Linked to PO Line Items
2. PO Line Items - Linked to Shipments
3. Shipments

And you’d like each PO Line Item record to multiple Shipment records, e.g. PO Line Item 1 for qty 1000, linked to Shipment A for 300, Shipment B for 700

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Is it possible to setup automatic followup if the Airtable form hasnt been updated by the supplier in set timeframe?

Yeah this part’s probably the easiest bit of everything you’ve mentioned.  You’d just have a formula field that checks today’s date against whether the PO’s been confirmed yet