APIs Purchase Requests and Purchase Orders

Purchase request (PR) and Purchase order (PO) APIs are part of LittleBig Connection APIs and help you in the Procure stage of your project lifecycle. Let’s see in this article when and how you can use them, and which information they include.

Within this article

• Presentation of Purchase Requests and Purchase Orders APIs
• Using Purchase Requests (PR) API
  • Search of ongoing PRs
  • Update of a PR (validation/rejection/external number addition)
• Using Purchase Orders (PO) API
  • Retrieval of ongoing POs
  • Update of a PO
  • Attach files to a PO
  • Trigger direct renewal of an existing project

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Presentation of Purchase Requests and Purchase Orders APIs

These APIs allow you to manage upcoming and ongoing projects in sync with your internal tools.

Indeed, once an Operational manager has selected an expert, they may need to create a Purchase Request and have it validated by your procurement department (optional). Instead of having to duplicate the information on LB platform to your internal tool, the PR API can connect LittleBig platform with your e-procurement tool so that the PR is created and validated/rejected only once in your tool. The decision is then reported into LB platform.

Then, after PR validation (if any) or directly after the profile selection, the corresponding PO is automatically generated to allow your procurement department to allocate the resources required for the project. Some information may need to be added to this PO, and instead of going back and forth between your tools and LittleBig platform, the PO API can streamline these actions.

When the project is about to end, you may use the Renewal operation to trigger the direct renewal (if applicable), indicating the new dates and the new amount. If this is done correctly, a new RFP will be created, ready to be published and create the renewal. 

Here is an example of when to use the two APIs when the PR feature is activated:

Here is an example of when to use the PO API when the PR feature is not activated:

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Using Purchase Requests (PR) API

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Search of ongoing PRs

With the API call operation SearchPurchaseRequest, you can filter the ongoing Purchase Requests. You may also be able to do a search for a specific period of dates/time, to narrow down the scope of the results. You may check the API documentation page to have more details on the topic of search criteria.

The response you will receive contains information of the Purchase Requests matching the criteria below:

• ID of the Purchase Request
• ID of the Purchase order
• PR status
• Disability Status
• Custom fields (if any)
• RFP information (same as the one retrieved thanks to this RFP API call operation)
• Selected Proposal (same as the one retrieved thanks to this Proposal API call operation)

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Update of a PR (validation/rejection/external number addition)

After retrieving ongoing Purchase Requests, with the API call operation UpdatePurchaseRequest, you can update PRs' details (adding an external identifier) and either approve or reject them.

If your request is successful, the response will contain the updated information for the Purchase Request in question. Otherwise, an error message will be shown.

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Using Purchase Orders (PO) API

Once the Purchase Order is generated, it will then be possible to access the data it contains via the API, with the purpose of synchronizing it to your internal systems.

It will also become possible for some of those details to be modified and to add attachments. 

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Retrieval of ongoing POs

With the API call operation SearchPurchaseOrders, you can filter out the ongoing Purchase Orders. You may carry out searches, specifying a specific timeframe (date/time), in order to reduce the scope of the results shown. Have a look at the API Documentation page to have more details on the search criteria. 

The response you will receive contains the information of the Purchase Orders that matches the below criteria:

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Update of a PO

With the API call operation UpdatePurchaseOrder, you may update the information of the Purchase Order (adding an identifier to the PO and/or the consultant), once it has been retrieved. 

If the request is successful, the response will contain the updated Purchase Order. Otherwise, an error message will be displayed.

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Attach files to a PO

The API feature offers you the option of uploading and attaching documents to your Purchase order thanks to the API call operation UploadPurchaseOrderDocument.

If the request is successful, the response body will contain a message saying that the file has been added to the PO. Otherwise, an error message will be displayed.

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Trigger direct renewal of an existing project

When the project is about to end, you may use the Renewal operation to trigger the direct renewal (if applicable), indicating the new dates and the new amount. 

If this is done correctly, a new RFP will be created, ready for the publication f the renewal.