Supply chain collaboration software on the record, not lost in email
Kargentra Collaboration Center is supply chain collaboration software that puts every conversation, request and escalation on the order, shipment, trip, purchase order, return, invoice or dispute it is about. Customers, suppliers, carriers and drivers join from their own portals and apps, internal notes stay internal, and every follow-up has an owner, a due time and a history.
What changes for your operation
Context travels with the thread
Every conversation opens on its record, with current state and open requests, so nobody has to ask which shipment.
Internal stays internal
Each message stores its audience. Internal notes and mentions never reach a partner or an AI summary.
Follow-ups that cannot slip
Requests carry response and acknowledgement targets, go overdue visibly and escalate to an owning team.
One language across parties
Operations, warehouse, supplier, carrier, customer and driver share the same purposes and states.
What Collaboration does
Threads, requests and follow-ups on every record, inside and out
Threads on every record
Conversations attach to the order, shipment, trip, purchase order, ASN, return, invoice or dispute they concern.
- Thread header: record, current state, conversation type and parties
- Business actions for the record reachable from the thread
- No free-floating chat: every conversation has a subject
Conversation purposes
Twenty-six purposes give every thread a reason, from a status enquiry to dock appointment coordination or an invoice question.
- The purpose sets default audience, team and response due
- Customers start only customer-startable purposes, on their own accounts
- Shipment exceptions and POD or document corrections have their own purposes
Internal and external visibility
Choose internal only, bilateral, multiparty or restricted internal, and every message records who could see it.
- Audience snapshot stored with each message
- Internal notes never reach an external party
- Restricted internal for sensitive commercial threads
Mentions and internal notes
Bring a colleague in with a mention inside an internal note, without exposing the discussion to the partner.
- Mentions reach internal members only
- Notes sit alongside replies on the same thread
- Unread and Needs my action follow the mention
Requests and follow-ups
Ask for information, a document, evidence, an acknowledgement or a status confirmation, each with a due time.
- Acknowledged is not the same as fulfilled
- Overdue shown on the thread and in every queue
- Responses received by phone or email recorded as offline
- Reminders sent singly or in bulk
Escalation and command centre
A command centre shows what needs doing, who is waiting and what is late, and every number opens the conversations it counts.
- Needs my action, Waiting on others, At risk, Breached, Unassigned
- Service targets: on track, at risk, breached
- Bulk: assign team, acknowledge requests, send reminder
Customer conversations
Customers reply, ask, acknowledge and respond in their portal, and can start a conversation on their own shipment, invoice or dispute.
- Scoped to the customer's own accounts
- The same thread the operations team works
- In disputes, a message is never a decision
Partner and driver channels
Suppliers, carriers and drivers collaborate from their own portals and the driver app, each scoped to their own work.
- Supplier threads on purchase orders and ASNs
- Carrier threads on tenders, exceptions and disputes
- Driver conversations scoped to assigned trips
Policy, templates and delivery
Tenant policy per conversation type sets audience, response due, acknowledgement and team, with versioned reply templates.
- Policy changes apply going forward; history is immutable
- Optional delivery outside Kargentra through Connector Hub
- Inbound replies attached only with a trusted identity and correlation
Customers ask on the order, not in a new email chain
In the customer portal, a customer opens their shipment or invoice and asks the question right there. The thread lands with the operations team on the same record, with its purpose, due time and owner. Replies go back to the portal, and nothing internal travels with them.
- Start a conversation on your own shipment, invoice or dispute
- Reply, ask, acknowledge and respond to requests
- Customer service sees the record state before answering
- Drafted replies are reviewed and sent by a person
Partners collaborate where the work already is
Carriers discuss a tender, an exception or a disputed charge from the carrier portal, and suppliers raise questions on a purchase order or an ASN from the supplier portal. Each party sees only its own conversations, and each conversation stays on the record it is about.
- Shipment exception conversations with the carrier
- Document and POD correction requests with due times
- Purchase order change discussions with the buyer
- Dock appointment coordination with the yard
Disputes talk on the record and decide in the workflow
An invoice question can become a commercial dispute without losing its history. The conversation carries the evidence and the proposals, while the decision is taken in the dispute workflow by the person who owns it. A message is never treated as a decision, by either side.
- Invoice question or dispute as a conversation purpose
- Restricted internal threads for commercial deliberation
- Evidence requests tracked to fulfilled, not just acknowledged
- Supplemental invoices and credits stay with Finance
From a question to a resolved conversation
- 01
Open on the record
A person or partner starts a conversation on an order, shipment, trip, PO, return, invoice or dispute, and chooses its purpose.
- 02
Set the audience
Policy sets the default: internal only, bilateral, multiparty or restricted internal. Each message stores who could see it.
- 03
Reply, note and mention
Replies and questions go to the parties; an internal note with a mention brings in a colleague without telling the partner.
- 04
Request with a due time
A request for a document, evidence or confirmation gets a target. It can be acknowledged before it is fulfilled, and goes overdue visibly.
- 05
Follow up or escalate
Overdue requests are reminded, singly or in bulk, and escalated to the owning team when the target is breached.
- 06
Resolve
The owner resolves the conversation once every ask is answered. A later question reopens it, and the reopen is counted.
- 07
Measure
First response and resolution medians, reopen and escalation rates and late requests show where conversations stall. Owner: service manager.
Governed AI inside Collaboration
Ask Kargentra reads the record you are looking at, cites every fact it uses and proposes the next step. Nothing changes until a person with the right permission approves it.
- Summarise this conversation
- List what is asked
- Suggest next step
The customer has asked two things on SHP-30781. First, the signed POD for the delivery on 6 October: the carrier acknowledged that request yesterday but has not fulfilled it, and it went overdue at 11:00. Second, whether the next delivery can move to Friday: that is a delivery-commitment question, so it is routed to the promise owner rather than drafted.
- Request · POD document · acknowledged · overdue 11:00
- Thread · SHP-30781 · bilateral · customer
- Purpose · Status enquiry
- Policy · delivery commitment · human response
Proposal · requires approval
Send the carrier a reminder for the signed POD and assign the date question to the promise owner.
Approver: Customer service rep. Applied only through the governed action, and recorded in the audit trail.
Exceptions and edge cases Collaboration handles
Real operations are mostly exceptions. These are handled as first-class states with an owner, evidence and a next step, not as notes in a spreadsheet.
- A partner acknowledges a document request but never sends the document: the request stays open and goes overdue.
- A customer phones instead of replying: the response is recorded as offline, with the time and the person who took it.
- A colleague is mentioned in a thread shared with a carrier: the mention lives in an internal note the carrier never sees.
- A reply arrives without a trusted identity or a matching correlation: it is not attached to the conversation.
- The conversation policy changes mid-week: new threads follow the new version and existing history stays as it was.
- A resolved conversation gets a follow-up question: it reopens, and the reopen counts in the analytics.
- A customer looks for a purpose that is not customer-startable: the portal simply does not offer it.
- Delivery to a partner's external system fails: the failure is counted and visible, never silently dropped.
Who uses Collaboration
Operations coordinator
Works Needs my action, answers on the record and turns open questions into tracked requests with due times.
Customer service rep
Answers customer conversations from the portal with the order or shipment state in view.
Customer service manager
Runs the command centre, assigns teams, chases breaches and reads response and resolution medians.
Supplier contact
Raises and answers questions on purchase orders and ASNs from the supplier portal.
Carrier dispatcher
Discusses tenders, exceptions and disputed charges with the shipper from the carrier portal.
Tenant administrator
Sets policy per conversation type, versions reply templates and connects delivery outside Kargentra.
Collaboration Center at a glance
A scannable reference for evaluation teams and RFPs.
| Threads |
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| Visibility |
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| Requests and follow-up |
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| Command centre |
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| Governance |
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| Integrations |
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Connected to the rest of Kargentra
Every module reads and writes the same record, so a hand-off is a state change rather than a re-keyed file.
- Customer PortalCustomers start and answer conversations on their own shipments, invoices and disputes.Explore Customer
- Carrier Network & PortalCarriers collaborate on tenders, exceptions and disputed charges from their own portal.Explore Carrier
- Supplier PortalSuppliers discuss purchase orders, ASNs and receipt differences with the buyer and the warehouse.Explore Supplier
- Driver AppDrivers reach the team from their assigned trips, and the conversation stays on the trip.Explore Driver
- Freight Finance & BillingInvoice questions and commercial disputes keep their conversation beside the money facts.Explore Finance
- Ask KargentraAsk Kargentra summarises threads, lists what is asked and drafts replies, never quoting internal notes.Explore Ask Kargentra
Collaboration: frequently asked questions
What is supply chain collaboration software?
Supply chain collaboration software gives a business and its customers, suppliers and carriers a shared place to ask, answer and follow up on the work between them. In Kargentra that place is the record itself: each conversation sits on the order, shipment, trip, purchase order, return, invoice or dispute it concerns, so context and history never live in one person's inbox.
Can carriers and customers join conversations?
Yes. Customers join from the customer portal and can start a conversation on their own shipments, invoices and disputes. Carriers join from the carrier portal, suppliers from the supplier portal and drivers from the driver app, each scoped to their own work. Partners see only the conversations they are part of, and never an internal note.
Is collaboration history auditable?
Yes. Every message records its author, time and audience snapshot, so you can show who could see what, and when. Requests keep acknowledgement and fulfilment apart, offline responses are recorded with who took them, and policy changes apply going forward while existing history stays immutable. Reopens and escalations are counted, never overwritten.
How do mentions and internal notes work?
An internal note sits on the same thread as the external conversation but is visible only to your organisation. Mentions work inside internal notes and reach internal members only, so you can bring in a colleague from finance or the warehouse without the customer or carrier seeing the discussion. AI summaries never quote internal notes either.
Can conversations reach partners outside Kargentra?
Yes, when the tenant configures it. A conversation can be delivered outside Kargentra through a Connector Hub connection, under an explicit policy for that conversation purpose. Inbound replies are attached only when they arrive with a trusted machine identity and a matching correlation, and any delivery failure is counted on the command centre.
Does AI answer conversations for us?
AI assistance in a conversation summarises the thread, explains why it needs attention, lists what is asked and drafts a reply for a person to review and send. Topics such as price, delivery commitments, claims, liability and credits are always handed to a person, and tenants decide whether AI assistance is switched on at all.
Further reading
- Guide · 9 min readAI in logistics operations: assist, propose, approveWhere AI helps logistics teams today, what data it needs, and the guardrails that keep advice from turning into unapproved action.
- Guide · 9 min readElectronic proof of delivery (ePOD): a practical guideWhat electronic proof of delivery should capture, how offline capture works and why arrival, a delivery attempt and accepted POD are different.
- Guide · 9 min readFreight audit and billing readiness, explainedThe freight audit process step by step, why delivery evidence decides billing readiness, common invoice errors and how disputes are resolved.
Take the Collaboration datasheet with you
Capabilities, workflow, capability reference and the questions buyers ask, on two pages.
PDF · 2 pages · 311 KB
See Kargentra run your operation
A working session on your lanes, your sites and your hand-offs: order to invoice, on one record.