The Cofactr apps
The widgets and the Navigation bar on the left side are mirrored. Each section is one of the apps inside Cofactr.
Parts Search is where you search for individual parts and see supply options for the parts, can buy parts, or can add parts to other parts of the platform.
BOMs are where your Bills of Material live. You can upload, view supply options for whole BOMs, buy whole BOMs at multiples, or add BOMs to other parts of the platform.
Watchlist is a tool for you to track strategic parts for changes in lead time, pricing, and supply.
Part Library is an app for you to manage all your parts, across BOMs, Production runs, and across the rest of Cofactr.
Quoting is an app for you to track all the quotes you've requested through Cofactr.
Purchasing is where parts quotes from distributors and Shopping Lists live. Shopping lists are aggregated lists of things you want to purchase, so any combination of multiple BOMs and parts.
Inventory is everything you own, what you are doing with those parts, and everything you are shipping. This includes your parts stock (the types and amount of parts), your stock lots (the number of individually packaged parts like reels, trays, or cut tape, and the condition of those parts including if they are being processed in any way like split, combined, reeled, baked, etc.), your locations (places parts are stored), and your shipments (any lists of parts to be shipped or the status of those shipped parts).
Account is the information about your company like your website, shipping and billing addresses, and the user permissions for team members and outside collaborators.
Your personal account information can be accessed via the gear icon in the upper right corner of the platform.
Each part of each app in Cofactr displays information that focuses on a specific aspect of design, procurement, or management and shipping of your parts, but they all have common form and function.
Overarching form and function of Cofactr
When you dive into an app you'll see a pretty standard format. A grid of data, maybe a few tabs to view different info, some filters, some things you can do with the information, a chat icon in the lower right to find help, and the navigation bar always to the left. The deepest you can dive into an app is 2 levels before you move to another app in the platform. Thats fundamentally it, a few types of features that are all in the same region of the platform and 2 levels of depth.
Let's look at BOMs as an example:
In the upper right you see "New Bill of Materials". This is an action. Actions are always on the right side of the screen. There you can see anything action oriented you can do in the app. There are lots of actions in Cofactr like creating a new bill of materials, adding things to a shopping list, splitting a stock lot, you can quote and buy a part, and more. But those actions are always on the right side of the window.
Now lets dive into the next level of BOMs. If you double click on a BOM you see that BOMs info:
You can see the available tabs for a BOM which are Lines, Supply, Inventory, and Purchasing.
Lines are the BOM data, which can be edited by double clicking on a field.
Supply is the global parts supply summarized for each BOM line.
Inventory is an account of any inventory that matches your BOM lines, wether is be on hand, being processed, or expected.
And purchasing provides a way to buy the BOM
Below that are the filters which are Columns, Filters, Export, and Search.
Columns gives you a list of all the possible viewable columns.
Filters lets you limit the displayed lines by different properties.
Export lets you export as an Excel or CSV. Those exports will have every possible column.
Search is a contextual search, so if you know you're looking for a specific piece of data you can type it there and the data grid will only show you lines that match the search.
In the lower right you have the help chat, where you can ask questions and search help articles.
Thats it!
Almost every part of Cofactr follows a very similar structure and function.