After the RFB has completed the internal review and approval, you can start the bidding process.
To start the bidding process:
- Go to your Project > User mode > Logs > Requests for Bid.
- Open the bid that you want to send.
- Click Invite to open Invitations window.
If this is the first time you are sending an invitation, click Add to open the Vendors window, select a vendor BP and click Attach. A list of vendors in the selected Vendor BP is now available in the Invitations block. See the Public Bidding and Private or Non-Public Bidding for more details about the options in the Invitation block.
- Select a vendor from the Invitations window and follow one of the instructions below:
If Unifier is not integrated with Oracle Identity Manager (OIM), and you are sending invitation for the first time, open the RFB and click Send Invitation. Unifier sends two emails:
- An invitation email (contains the Bid Access UR)
- A credential email (contains the username and password).
In this case, if a vendor who has already received an invitation loses password and request to receive another password, open the RFB, click Send Password to send a credential email (contains the username and new password). Oracle recommends that the bidders change the password at the very first log in, and then sign in to Unifier using the newly set password.
If Unifier is integrated with OIM, and you are sending invitation for the first time, open the RFB, click Send Invitation. OIM sends one email:
- A credential email (contains the username and password). There might be a delay receiving a credential email from OIM based on the bidder reconciliation job interval set in OIM.
If a bidder accesses Unifier through OIM, the bidder cannot change password in Unifier. Changing password can be done only in Unifier when it is not accessed through OIM. Oracle recommends that the bidders change the password at the very first log in, and then sign in to Unifier using the newly set password.
The following provides additional information regarding the bidding process:
- If you need, you can click Modify to modify the bidding end date.
- The list of vendors you use to distribute the bid invitations can include your company’s entire list of vendors or a list of "approved vendors" specific for the project you are working on.
- Your administrator can design a business process that filters the master list of vendors into a sub-set of this list for your project. If such a sub-set of the vendor list has been created for your project, this is the list of vendors you will see in the Bidders window, unless this is a public bid. For public bids, the filtered vendor list will be ignored.
- To see the approved list of vendors with more information, go to your project Logs node in the Navigator and click on the business process that created the vendor list for your project. Unifier will display the list of records in that business process. To see the approved list, click the Filtered Referenced Records button on the toolbar.
Note: Once you have sent out all the bid invitations, Unifier freezes the RFB until the bid due date passes. After the due date passes, you can compare the bids.