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.
- Go to the Proposal Management tab.
If this is the first time you are sending an invitation, click Add to open the Add Vendors window, select the desired Vendors BPs, and move them from the Available block to the Selected block. When all the desired vendors have been selected, click Add.
- Select a vendor from the log.
If you are sending invitation for the first time, click Send Invitation. Unifier sends two emails:
- An invitation email (contains the Unifier Login URL)
- A credential email (contains the username and password).
If a vendor who has already received an invitation loses their password, the vendor can change their password with the Forgot Password link in the Sign In page. 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 modify the bidding due date in the upper portion of the Proposal Management tab.
- 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 grouping node in the Navigator and click 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 View filtered 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.