Discussion Forums

You can use discussion forums to communicate with buyers or sellers. PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing includes two delivered forums:

• An event-specific forum enables suppliers to ask questions regarding the event and have them answered by the buyer.

• A general question forum displays inquiries regarding the application's operation and the bidding process.

System administrators can also create new forums. Replies can be marked as public or private. If private is selected, only the replier and the author of the post being replied to can view the message. If the message is marked public, all users can view the message. Forums can also be marked read-only so that some users can view the messages, but not post replies or post new messages. All delivered and newly created forums reside in the Forums component.

When an event or RFI is created, you can start a high-level message thread for that event. When that event is posted, the system includes a text message about the discussion forums in the notification email sent to invited bidders. For each event that has a message thread, the system provides a link to the message thread on the Search Events and Event Workbench pages. Security for the forum is role-based and enforced at the event ID level. In addition, the event creator can exclude named users from seeing a particular forum. A bidder can see either all of the public discussion surrounding an event or nothing.

Bidders can ask questions of event creators regarding use of the application and the bidding process using the general question forum. This forum is not tied to an event and can be accessed from the general forum on the supplier-facing Search Events page, the Event Workbench, Analyze Events, and Bid Response pages, and the Home Page pagelet. Security for the forum is role-based, in addition to the named supplier exclusion feature.

The Forum Administration component enables the event creator to manage the forums, including deleting messages, creating new custom forums, modifying existing forums, and setting security for all the forums.