How You Respond to Line Attributes

The negotiation document author may have asked you to respond to certain important attributes of a particular negotiation line. Such attributes do not deal with price or additional costs of a line, but instead they are concerned with characteristics of the line.

Line attributes may be required or optional. If a line attribute is optional, you do not have to respond to it. You must respond to all required attributes.

Line attributes can be used when evaluating responses to a negotiation. Such negotiations are called multiattribute scored negotiations. In multiattribute scored negotiations, all required attributes of type text, number, or date, have a list of acceptable values defined by the negotiation author. When you reply to a required attribute in a multiattribute scored negotiation, you must select your response from the predefined values. You can enter a value for a required attribute of the type URL. If the negotiation is not a multiattribute scored negotiation, there are no lists of acceptable values, and you can enter any value appropriate for the attribute data type.

The negotiation document author may have defined some additional information you can use when deciding on your response to the line attribute. If the author specifies a target value for a line attribute, she may choose to display the target value. Additionally, in a multiattribute scored negotiation where there are required attributes, the allowable values are assigned a numeric score that indicates that value's desirability. The author may choose to display this information as well. You should check any targets and scores that are displayed when planning your response to the attribute.

When ready to reply to the attribute, you select an acceptable value from the lists supplied if required or enter the value directly if allowed.