Upload a Bid Response

Note: You can upload a bid response either when logged in as a service provider or logged in as a buyer (a non-servprov domain).

This page is accessed via Sourcing > Bid Creation > Upload Bid Response.

What happens when you upload a CRT?

Once you, the carrier or service provider, record bids on a carrier response template (CRT), you upload the carrier response template back into Oracle Transportation Sourcing.

When you upload a bid response (carrier response template), Oracle Transportation Sourcing does the following:

• Validates uploaded bids for data type errors, entries in valid list of values, and primary key violations.
• Depending on the transaction code, inserts, updates, or deletes bids.
• Computes the cost of the bids using the Oracle Transportation Management rating engine.
• Updates bid status values based on whether the bid was rated or not.
• Notifies you of what bids succeeded and what bids failed and why they failed.
• Creates a single rate offering for each carrier response template uploaded. This rate offering has the Read Only option marked and cannot be edited. The rate offering ID is the same as the first bid ID uploaded in each carrier response template.
  
  If a carrier is bidding on a single lane with more than one transport mode (inter-modal rates), then two rate offerings are created: one rate offering for each transportation mode.
• Creates a rate record for each bid. The rate record is associated to the single rate offering. This is a sourcing rate and cannot be edited. The rate record ID is the same as the bid ID from which it was created.
  
  If the bid shares the same lane differs by equipment group, then only one rate record is created. The different equipment groups are added as cost conditions.

Editing the Carrier Response Template

Here are some pointers when editing the carrier response template:

• No password is required when you unprotect the MS Excel spreadsheet.
• The CRT spreadsheet is a Microsoft Office 2003 or later file with the extension of .xls or .xlsx as explained below.
  
  For existing users upgrading from a previous version of Sourcing, by default you must use the file extension of .xls. However, you can change to using .xlsx by opting in to the optional feature, ENABLE XLSX FILE FORMAT IN SOURCING SPREADSHEETS.
  
  If you new to OTM using 23C or later, then you must use the file extension of .xlsx.
• If you enter a value in a cell that is more than 15 digits, 123456789123456789.00, the value is saved as 123456789123456000.00 upon upload. It is recommended not to use values greater than 15 digits.
• If you do not want to bid on a lane, unprotect the Excel spreadsheet and delete any lanes (rows) on which you do not want to bid. Doing any of the following will result in an incorrect bid or error instead of a non-bid:
• • You cannot leave a cost cell empty or null as this will cause errors during upload. Uploading the carrier response template with an empty or NULL value in any rate attribute will generate an error. You cannot enter an empty or NULL value even if the lane exists or not.
  • If you enter a cost of 0, Oracle Transportation Sourcing will upload this as a zero cost bid instead of a non-bid. You must explicitly change an empty cell to a zero if bidding the cost as free.
  • You cannot enter a Maximum Shipments Requested of 0 to indicate a non-bid.

Note: If a particular ocean lane lacks a dray lane, the carrier must enter a dummy cost carrier response template since they cannot leave the cost empty. When the CRT is uploaded, Oracle Transportation Management Sourcing will not create the corresponding rate for the non-existing dray lane.

• If you edit the CRT spreadsheet and re-order the columns, you must put them back in the order specified on the CRT configuration before uploading to Oracle Transportation Sourcing. The Oracle Transportation Sourcing logic relies on behind-the-scenes sequence numbers on each column. If you upload a CRT with the columns in the incorrect order (any order different than the originally generated CRT), you will see errors. To fix these errors, you need to place the columns back into the exact order that Oracle Transportation Sourcing expects and re-upload the CRT.
• For this same reason, do not delete any columns from the CRT because this will cause errors upon upload.
• You can add columns to the right of the last automatically generated column without causing any problems.
• Populate the following fields with GIDs to avoid an invalid data error message:
  • LANE_ID
  • EQUIPMENT_GROUP_ID
  • TRANSPORT_MODE_ID
  • BID_PACKAGE_ID
  • SOURCE_SOURCE_REGION_ID
  • SOURCE_DESTINATION_REGION_ID
  • SOURCE_ARBITRARY_LANE_ID
  • DESTINATION_SOURCE_REGION_ID
  • DESTINATION_DESTINATION_REGION_ID
  • DESTINATION_ARBITRARY_LANE_ID

Note: If you do not enter a domain name for the Bid Package ID, Sourcing uses the domain name of the bid to create the bid package.

Uploading a Completed Carrier Response Template

1. Click Sourcing > Bid Creation > Upload Bid Response.
2. When logged in as a buyer, you see the Service Provider ID field. Enter the ID of the service provider for which you are uploading the bid response.
3. Click Browse beside the What XLS file do you want to upload? field and select the file you wish to upload
   
   You upload the carrier response template as a Microsoft Excel (.xls or .xlsx) file. The CRT file can reside anywhere on your computer.
4. Click Upload to upload the carrier response template.

Once you click Upload, this process runs in the background. Once the process is complete, a notification is either sent in the form of an email or a message to the message center as follows:

• If you are logged in as a service provider, an email with the results is sent to the sourcing contact of the service provider.
•  If you are logged in as a buyer, a message with the results is sent to your message center. The message title contains the ID of the service provider for which the CRT was uploaded as well as the ID of the bid round.

This notification is sent once the raw carrier response data has been uploaded and data validation completed. This notification includes the bid round ID, a count of bids that succeeded and failed, as well as, CRT row number, lane ID, and comments for both successful and failed bids.

Note: Be careful of the number of carrier response templates that you upload consecutively. Since a carrier response template typically contains a large number of bids, Oracle Transportation Sourcing requires time to process each carrier response template. If you upload too many carrier response templates consecutively, there could be a negative impact on the performance of Oracle Transportation Sourcing.

Possible Upload Issues

Here are some of the possible issues you may encounter when trying to upload a carrier response template:

• In projects and bid rounds for ocean, the equipment group specified on the constraint set must match the equipment group used in the lane summary for the matching lane. If the equipment does not match, then you will see an error when uploading the bid response. This is a result of how Oracle Transportation Sourcing aggregates demand specifically for each equipment group; there is no equipment group conversion factor for ocean.
• If for some reason, Oracle Transportation Sourcing cannot compute a cost for a bid, then an exception will be logged for that specific bid. Oracle Transportation Sourcing will continue to compute costs for the remaining bids in the CRT. As opposed to a CSV upload, when you are uploading an XLS spreadsheet, the upload will always finish and any exceptions will be logged.