Create Line Attributes

Line attributes make your negotiation line more descriptive and can also be used to ensure that all responses submitted for the line include specific details not included elsewhere in the line information.

In this example, the category manager for a national used car seller is defining a negotiation to deal with suppliers of used cars. She defines the negotiation as a multiattribute scored auction and defines line attributes to describe vehicles.

Define Line Attributes

1. After defining the negotiation line for the vehicle to buy, the category manager clicks the Edit icon at the end of the negotiation line for vehicle.

2. On the Lines: Edit Line page, she scrolls until the Attributes region appears. She clicks Add Group. On the new row, she clicks in the Attribute column and enters Vehicle Specifications for the group name. The other columns on the line are write-protected since they don't apply to the Group element.

3. From the Actions menu, she selects Add Attribute.

4. On the Add Attribute page, she enters Color as the Attribute. She accepts the defaults of Required for Response and Text for Value Type. She enters a weight of 20 for this attribute. She chooses to have no target value for this line attribute.

5. In the Acceptable Values region, she clicks the plus icon to add a row to the table. She proceeds to enter possible color values in the Response Value column and their numeric scores in the Score column. When finished, she clicks Save and Close to return to the Lines: Edit Line page.

6. She highlights the row for the Vehicle Specifications group and selects Add Attribute from the Actions menu to add another attribute to the negotiation line.

7. She names this attribute Mileage and this time selects Number as the Value Type. It has a weight of 80. She specifies a Target value of 5000 and displays this target to suppliers.