Bidding a job can be a critical part of a maintenance operation. The below process will allow you to quickly create and assign bid requests for a related Meld to multiple vendors.
- Creating an Individual Bid Request
- Creating the Bid Request Melds
- Accepting a Vendor's Bid
- Tracking Related Bids
- Showing Open Bid-only Melds
Creating an Individual Bid Request
Step 1.
Create (or edit) a Meld so the Brief Description is prefixed with *BID-ONLY*. This will ensure that Agents and Vendors know this Meld is for a bid.
Step 2:
Assign the Meld to the Agent or Admin that will be tracking the Bid using the Maintenance field.
Step 3:
Create and add the tag Job Pending Bid.
Note: Additional articles are available regarding the basic use, management, and best practices for tags.
Step 4:
Enter the remaining necessary information and create the Meld.
Creating the Bid Request Melds
Clone the Bid-only Job Meld to make a copy for each bidding Vendor.
Step 1:
Clone the Bid Meld.
Step 2:
Remove the Job Pending Bid Tag.
Note: This tag is used to track how many Melds are waiting for a bid, not how many bids there are across all Melds.
Step 3:
Assign the request to the desired vendor with the Maintenance field.
Step 4:
Click Clone to create the Bid Request Meld.
Repeat steps 1 through 4 until a bid request has been sent to all desired Vendors.
Your Vendors will now respond to the individual, cloned Melds you sent them. After they all respond you can select the winning bid.
Accepting a Vendor's Bid
After you have selected the winner of the bid:
Step 1:
Edit the Bid-only Meld that's assigned to you or one of your agents.
Step 2:
Remove the *BID-ONLY* prefix from the Brief Description.
Step 3:
Remove the Job Pending Bid Tag and Save.
Step 4:
Click Reassign.
Step 5:
Delete your Agent, assign the winning Vendor, and click SAVE.
Tracking Related Bids
Each cloned Bid Request will be updated by the assigned Vendor, and because they are all cloned from the Bid-only Meld, they are all related.
Open the Bid-only Meld or one of the Bid Request (cloned) Melds, then click Related.
Showing Open Bid-only Melds
This filter will show all Bid-only Melds.
Step 1:
On the Melds List, click the Top Filter Arrow, then click Add Filter.
Step 2:
Click the FILTER menu, then click Tags and select the Job Pending Bid tag and APPLY FILTERS.
Step 3:
Click SAVE.
Step 4:
Create a name for your filter, and click SAVE FILTER.
Note: If you want this Filter to be visible to internal Agent and Admin users, un-check the Private box before saving.
