RFx Approvals? Thoughts?

[Former Member]

Hello,

I have a requirement to have approvals for RFX award.

Did anyone have similar requirement, what was the solution you have deployed?

Thanks

- Netaji Gummadi

[Former Member]

Option 1 : Leverage Project approvals

Option 2:

1. Have a custom field in the RFx at header " Lock for approval".

2. This field can be flagged or un-flagged only by the creator of the document.

3. Have Business rule definition on this custom field

4. If this field is flagged the RFx phase cannot be changed to AWARD

5. Have a custom tab to populate the Approvers ( from Collaborators )

with a value list field against each approver to mark it as YES or NO.

6. Send a notification to the approvers in this custom table to review and flag the RFx approval as YES or NO.

7. Rule to automatically change the Phase to Award if all field values are YESNow that i have put down the options, want the SMEs to vote on these.

Any other better solution, pls put them across.... Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi Gummadi -

Do you have any more detailed requirements for this approval? I have worked with customers before that require such an approval and there are ways to use scripting in the RFx to provide some approval functionality for the RFx award.

It is important to know, however, that the "award" phase on the RFx really means "in awarding". That is, the award phase does not mean that the award has been completed and supplier(s) are accepted.

It would be good to know more about how awarding will be done in the RFx to determine the best solution here. For example, will the RFx optimizer be used? Will scenario awards be used? Will only simple awarding be done?

Also, it would be good to know what exactly the approver is approving. What is the business process here? Is the approver supposed to validate that the award is "ok" before the supplier is informed? Does the act of approving the RFx award result in any follow-on actions?

As you have pointed out, it might be possible to use the standard workflow capabilities of the Project to enable this business process. It might also be possible to use the User Defined Objects to enable this process using standard workflow functionality. Scripting on the RFx might also be possible.

It would be good to know the more specific requirements so that a good solution can be proposed.

I hope this helps.

Rob

[Former Member]

Hi Rob,

How are you, was in your march training class. Thanks for your response.

My comments :

It is important to know, however, that the "award" phase on the RFx really means "in awarding". That is, the award phase does not mean that the award has been completed and supplier(s) are accepted.

NG: Agree

It would be good to know more about how awarding will be done in the RFx to determine the best solution here. For example, will the RFx optimizer be used? Will scenario awards be used? Will only simple awarding be done?

NG: we are not using Optimizer. Both Simple and Scenario based (of course manual as automatic will need optimizer)

Also, it would be good to know what exactly the approver is approving. What is the business process here? Is the approver supposed to validate that the award is "ok" before the supplier is informed? Does the act of approving the RFx award result in any follow-on actions?

NG: Approver is approving the Annual purchase value (calculated manually, there is a formula)

As you have pointed out, it might be possible to use the standard workflow capabilities of the Project to enable this business process. It might also be possible to use the User Defined Objects to enable this process using standard workflow functionality. Scripting on the RFx might also be possible.

NG : At this time inclined towards scripting in RFx.

Regs

Gummadi

[Former Member]

Hi Gummadi -

One possible solution for this requirement is to use a set of toolbar scripts. It would involve a script each for "send for approval", "approve", and "reject". The first script, send for approval, would probably lock the document using the IapiDocumentLockManager class. Ideally, it would also notify the approver(s), but currently there are no published IAPIs for email processing. The approve and reject scripts would be responsible for ensuring the identified approvers are performing the action and recording the result (probably in extension fields).

You will need to work out how the approvers are identified. Does the end user pick them? Is it based on some business rules or logic (e.g., value? business unit? category? etc).

You will also need to consider the triggering point. Per our earlier discussion, entering the the Award phase really means "In Awarding". It seems the requirement is for this approval to happen before the Award is Accepted; right now, I don't believe we have a suitable hook that can trigger this process prior to Award Acceptance, so the user might need to manually trigger the process.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards,

Rob

[Former Member]

Hi Rob,

We also have a similar requirement. For us, emails to approvers are critical. What would be your view on creating a UDO from the RFX and then triggering this for workflow approval. I am assuming here that since workflow is supported for UDOs, emails can also be automatically triggered.

Thanks,

MP