Auction Schedule Help

[Former Member]

Hi All,

In Sourcing 9 and 7, When an auction is created under schedule tab there are two fields which decide upon the timings of the auction.

They are:-

• Minimum Line Item Bid Duration
• Action Duration

Can someone please throw some light on how exactly these fields decide the schedule of the auction?

Also what if the line items are staggered, both start and end, then how these two fields decide when the auction closes?

Thanks!!

Shikha Thakur

[former_member200421 · Accepted solution]

Hi Shikha,

The "Minimum Line Item Bid Duration" is the shortest amount of time that the Auction will be open for bidding so if you enter a value of 20 minutes in this field, then the Auction will remain open for bidders to place bids for 20 minutes regardless of whether there is bidding activity or not.

The "Auction Duration" is the maximum amount of the time that the Auction will be open for bidding including time extensions so if you enter a value of 30 minutes in this field, then the Auction will remain open for bidders to place bids for an additional 10 minutes (beyond the minimum period of 20 minutes) IF there is bidding activity. 

There are two additional fields that are important to how the long the Auction will actually remain open for bidding AFTER the "Minimum Line item Bid Duration" has been achieved.  They are:

- Inactivity Period - this determines how long bidders can remain inactive without the Auction closing

- Extension - this deterrmines how many additional minutes will be added to the Auction when there is a bid placed during the Inactivity Period

If the values in these two fields are both set to 2 minutes, following along in the above example, this means that there could be a maximum of 5 time extensions of 2 minutes each added to the Auction if there is bidding activity.  However, if there is no bidding activity for more than 2 minutes, then the Auction will close even though it has not gone the full 30 minutes defined in the Auction Duration field.

If there is bidding activity, the Auction will still automatically close when the Auction Duration is met - again, following in the example above, once the Auction has been active for 30 minutes, it will close regardless of bid activity.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply!.