Vendor Bid System Screenshot Guide

Transcription

1 Vendor Bid System Screenshot Guide Permissions to use the VBS System can be requested by contacting your Agency Security Administrator or: MyFloridaMarketPlace, or Buyer Help, Services Desk (Special Processing and Issues): Send requests to and cc: (850) Requst that all tickets are routed to the STO_AM_DMS_SPURS_SUPPORT group. (Rev 20 Sept 07)

2 Help Button works in case you get lost *New Advertisements on VBS Have the document you wish to upload processed and burned to a.pdf file before you reach this point. To get to this page, go to: Click on State Purchasing under the Business Operations heading. 3. Click on the Solicitations (Vendor Bid System) link 4. Administrator Log-In 5. New Advertisement

3 CONTACT PERSON: Select the Contact Person for this advertisement (will add relevant information like phone number, address, and address) The Contact Person name listing is by LAST NAME so it looks strange when you scroll through it. If you need to add a new Contact Person, use the button next to the drop down and fill out the requested information (phone, address, , etc.)

4 ORIGINAL ADVERTISEMENT NUMBER: This field is NOT REQUIRED. If this is a New Advertisement and not a Posting that needs to be linked to another previous Advertisement leave this BLANK If this is an Award Posting or a Notice that needs to link back to another existing VBS advertisement: Type, copy, or paste the original Advertisement number EXACTLY (including spaces) as it appeared for the initial advertisement. NUMBER: Fill in Advertisement Number. --If this is a Single Source, enter in the Company name as part of the number (ex Blah Inc)

5 TYPE: Choose the advertisement type. This determines some of the generated language displayed on the Advertisement Detail page. All solicitations require at least 24 hours between the Begin and End dates.

6 TITLE: You should be able to fit the whole document title in this field. The space does have a limit though, so you might have to abbreviate for some of the longest titles. DESCRIPTION: A good amount of text can be added here either through typing or copy/pasting from a Word document. This field is Optional, but I usually put in something simple like what type of Advertisement it is. There is no Spell Check / Grammar feature for the VBS system so please double-check your work.

7 BEGIN DATE: This date is the one that determines when the Advertisement will become public. This date can be the current day or any time in the future. Non-Administrators will not be able to see the advertisement if you use a future date, but you will be able to see, edit, and delete the Ad which will appear in red font in the Search results. The Date must be in MM/DD/YYYY format. BEGIN / ENDING TIME: These times are for internal records and protest time-tables. They should be listed on the Advertisement Request / PUR Form. This time does not determine what time of day this Advertisement will appear. OPENING DATE / OPENING TIME: Optional for Single Sources and Agency Decisions but is required for other postings--it adds a line of text in the Advertisement Detail stating: Solicitation will be opened on (Date) at (Time). Remember, if you choose the current date for your Begin Date the advertisement will show immediately. If you choose a future date, the ad will appear at midnight that day and will disappear at midnight on the End Date. END DATE: This is the Date you want the Advertisement to come off the VBS system and be archived into the Closed Bids section.

8 ADDRESS: Address of wherever the solicitations should be sent to. CLASS & GROUP CODE: This is the six main digits in the Advertisement number. If the system kicks back saying that the commodity code is bad, try another one. The Group code 000 is not acceptable. ADDITIONAL COMMODITIES: If you have more than one commodity code, CHECK this box and it will take you to a second page when you click Save Advertisement that will allow you to enter in more Codes. It will not allow for duplicates so make sure each Code is unique. SAVE ADVERTISEMENT: Click here to save the Advertisement. If there are any problems with the information you entered above, a red text message page will pop up explaining which areas are incorrect Hit the back button then to correct the errors. If everything is good, you will get a message saying that the Advertisement was Successfully Saved.

9 If you CHECKED the Additional Commodities option before clicking Save Advertisement you will be pushed to this page. You do not have to fill out all of the fields ~ only the first two columns are required, but there is no set limit or minimum to how many rows you can use. Each number must be unique: Ex: As with before, the Group code 000 is not acceptable. If you still have more Commodity Codes to enter after filling these fields out Check here. When you are completely finished, adding Commodity Codes, click here. VENDOR NOTIFICATION: During vendor registration, they are given the option to indicate if they wish to receive electronic notification when a solicitation they might be interested in is posted. It is important that you include ALL Class and Group codes appropriate for your solicitation to ensure that all interested vendors are notified. If Commodity Codes attached to an advertisement match those a vendor is interested in, an automated is generated and sent to the vendor.

10 BROWSE: Use the BROWSE button to find the.pdf that you created of the Advertisement document. VBS ONLY ACCEPTS.PDF DOCUMENTS. (Scanned PDF documents are not ADA Compliant, please use only documents created electronically through Adobe Acrobat.) Be sure that the document path name does not have any special characters (#, $, /, etc.). Also make sure that the document name is not more than 25 or so letters/numbers (this goes for the folders that the document is saved in). Uploading a document from your desktop is the most successful method as it is not as prone to server hiccups or permission errors. FILE DESCRIPTION: This is what the link to the uploaded.pdf will say. I usually pick a short descriptive term or phrase that will help the vendor understand what is in the document. (ex.: Addendum No. 1: Questions & Answers) Special characters are allowed in this field since it is not the actual document path name. UPLOAD BID SPECS: Once you ve filled out the above info, click Upload and it will take a moment to send the.pdf document to the web. If there is a problem, an error page will direct you back to fix it. DOCUMENT TYPE: This lets you choose if the document you are uploading is a complete file, an amendment or just a page-replacement. Use the dropdown menu for the different options.

11 UPLOAD BID SPECS: Provided on the Upload page is a number of tips and tricks for uploading.pdf files: Tips for loading PDF documents: 1. Keep the name of the PDF file short. Avoid special characters such as apostrophe, question marks, etc. when numbering advertisements and when naming files. The Vendor Bid System does not record the original name of the file anyway, so it doesn't matter once the document has been successfully uploaded. 2. Always upload from a C: drive location, such as your Desktop. Uploading from another drive or a network share greatly increases the likelihood of encountering an error. 3. Clear your Internet Cache every few weeks or after experiencing a bunch of VBS errors. Your desktop support person can show you how to do this yourself using Internet Explorer Options. 4. Postdate advertisements which are supposed to begin today. You can make all of the corrections and upload all of the files you need, regardless of how many VBS errors pop up. Once the advertisement is PERFECT (except for the dates!), edit it to set the real dates and save it one last time. In the working world, final approval often doesn t arrive until the very last minute. If you are creating a new advertisement or versioning an existing advertisement, start out with a future "Begin Date". You can change it back to the real value after the PDF files are all in place. Some types of new advertisements have minimum durations between the Begin Date and End Date, so you may have to adjust both. 5. If you need corrections made to an advertisement, or if you need a PDF file uploaded for you due to VBS errors, you must go through the ETSD Help Desk and you need to contact them by . Address your message to help@myflorida.com, cc: david.luke@dms.myflorida.com, attach any PDF files you need uploaded, give the exact Advertisement Number you wish changed in quotes, and describe what you want done. You have to be specific, so if you need me to Version an advertisement then tell me so, and if you need me to upload a PDF file then give me the text to type into the Description field and the "File Type" to choose from the drop-down list. 6. Create your PDF document as efficiently as possible. Scanners take a picture of a page. The resulting PDF file is huge because it contains a graphical representation of the original document. Always use Adobe Acrobat or a competing software product to produce your PDF file from Word, Excel or other electronic original file. You may ask your desktop support person to check your Acrobat configuration to be sure it is producing the smallest files possible. As an additional benefit, documents produced from electronic originals are more legible than ones converted to graphics. If you MUST upload a scanned document (such as a bid tally sheet), then make sure that your scanner is configured to produce as small a file size as possible. Your desktop support person can assist with this as well. The smaller the file, the less likely that you will encounter an error during upload AND, the less likely that vendors will encounter an error during download. PDF files under 2 MB usually have no problem, and hundreds of pages of information can fit in this amount of space. Your desktop support person can show you how to check the size of a PDF document prior to upload. 7. Scanned PDFs are not ADA compliant as they are not readable by visual assistance programs like JAWS. Please use electronically converted.pdfs whenever possible.

12 SUCCESS: If there are no problems, the VBS will bring you to this page. If there are multiple.pdf files to upload to the Advertisement click YES, and repeat the Uploading steps for each additional document. The system will give you the option to delete uploaded documents that are in there by mistake, but once you click the final Save button, whatever is in the upload list will be published. If there is nothing left to add, click No and it will complete the Advertisement and kick you back to the New/Search menu. FINAL NOTES / REMINDERS: Anything uploaded and published through the VBS is considered Public Record. If there are spelling / formatting errors in the document, they cannot be altered once it has gone live. Postings that are not set for future dates appear immediately, no matter what you put in the time field. The VBS system cycles at during the night ~ documents that are set to come off posting will disappear at Midnight of their End Date. Changes to published information must be made through Addendums and Amendments (see Versioning below) If you do not wish to publish an Addendum or Amendment document, but still need changes made to the advertisement detail itself you can version the advertisement and hit Cancel when it reaches the upload page.

13 VERSIONING When you need to make an Amendment or Addendum to an advertisement that is still open, you need to make a Version. SEARCH ADVERTISEMENTS: Since you re not starting a new advertisement, you need to choose Search Advertisements to find the appropriate solicitation.

14 SEARCHING (Open Solicitations) Since the VBS database is extensive, it s necessary to narrow your search parameters by using filters. Searching by specific solicitation number is the least reliable method. The VBS system will not recognize a solicitation number that is not typed EXACTLY as it appears on the advertisement (including spaces and punctuation). Typically Agencies have perhaps a few dozen solicitations/advertisements at the very most, therefore choosing the appropriate Agency on this drop down before clicking Search Advertisements will net the best results. SEARCHING (Closed Solicitations) If the solicitation you are looking for has already closed and been archived you can use the Search by Date function in addition to the Agency dropdown. By putting a range of dates in these fields the VBS system will return only posted items that closed during that time period. You can also Search by Fiscal Year by using the drop down marked: Search for Closed Bids.

15 SEARCH RESULTS PAGE: Here you can see a list of advertisements that are still open (when the solicitation reaches it s end date, it automatically shifts to the Closed Bids section of the VBS and will no longer appear on this list.) SELECT ADVERTISEMENT: Solicitations will be sorted by Ad Type but you can search the web page text itself for key words by clicking Ctrl+F and using a Web Browser popup window. VERSION: To version the target advertisement, click the link here. RED TEXT: This solicitation is either starting today or is not yet Live meaning that it was set to open at a future date instead of immediately. DELETE: Advertisements that are not Live will not allow you to choose version only to Delete. This is because you can still make alterations freely to the Advertisement and attachments since it is not actually Published. The Edit dropdown provides options for manipulating these solicitations.

16 CONFIRMATION: To prevent accidentally versioning the wrong Advertisement, a confirmation page will appear after you click Version. Once you double check that you are in the correct solicitation, click Version Advertisement.

17 ADVERTISEMENT: Once the Version has been successfully added, you will be sent to the Advertisement Detail page. All the fields should still be filled out exactly as you had them for the original advertisement. This is the time to correct any changed information for the Advertisement detail itself. DESCRIPTION: The Description field is a constant on the front advertising detail page please do not change the description text every time you have an amendment as it will give the impression that Amendment 1 is all this solicitation pertains to.

18 ADVERTISEMENT DATES: The advertisement dates are the most important. A good many Amendments have to do with extending the bidding period ~ you can change the date fields to reflect the new schedule. NO TIME CONSTRAINTS: While doing a version, Invitations to Bid can have less than the 10 day window requirement for the Begin Date and End Date. This allows for last minute adjustments without having to forward the opening date to accommodate revisions. SAVE ADVERTISMENT: After you are finished updating the Advertisement detail if necessary click Save Advertisement to move to the Browse Screen.

19 UPLOADING: This page behaves just as it did in the original Advertisement stage. Browse for the appropriate Addendum / Amendment.PDF file and load it into the system. If the Advertisement detail was the only place that there were changes needed for the solicitation, there may or may not be a document that is to be uploaded. If there is nothing to upload, simply hit Cancel and the system will send you on to the final Success / Fail screen. FILE NAME: This is what the hyperlink to the uploaded file shall be named best to keep it simple but explanatory Ex. Addendum No. 1 Questions & Answers DOCUMENT TYPE: UPLOAD BID SPECS: Once you ve filled out the above info, click Upload and it will take a moment to send the.pdf document to the web. If there is a problem, an error page will direct you back to fix it. All Amendments and Addendums are considered Amendment on this dropdown. Even if you are replacing the entire bid document, the system will not allow for more than one Complete Document designation.

20 SUCCESS: If there are no problems, the VBS will bring you to this page. If there are multiple.pdf files to upload to the Advertisement click YES, and repeat the Uploading steps for each additional document. The system will give you the option to delete uploaded documents that are in there by mistake, but once you click the final Save button, whatever is in the upload list will be published. If there is nothing left to add, click No and it will complete the Advertisement and kick you back to the New/Search menu. CONGRATULATIONS: The Vendor Bid System is a powerful but temperamental tool. If you get excessive errors the best solution is to walk away from it and try again later. Certain periods of the day are worse than others since the VBS is part of system that also houses employee work areas. Employees logging in and out of the system can effect load / save times and cause errors. If you are still getting errors despite everything you try contact your Agency HelpDesk.