Help Home/Creating Negotiations

There may be times when you cannot finish creating your RFI, RFQ, or auction in a single session, or the creation process involves collaboration between several people. Or you need to create a negotiation but not actually submit it until sometime in the future. In each of these cases, you can create a draft of the RFI/RFQ/auction and save it for later editing or submission.

Creating a draft

Once you have completed the Create Header page, you can save your draft by clicking Save Draft. Your draft is assigned a number, and a confirmation message informs you that your draft has been successfully saved. Alternatively, once you proceed beyond the Create Header page, a draft is created automatically for you by the system behind the scenes. This draft has the same name as your negotiation and is updated every time you proceed to a new page in the creation process.

Accessing and editing draft documents:

To access and edit your draft document

• On the Negotiation Home page, click the "Drafts" Quick Link under Manage. You can search for your draft

• Once you locate your draft, you can:

  • Edit the draft by clicking Update.

  • Open someone else's draft for editing by clicking Unlock (you must have the correct authorization to update someone else's draft).

  • Publish the draft by clicking Review and Submit.

  • Create a new version of the draft by clicking Copy.

  • You can remove the draft from the system by clicking Delete.

  • If your negotiation is a very large negotiation, the concurrent program to create the draft may still be in progress. If so the Request Status column will show a status of Pending. This means your concurrent program is waiting to begin. You can end the concurrent program by selecting the negotiation and clicking Cancel Request. Also, if the status is Pending or Processing, you receive an error message if you click Copy, Delete, or Update. You can click Review and Submit, but you can only view the negotiation, you cannot submit it for publishing or approval.

Using drafts with multi-round negotiations

If you have chosen to take a negotiation to an additional round, you have the option of saving the new round's information as a draft. When you save a draft, the status of the previous round is changed to Round Completed and is therefore no longer available for awarding. Note however that once you save the draft, if you subsequently delete it, the status of the prior negotiation is changed back to Not Awarded, and it available for awarding.

Security on draft negotiations

Users with the Create Buyer's Negotiation function can save and subsequently edit their draft negotiations. When you access the Manage Draft Negotiations page, you always see the drafts which you own or on which you are a collaboration team member. If you are the draft creator, you can update, review and submit, unlock, or delete any of these drafts.

Anyone with the Edit Draft Sourcing Documents function can access and edit draft negotiations created using Demand Workbench..

Anyone with the Manage Draft Sourcing Documents function can access and edit drafts created by others at the same company. If you have this function and access the Manage Draft Negotiations page, you can edit any drafts that are not locked.

Additionally, anyone with the Unlock Draft Sourcing Documents function can unlock on a draft but not access it for editing or submission.

This is a useful authorization for an administrator to have in case a draft needs to be edited, but the buyer has locked it and is subsequently unavailable, for example, on vacation.

For private negotiations:

If you are a collaboration member with view-only access, you can view the draft but not edit it. If you are a collaboration member not restricted to view-only access, you can perform whatever tasks are allowed by your function security.

Note: The Sourcing Super User, by default, is authorized to manage and unlock drafts.