Accessing My Projects
To get started with a project, you will need to be a registered customer. As a registered customer, you will be able to see My Projects form the account section on the left.
The project page will show the project grid, of existing projects and archived/completed projects. You will also be able to search and filter at the top of the project page.
At the top right, you will also be able create a new project. Select Create Project. This will take you through to the Project Creation process.
Basic Project Details
This information will be provided to every vendor that is invited to this project.
Field
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Notes
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Project name
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Allows the customer to enter project name. This will be the title that will be sent to the vendors.
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Project type
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Allows the customer to lookup and select the project type from the dropdown. This Project type will determine what vendors can be invited.
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Subcategory
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Once the project type is selected, a new selection of items display the sub categories of this project type. Allow users to select a sub category, which will determine the vendors that can be invited to participate on this project.
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Project Budget
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Allows the customer to include the budget for their project. This can be configured to be a required field in the settings.
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Start Date/End Date
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Allows the customer to input a date range for the project initiation and delivery.
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Project Description
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Allows the customer to include a detailed description of the project. |
Attachments |
Allows the customer to upload files that all invitees can see/download (2MB limit).
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If the Customer Terms & Conditions are enabled and it is configured that a customer can upload their own Terms & Conditions, this will be available at the bottom of the first page.
The Standard Project Terms and Conditions will link to the URL that was configured in the Project Bidding module. The second option allows the customer to upload a file with their terms and conditions for the project.
You will also see the Progress bar at the bottom of the page, next to the Save prompts. It generally consists of 4 steps:
- Project Details
- Project Review
- Project Vendor Invite
- Project Submission
If the Category/Subcategory selected by the vendor contains Custom Project Questions, this will be added between Steps 1 and 2.
After populating the information on this page with everything needed, you have 2 options.
- Save & Exit will save this project as a draft in My Project and exit the Project Creation process. You can still revisit and complete project submission at a later stage.
- Save & Continue will save this project as a draft, and take you to the next step of the process.
Additional Details
If the user selected a sub category that contains additional questions, once the user has selected to continue, the additional questions will appear after the basic step.
The custom questions can be mandatory. Selecting Save & Continue will take you to the Review stage.
Project Review
This step will allow the users to check all of their input details (including custom questions).
Users can Save & Exit or Save & Continue.
Project Vendor Invitations
Users will be able to see a list of vendors available for them to invite. The vendors listed here will be based on the selection of the Sub Category. Vendor can choose which Sub Category to appear in under Front End Store View in the admin. The term for Vendors can also be modified in the backend configuration. See
Project Bidding - General Configuration.
In this example, Vendors are labelled as Project Experts.
The filters on the left are Vendor Attributes. Once the user selects Add to Invite List you will be able to see which vendors have been invited by selecting the View dropdown at the bottom bar.
If you added multiple vendors, you will be able to see them listed under this section. You can view each vendor's profile, and also remove them from the invite list (or cancel all invites altogether).
Once ready to send the invites, choose Send Project to Invited Vendors. A pop up will appear to confirm your choice.
Simply choose Send Project to continue.
Project Sent
Now that the project has been sent, the user and vendors invited will receive an e-mail. The user will also be taken to the confirmation page which has the success message as below.
At any point if the user wants to check or manage the project they have just created, they can go to the customer dashboard in My Account > My Projects.
The project will appear here, with details of any proposals accepted. You can simply select View Project at the bottom right of each project to see the full details.