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Event Management
Guide
Release 9r2
Document Version 4
August 2015
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Ariba Sourcing solutions (On Demand and software) are protected by one or more of the following patents, including without limitation: U.S. Patent Nos.
6,199,050; 6,216,114; 6,223,167; 6,230,146; 6,230,147; 6,285,989; 6,408,283; 6,499,018; 6,564,192; 6,871,191; 6,952,682; 7,010,511; 7,072,061; 7,130,815;
7,146,331; 7,152,043;7,225,152; 7,277,878; 7,249,085; 7,283,979; 7,283,980; 7,296,001; 7,346,574; 7,383,206; 7,395,238; 7,401,035; 7,407,035; 7,444,299;
7,483,852; 7,499,876; 7,536,362; 7,558,746; 7,558,752; 7,571,137; 7,599,878; 7,634,439; 7,657,461; and 7,693,747. Patents pending.
Other Ariba product solutions are protected by one or more of the following patents:
U.S. Patent Nos. 6,199,050, 6,216,114, 6,223,167, 6,230,146, 6,230,147, 6,285,989, 6,408,283, 6,499,018, 6,564,192, 6,584,451, 6,606,603, 6,714,939,
6,871,191, 6,952,682, 7,010,511, 7,047,318, 7,072,061, 7,084,998; 7,117,165; 7,225,145; 7,324,936; and 7,536,362. Patents pending.
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Revision History
The following table provides a brief history of the updates to this guide. Ariba updates the technical
documentation for its On-Premise solutions if
• software changes delivered in service packs or hot fixes require a documentation update to correctly
reflect the new or changed functionality;
• the existing content is incorrect or user feedback indicated that important content is missing.
Ariba reserves the right to update its technical documentation without prior notification. Most
documentation updates will be made available in the same week as the software service packs are released,
but critical documentation updates may be released at any time.
2 August 2014 Chapter 23 Microsoft Excel Service pack feature update: Added a section titled
Export and Import Enhanced Excel Export, to the content on exporting
UI tables to Excel.
3 March 2015 Chapter 2 Introduction to Events Added a screen shot of the Event Status grid and
associated description. Also, added content
describing different intermediated event status that
get rolled into the high-level statuses.
4 August 2015 Chapter 17 Monitoring an Event Removed the text that indicated the Award tab was
not available for RFIs on page 197.
Initiator Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Market Feedback Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Specify how participants view market information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Show participant responses to other participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Show reserve price to all participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Can participants see ranks?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Show calculated value of competitive term before participant submits bid . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Show formulas to all participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Can owner see responses before event closes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Show bid graph to all participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Indicate to participants that participant-specific initial values have been specified . . . . . 46
Message Board Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Receive emails from participants at this address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Allow messages between the project team and participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Replace message details with link in user-created emails sent to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
In Ariba Sourcing, an “Event” is the publication of data to suppliers or buyers and their response to
questions or bidding on goods or services. It includes Requests for information, or proposals, as well as
forward and reverse auctions. Here is a check list for getting started quickly:
Task Procedure
Determine event Refer to “Introduction to Events” on page 17 for an overview of event types and the
type templates available for each.
Create the event • Under Common Actions or from the menu bar choose Create > Sourcing Project.
• For fast results, copy from a similar event. Click Copy from Project and select one.
• Fill in the event details and click Create.
This entire procedure is covered in more detail below in “To create an event:” on page 14
Define the event The rules are described in “Event Rules” on page 25. The rules in your project depend on
rules the event type and the template you selected. The templates provide a good starting point,
so all you need to do is fill in certain values.
Select team members By default you are the project owner and members of certain system groups are already
included by default. You can add other project owners and observers from the Team page.
See “Changing Team Members” on page 49 for details.
Invite participants From the Supplier or Participants page you can invite registered suppliers/participants and
you can create new ones. See “Inviting Participants to an Event” on page 53 for details.
Creating event Go to the Content page to add questions, requirements, the items and lots that you plan to
content buy or sell and all the cost or other terms required. You can copy some or all of the content
from another event, to simplify this complex step. You can also copy individual items from
other events and drag and drop them to the Content page. See “Creating Content” on
page 57 for details.
Publishing your To publish your event, click Publish. Your administrators may have set up an approval
event process. If so, all the appropriate team members and approvers are notified. See
“Reviewing and Publishing an Event” on page 167 for details.
Monitoring your Find the event on the Dashboard or by searching for it and click on its name, and choose
event Monitor or View Details. You see the event’s monitoring interface. Be prepared to:
• Pause and resume
• Extend or reduce timing
• Cancel and close the event
• Edit a running event
Make the award From the event-monitoring page you can create one or more award scenarios on the
Scenarios tab and then choose one for your award on the Award tab.
See “Scenario Tab” on page 191 and “Award Tab” on page 197.
Note: To print a page, click the Print icon at the top of the page. It formats the screen for printing,
presents a preview, and shows the normal print dialog box for your operating system. Use this
Print icon instead of the browser print function, which does not reformat the page by removing
the tabs and header information at the top.
To create an event:
1 Under Common Actions, choose Create > Sourcing Project.
2 On the Create Sourcing Project page, enter a name and description for your event. Do not use characters
/ \ : * ? “ < > | in any field. Name and description fields can take an unlimited number of characters. Other
fields might limit you to 255 characters.
3 If you want to copy another project, click Copy from Project and select the project or event that you want to
copy. The option, Do you want to copy project groups that were not in the template, from the project being
copied?, appears at the bottom of the screen. Select Yes to import the project groups defined in the project
or event you are copying.
Note: When you click Copy from Project and search for projects to copy from, the ID field displayed is for
searching of workspaces (Contract Workspace, Sourcing Project, etc.) starting with WS only. To search for
RFX Events/Quick Projects based on Doc ID, you must use the Keywords field instead.
Sourcing automatically sets the event type and template to match the project or event you are copying.
You can then modify the data you have copied.
4 Choose the Event Type that you want to create. To read more about different event types, see the chapter
“Introduction to Events” on page 17. The event type controls the display of event templates, which are
different for each event type.
5 Fields with an asterisk are required. Contact Ariba support if you want to change the required fields. A
plus sign means it can have multiple values. Not all of these fields appear for all types of event.
• Test projects are excluded from reporting, if you filter them out, but the system sends notification
emails as it does for a normal event; so be careful not to inadvertently send misleading emails to
participants or team members. To change an event to a test event see “Test Events” on page 24.
• The Base Language is used when there is no version of the template in the user’s language. You cannot
change the base language after the event is created.
• The Owner defaults to the person creating the event, you can change or add owners. The last one
added is listed on the Summary page in reports.
• Commodity refers to the goods or services listed in the event. They are also known as categories, or
UNSPSC codes. For more information see “Commodity” on page 62.
• Baseline Spend is the amount you have traditionally spent for this event.
• Target Savings% is the percentage you want to save for this event.
• Predecessor Project is a related project or event that ran prior to your auction. If you specify a
predecessor project, you get a chance to select which content and suppliers to copy into the new
project, and whether the previous bids should be used an initial bids in the new event.
Regions, Departments, Baseline Spend, Commodity, and Target Savings% fields can be used for
reporting. These fields are not shown to participants.
6 Click Create. When editing an event, some portions of a page might be hidden from you, or be predefined.
You may be able to skip some pages. The pages and fields depend on the event template you chose.
Ariba Sourcing allows you to create and run events in which you exchange business information with other
companies. Depending on the type of information you want to collect, you create different types of events
using Ariba Sourcing. The event templates covered in this chapter are provided with the product. Users in
the Template Creator group may create new templates or copy and modify existing templates. Creating
templates is covered in Chapter 24, “Creating Event Templates.”
You can view the event status in multiple places in the user interface:
• On the upper right hand corner of the monitoring interface.
• In the Event Status grid area on the Ariba Spend Management Dashboard:
Status Description
Draft While you are creating an event, before you publish, it has a status of Draft.
Preview When setting up an event, you can choose to have a period before the event opens for
bidding when participants can preview it, answering questions or preparing their bids.
You can choose whether to allow prebids. You can edit the event: see “Editing Published
Events” on page 173.
Open The event is open for participant responses. You can edit, cancel, or close the event.
Status Description
Pending Selection The event has closed for responses and is pending your awarding selections. You can
reopen or edit the event.
Completed The event is completed. You can no longer reopen or edit it. The completed state is the
end point of events that run their course normally.
Cancelled At any point after publishing an event, you can choose to cancel it. Cancelling an event
bypasses all the other statuses and immediately ends the event. The cancelled state
indicates that you aborted the event. You can undo the cancellation of an event. See
“Cancelling an Event” on page 201.
The Ariba Spend Management Dashboard queries your event database every six hours and displays the
events you created over the last three months, six months, or year, depending on the amount of events you
have created.
The Event Status grid displays consolidated counts of events in each status. This includes events in one of the
intermediate statuses, in which events can be. These statuses are in addition to the five event statuses
described in this section, and can be thought of as transient states of an event that occur as it moves from one
primary status to another. These event statuses are displayed only on the monitoring interface. They are not
displayed in the Status column in the My Documents content item or in the Event Status grid.
The intermediate statuses are counted as part of one of the high-level statuses. Events in the Scheduled and
PrebidReview statuses are counted along with those in the Preview status, and all the events are shown to be
in the Preview status. Similarly, events in the Review and Paused statuses are counted along with those in the
Open status to display the consolidated number of events in Open status.
Note: If an update to an event is pending, the event will appear in the Open status. The pending update
prevents the event from moving to the Pending Selection status in the search results and on the the Event
Status grid. It is recommended that you do not leave updates to events pending. You must either publish the
updated event or revert the changes.
Since RFIs are not competitive, they may be open for responses for an arbitrary amount of time (several days
or weeks), allowing participants to log in and respond at their convenience.
If your RFI contains many questions or if you invite many participants, it could become difficult to interpret
all the information that you collect. The Scoring feature can help you rate participants’ responses.
An RFI is often thought of as the qualifying round of a longer sourcing process. In the RFI step, you collect
information about participants for the purpose of selecting a few of them to invite to follow-on events such
as RFPs or auctions. Ariba Sourcing functionality allows you to reuse the information from an RFI in a
further event. See “Copying Content for Multi-Round Events” on page 88.
RFPs are not directly competitive (there is no real-time exchange of information between competing
participants). Therefore, they can be open for responses for an arbitrary amount of time (several days or
weeks), allowing participants to log in and respond at their convenience.
If your RFP contains many questions, use the scoring feature, which allows you to rate the importance of
questions and pricing and grade participants’ answers to create a final score for each participant.
An RFP is generally thought of as the second step of a longer sourcing process. In the RFP step, you gather
more detailed information about participants. For example, determine exactly which goods or services
suppliers offer, and collect information about their production capacity, as well as their prices. You can use
this information to set up a follow-on auction, determine which lots you should invite them to, and
intelligently set up their ceiling prices.
RFP Templates
There are three templates that allow you to create specific types of RFPs:
• “Request for Proposal” on page 21
• “Request for Proposal with Price Breakdown” on page 21
• “Request for Proposal with Total Cost” on page 21
For example, a supplier wants to sell you a part for $20 per unit. You want to understand how they arrived at
that price. You learn that for this particular part there are four primary costs: tooling, labor, materials, and
markup. Therefore you want your participants to quote you on each one of those costs for that particular
part.
To learn more about total cost RFPs, see “Total Cost Auctions and RFPs” on page 117.
Auctions
These event types are more specifically known as reverse auctions in Ariba Sourcing. A reverse auction is a
real–time online event during which participants submit competitive bids for specific goods or services.
Since auctions require a lot of preparation to be successful, sourcing professionals typically prepare for them
by running qualifying information-collecting events (RFIs and RFPs).
Depending on how the event is configured, Ariba Sourcing can provide participants with feedback on how
their prices compare with other participants’ prices, in the form of:
• The value of the lead bid
• Their rank in the auction
• A graph comparing the bids in the auction
Auctions are directly competitive and allow the real-time exchange of information between participants. You
must be carefully schedule your auctions so that all participants can participate at the same time.
Use an auction to bring the participants into competition for your business. Create line items for everything
that you want to buy. You can group line items into lots to create a package of goods or services to bid on.
Specify ceiling and reserve prices, timing rules, and other strategic rules, to maximize competition.
Train the invited participants in advance so that they are comfortable using the Ariba Sourcing interface. On
bid day, participants log in to Ariba Sourcing and submit bids. Optionally, a real-time graph shows them how
they compare to other participants. You, or someone in your organization, administers the auction, changing
the timing of lots, deleting erroneous bids, and responding to participants’ questions.
Auction Templates
There are six templates that allow you to create specific types of auctions:
• “Reverse Auction” on page 22
• “Extended Reverse Auction” on page 22
• “Reverse Auction with Bid Transformation” on page 22
• “Total Cost Auction” on page 23
• “Dutch Reverse Auction” on page 23
• “Index Based Auction by Amount or Percentage” on page 23
Reverse Auction
This is the standard auction. In a reverse auction, suppliers submit bids, offering progressively lower prices
in an effort to outdo their competition and offer you the best price. You configure rules to determine the
timing of the auction, the amount of market information communicated to participants, and bidding rules,
such as, “Is the lead bid protected by a buffer?”
The Reverse Auction with Bid Transformation template allows you to design an auction to bring the two
suppliers into competition. You set up Ariba Sourcing to automatically include the shipping costs of the
material in the prices that the participants bid.
To learn more about Bid Transformation, see “Bid Transformation Auctions” on page 105.
You determine whether the values for these factors are to be provided by the suppliers during the event,
whether you want suppliers to see only their own rank, their own rank and the lead bid, or all supplier
responses. Supplier ranks are based on the unit cost. Suppliers see their total cost and unit cost. They also see
the cost terms that you made visible for them.
To learn more about total cost auctions, see “Total Cost Auctions and RFPs” on page 117.
To learn more about Index Auctions, see “Index Auctions” on page 127.
Forward Auctions
You usually use Ariba Sourcing to collect information or pricing on things you want to buy. In a forward
auction, you want to sell rather than buy. Instead of inviting suppliers to compete to offer you the lowest
cost, you invite buyers to compete to offer you the highest price.
Use a Forward Auction to bring the parties into direct competition for your goods. Create line items for each
specific item you want to sell. You can group line items into lots to create a package of goods or services for
buyers to bid on. Specify ceiling and reserve prices, timing rules, and other strategic rules, to maximize
competition.
Forward Auction
This is the standard Forward Auction. In a Forward Auction, participants submit bids, offering progressively
higher prices in an effort to outdo their competition.
For example, you might have negotiated with participants and agreed to pay the costs to ship their purchases
to them. Suppose that one of the participants is based in the United States, and the other is based in France.
Since you have agreed to pay the shipping costs, the participants based in France must offer a higher bid if
you are to earn the same profit by selling to them.
The Forward Auction with Bid Transformation template allows you to design an auction to bring the two
participants into competition. You set up Ariba Sourcing to automatically include the shipping costs in the
prices that the participants bid.
To learn more about Bid Transformation, see the chapter “Bid Transformation Auctions” on page 105.
Test Events
Test projects can be excluded from reporting, if you filter them out, but the system sends notification emails
as it does for a normal event; so be careful not to inadvertently send misleading emails to participants or
team members. If an event is not completed, you can change it to a test event.
3 Find the Overview section of the Summary page. Click Actions > Edit Overview.
5 Click Update on the summary page, then you can click Actions > Delete.
Event rules control how an event works. This section covers event rules for users who are creating templates
as well as for those who are creating events from these templates.
For information on how to create templates, see Chapter 24, “Creating Event Templates.”
When creating a template, you often have the option to withhold control of this rule from the person who is
using the template to create an event, also known as the project owner. The options are:
• Delegated: The ability to edit this rule is delegated to project owner. When they create a project, they can
see this rule and they are allowed to change the setting.
• Read only: When they create a project, project owners can see this rule and setting, but cannot edit it.
• Hidden: When they create a project, project owners cannot see this rule or how it is set.
If this option is absent, the project owner can control the rule setting. For project owners, this means they
may read about rules in this chapter that do not appear in the template they are using because the template
creator chose Hidden.
Auction Format
This rule only appears when creating an event template. Keep in mind that some of the event formats (RFI
and Spreadsheet) are non-competitive events for which there is no bidding.
English
In an English auction, the participants submit bids that beat their competitors, who gradually drop out of the
bidding until only one participant remains.
Dutch
In a Dutch auction the project owner sets the starting price as follows:
• For a reverse Dutch auction, set it just below the absolute lowest price for which they anticipate the seller
would be willing to sell it. Do not start at $0.00 if the price adjustment is a percentage, or the price
adjustment and the price will remain at $0.00.
• For a forward Dutch auction, set it just above the absolute highest price for which they anticipate the
buyer would be willing to buy it.
At specified intervals set by the project owner, Ariba Sourcing changes the price until one of the participants
accepts the price, at which time the specified goods are sold, or the ceiling is reached. Dutch auctions are
covered in greater detail in Chapter 11, “Dutch Auctions.”
Spreadsheet
This option is only available:
• When the Must participants improve their bids is set to No.
• For non-competitive events such as RFIs and RFPs. (Competitive means participants can see market
information such as rank, lead bid, or other competitors’ bids.) It is not available for auctions.
When this rule is set to Spreadsheet, it means that suppliers can only submit responses by downloading the
event as a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet, filling in their responses off line, and then uploading it. This
option is required for events of more than 1,000 lines, but can be used for events of any size.
When participants enter a spreadsheet event, they get to a page where the only option is to download the
spreadsheet in which they enter their responses. They can then upload the completed spreadsheet to the same
page. The event content does not appear on the page.
Number of Envelopes
For sealed-envelope bidding, this is the maximum number if envelopes you can use in this event. You can
add sections to an envelope. participants’ responses within sections associated with an envelope are not
visible to the project team until the envelope is opened during the Pending Selection period.
This rule appears for RFI and RFP events. It is not available for auctions.
Sealed-envelope bidding is used when laws require that buyers can only see certain sections of an RFP in
sequence and must qualify or disqualify participants before opening the next section (envelope) in the series.
For example, if the first section contains questions about technical specifications, this event can enforce that
participants be qualified or disqualified before the buyer can seethe second section, containing their price
quotes. Envelopes work as follows:
• When you create a section, you specify whether it belongs to an envelope, and if so, which one.
• An envelope can contain more than one section.
• An envelope contains responses for all event participants for that section.
• Buyers can only see responses in envelopes that are open.
• They can only open envelopes in sequence.
• When buyers open an envelope, they can only see responses for those who they selected to continue.
• When the buyer discontinues a participant, all that participant’s responses (opened or not) are deleted.
Timing Rules
These rules control event timing, bidding periods, preview periods, and review periods. These are some
usage considerations for timing rules:
RFIs do not collect pricing information or involve as much time pressure as an auction. You would generally
set one to open as soon as you publish it. If an RFI is published to Preview status, participants cannot
respond until you open it. You can leave it open however long you think is necessary for all your suppliers to
log in, conduct their own internal research as needed, and submit their responses.
RFPs can collect pricing information. You generally start allowing responses as soon as the event is
published, unless you think it likely that you will need to edit the event as a result of supplier feedback.
You can either end the bidding time after some specific duration, or at a specific time. Specify the date by
which you expect to make your awarding decision so that participants can accurately bid in case the pricing
of their bids depends on their supply of a certain good or on their planned workload at that time.
Auctions involve real-time supplier interaction. For an event to be successful, schedule it when all invited
suppliers can log into Ariba Sourcing and bid at the same time. Suppliers who receive information about
competitors during bidding will frequently update their bids in response. You can create a preview period (or
qualifying round) and allow suppliers to submit prebids. You can configure how overtime works, and set up
the amount of time between staggered lot closings.
The preview period starts when the event is published (or the specified start time) and ends when the bidding
starts. It provides time for participants to review the event and decide how to respond. You should generally
provide anywhere from a few days to several weeks for the preview period, depending on how complex the
event is. By default, there is no preview period and control is delegated to the project owner.
If prebids are required, and a supplier does not submit one, Ariba Sourcing automatically locks them out of
the event when bidding starts.
During the prebid period, the system only enforces the bidding rules for whether tie bids are allowed and
meeting the ceiling price. See “Can participants submit tie bids” on page 39, and “Ceiling/Floor/Initial
Price” on page 61. Participants can revise their bids as much as they like during this period.
Start Time
This rule is available only if you enabled a preview period. It establishes the start time of the bidding period.
The preview period always begins when the project owner publishes the event. The preview period ends
when the bidding period starts, unless the Prebid End Time rule is set to an earlier time.
This is not a required rule. If left blank, there is no Prebid Review Time. That is, the preview period ends
when the bidding begins. If, during the preview period, you extend the duration of the period, Ariba
Sourcing allows you to adjust the bidding start time to preserve the duration of the prebid review period.
Staggered is often preferred. It allows participants to concentrate on the item that is closing and also
allows participants that are only bidding on a few lots to leave after they are done. If you are bidding on
one lot of a 20-lot event, you have to wait the full parallel period just in case something happens to your
one lot at the last minute. For suppliers bidding on all 20 lots, they have to manage 20 data points at once.
• Serial means that bidding for one lot ends before bidding for the next one begins. Only one line is open
for bidding at one time. For more information on Serial bidding see “Serial Bidding” on page 31.
Parallel Bidding
In parallel bidding all lots open simultaneously and close at the same time. Parallel bidding advances your
event by allowing participants to bid on all items at the same time. This type of bidding is useful if you do
not feel you have to monitor the progress of each lot closely, and want to get as many bids on the lots as
quickly as possible. Parallel bidding is required for participant-specified bundles to operate. Refer to
“Bundle Lots” on page 64 for information on bundle lots.
Note: When a supplier is working with one line item in a parallel event, and clicks Submit for that item, a bid
is submitted only for only that item, not for all items.
Specify a bidding end time for the parallel bidding period, when all bidding stops.
The timing behavior of parallel bids is simpler than serial or staggered bidding. Ariba Sourcing does not
support stopping an item or reducing the timing of an item in parallel bidding. All line items go through
Preview, Open, Review and Pending Selection states simultaneously
With all lots open in parallel, you can compare the bidding activity on various lots as the bids come in. Use
parallel bidding for non-competitive events of any size. You can use it for auctions, but keep the number of
line items is small so participants can monitor all the item bids at once, especially in the closing moments of
the bidding period. Auctions of any size generally use staggered or serial bidding.
Staggered Bidding
In staggered bidding all lots open simultaneously, but close one at a time in succession. Staggered bidding
helps to create a period of excitement and competition as each lot’s closing time approaches.
Staggered bidding allows bidders to focus on a single line item as it closes without losing the opportunity to
compete on, and therefore not having to worry about, other items. The time between line item closings in
this type of bidding is usually short.
Suppose that you have three lots in your auction. When bidding starts, all the lots open simultaneously and
participants can place bids in any lot. However, all the lots do not close simultaneously. The first lot closes
after the amount of time specified in the rule Running time for the first lot (you always have the option to
extend or reduce the running time of a lot, or overtime can trigger and extend the running time). The amount
of time between subsequent lot closings is 10 minutes in this example. It is set in the template with the
“Time between lot closing” rule and the template can delegate changing it to the project owner.
For example, set the rule Running time for the first lot to 15 minutes, as shown in the following graphic:
When bidding begins, Ariba Sourcing opens all the lots. Assuming there are no overtime periods, lot 1
closes after 15 minutes, then lot 2 closes ten minutes later (open for a total of 25 minutes), then lot 3 closes
when another 10 minutes have passed (open for a total of 35 minutes) and so on, as illustrated by the
following graphic:
Serial Bidding
In serial bidding all lots open at different intervals and close one at a time in sequence, so that only one lot is
open at a time. When the auction begins, only one lot is open for bidding. After the first lot closes, the
second lot opens, and so on.
Serial bidding the most restrictive pattern of bidding. The supplier can bid on only one lot at a time. This
allows you to control the bidding and see what is bid on a lot before the next one opens. As the event
advances, you might decide to close it at any time, for a lot, or for the entire event.
In Serial events there is no overlap of the open bidding time between any two items. Initially all the line
items are in Preview state. After the preview period ends, the first item to be bid on goes into Open state and
the rest go into Scheduled state. Once the open bidding time of the first item is over, this item goes into
Pending Selection status and the next item goes into Open status until all items have been open for bid.
The following tables show an example of the timing behavior when items in Open state are stopped during
serial bidding.
Stop Item 1, Item 2 is the next item to go into Open state. In this case, the buyer closed item 1 at 9:30 and
moved up the starting time for the other bidding periods.
Stop Item 2 as well, and Item 3 goes into Open state starting from the current time.
The template might set the start time to begin when the event is published. If this option is delegated to the
project owner or if there is a preview period that starts when the event is published, the rule allows you to
select a date and a time. You can enter these values free form, but it is better to select a date from the
calendar or time list to ensure that the value is valid, in the future, and in the correct format.
Due Date
For a Survey RFI, or RFP, set the date and time when the participant response is due.
For example, if you set this to 3, bids in third, second, and first place trigger an overtime. There are two
situations where this rule would apply:
• Someone who was not in first, second, or third place places a bid good enough to move them into first,
second, or third place.
• One of the bidders currently in first, second, or third place places a new bid. This bid need not result in the
bidder changing place.
By setting the rank requirement, you can avoid starting an overtime for bids that are so far off the lead that
there is no need to give other participants additional time to respond.
For example, suppose the overtime period is 10 minutes and “Start overtime period if bid submitted within
(minutes)” is set to 5 minutes. If a lot is scheduled to close at 10:05, and someone places an overtime
triggering bid at 10:02 (within five minutes of the end), then the system adds 10 minutes to 10:02 and sets
the new lot closing time to be 10:12. If a bid came in after 10:07, another overtime would start.
An actual award date is hard to capture with certainty. Publishing a date might set false expectations, so be
somewhat ambiguous by only giving participants month or quarter and year. If working with multiple
buyers/divisions you can have many target award dates for one project.
Bidding Rules
These are bid-improvement rules: participants are bound by their bids and can only revise them by
improving them. With these bidding rules, Ariba Sourcing gives you additional power to determine exactly
how participants in your events must improve their bids. It is common to specify a common set of bidding
rules for all lines and lots in an event with line-item-specific price decrements. However, if desired you can
configure lot- or line-item-specific bidding rules.
This rule only appears for template creators. When set to Yes, it allows the buyer to specify different adders
and multipliers to different suppliers. Use this when you have a transformation that you perform on each bid
to arrive at your total cost.
Suppose, for example, that to compute your total cost, A’s bids are increased by a $100 switching cost (but
no import duty) and B’s by a 10% import duty (but no switching cost).
1 If participant B bids $500, your cost is $550.
2 The bid that participant A sees is $450. This is the total cost of B’s bid with A’s transformation applied in
reverse. A would have to bid lower that $450 for your total cost to be lower than $550, the current best
bid.
3 If A bids $430, the transformation for A adds $100, which means your cost is $530.
4 B now sees a competing bid of $480. If B bids $450, your cost is $500.
Bid transformation enables Ariba Sourcing to transform the displayed bids for each participant in this way.
Set this rule to a percentage of the lead bid. Any bid that improves the supplier’s last bid or the initial price
by more than the specified percent (the default is 10 percent) triggers a following warning such as the one
shown below:
Participants can ignore this warning and submit their bid anyway. However, they should always double
check their bid when this warning appears, in case they bid the price for an item instead of a lot, misplaced
the decimal point, or made some other typographical error.
Enabling the project owner to create a bundle is not controlled by this rule. To enable the project owner to
create a bundle lot, the template must contain a lot whose type is Bid discounted value at item level, compete at
lot level (collect item pricing during bidding). To enable participants to create a bundle lot, the template does not
need to contain a lot whose type is Bid discounted value at item level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing
during bidding). See “Types of Lots” on page 60 for more information.
When set to Yes, A buffer requires participants, in order to become the lead bidder, to improve the existing
lead bid by an amount greater than the buffer amount. A buffer ensures that no participant can take the lead
by bidding just a penny better than the lead bid, for example.
The bid decrement rule (in the Content section of the event) is different. It forces participants to improve
their own bids, but it does not force them to improve the lead bid. Suppose that the bid decrement is set at
$50. If the lead bidder is at $510 and another bidder is at $550, the bidder at $550 can improve that bid by
the minimum amount necessary, $50, and become the lead bidder at $500. In this case, the lead bid only
improves by $10.
With a lead bid buffer of $50, the second-place bidder would have been blocked from bidding only $500. In
order to become the lead bidder, a bid that is $50 better than the lead ($460) would be required.
The term Adjust is used for Dutch auctions, when this rule controls whether the price adjustments that the
system makes at the specified intervals are adjusted by a percentage of the current price or by an amount.
Percentage decrements are useful for avoiding the need to specify nominal decrements for many line items.
For example, decrements for lower cost items (say screws that are $1 for a pack of 20) tend to be small
(Perhaps $0.005). For higher-cost items such as tractors that cost $50,000, decrements should be larger
(perhaps $250). If you have a 50-line event with a variety of small and high priced items, you can either
specify nominal decrements line by line or decide to use decrements of 0.5% for all items which would
automatically make the decrements proportional to the unit price of the item.
Having the bid decrement in amounts is simple and easy for suppliers to understand. However, having the
bid decrement in percentages is more flexible. If you are unsure how many bids participants are likely to
submit, then choose percentage. (If you use a percentage, do not start a Dutch reverse auction with $0.00 or
the amount will never increase.)
For example, a participant in a reverse auction might want to reduce total cost by raising the cost of one of
these non-competitive items and lowering the cost of others.
If the template creator sets this rule to Yes, it allows the project owner control whether participants may
worsen bids on selected non-competitive cost components.
This rule requires two settings in the project content to be set a certain way:
1 This rule can only affect terms where the answer type is numerical or is text that is mapped to a number.
2 To require bid improvement on this term, “Will participants compete on this term,” must specify Yes,
Downward bidding if improving the bid means lowering it or Yes, Upward bidding if improving the bid means
raising it.
For more information, see “Will participants compete on this term?” on page 71
In the line item definition, select one term from the list to be the competitive term. The other items on this
list are non-competitive terms and subject to this rule.
When participants bid, they must either leave their bid as is or improve it on all the non-competitive
(unselected) terms. If they make the bid any worse with the idea of making up for it by improving some
other term by a greater amount, they get an error message.
For example, if you want to allow a reverse auction participant to reduce total cost by raising the cost of one
non-competitive item and lowering the cost of others, you can set that up as follows:
• Set this rule to Yes. For the term on which you want to require bid improvement, set “Will participants
compete on this term” to one of the Yes options.
• For any term on which you do not care about bid improvement, set “Will participants compete on this
term” to No.
If you do not care about bid improvement on any non-competitive terms, set the “Allow owner to require
improvement on non-competitive terms” rule to No.
The “Can participants submit tie bids” rule does not apply to the preview period. However, if you select the
No tie bids option, the “Can participants submit tie bids during preview” rule appears, which allows you to set
the preview period differently.
If you select one of the options for No tie bid for rank n (or better), the preview period works exactly the same
way and the “Can participants submit tie bids during preview” rule does not appear.
No tie bids means that tie bids are not allowed during the preview period.
Yes, allow tie bids means that if a tie bid exists when the preview period ends, it remains a tied when regular
bidding opens. If tie bids are not allowed during regular bidding preview-period ties remain, but no new tied
bids are allowed.
Allow tie bids and break by earliest bid time means that if a tie bid exists when the preview period ends, the tie is
broken by giving the tie to the bid received earliest.
Allow tie bids and break randomly means that if a tie bid exists when the preview period ends, the Ariba
Sourcing system breaks the tie by random selection.
The “Specify how lot bidding will begin and end” rule must be set to Parallel for this rule to appear.
Currency Rules
Initiator Actions
If the ability to create formulas is turned off in the template, there is still mechanism called cost components
that enables you to do some basic calculations to arrive at a total cost. This mechanism is turned on here if
you select one of the No options that enables cost components.
If you specify Yes to enable formulas, you can still use the TotalCost function within a formula to enable
terms that are adders, subtracters, multipliers or % discount to be applied to total cost.
After submitting a bid, Specify how participants view market information: Enable a
participants see: starting gate
• their own rank
• leading bid Show participant responses to other participants: Yes
• bid graph Hide the number of bidders by using the same participant alias:
• bid history No–unique aliases
• number of participants
Medium After submitting a bid, Specify how participants view market information: Enable a
participants see: starting gate
• their own rank
• leading bid Show participant responses to other suppliers: Yes - After
Supplier’s first response is accepted
• bid graph
• bid history Hide the number of bidders by using the same participant alias:
Yes–generic aliases
After submitting a bid, Specify how participants view market information: Enable a
participants can see: starting gate
• their own rank
• leading bid Show participant responses to other participants: No
Minimum Even after a bid, participants just Specify how participants view market information: Enable a
see their own rank starting gate
Use this feature in combination with the ceiling price in order to restrict the display of market information to
competitive participants. You set the ceiling price during lot and line item creation. (See “Content Types” on
page 57.) The ceiling price is the highest price that participants can bid. Trying to place a bid higher than the
ceiling price results in an error.
If the rule “Specify how participants view market information” is set to one of the choices that enables a
starting gate, the choices here are After participant’s first response is accepted or No. This respects the
requirements of the starting gate.
Choose Yes or After participant’s first response is accepted to display the bid history table. Choose No to hide the
bid history table.
Displaying the bid history table exposes a great deal of information to participants. The bid history table
displays all the competing bids, their submission times, and makes it very clear how each participant
compares to the market.
This rule setting affects the options that are available for the “Can participants see ranks?” rule.
If you choose No–unique aliases then Ariba Sourcing aliases the names of other companies and then appends
a number to uniquely identify the company. Participants can then see how many competitors you have
invited to the auction, and perhaps guess at the identity of other companies by observing their bidding
patterns. In the example below, the participant viewing this is XYZ Technologies, and they can see that there
are two other companies bidding on this lot.
These numbers only identify the unique aliases for those bidding on this lot. There might be more bidders
with other numbers who did not bid on this lot. To figure out how many other bidders there are, a participant
would have to find the highest number among all lots.
By default the alias name is “Company.” To change it, have your administrator edit the
Application.AQS.RFX.AliasKeyword parameter.
If “Show how participants view market information” is set to Do not enable a starting gate, the only choices
here are Yes or No.
If “Specify how participants view market information” is set to one of the choices that enables a starting
gate, the choices here are After participant’s first response is accepted or No.
Choose Yes or After participant’s first response is accepted to display the lead bid to participants. Ariba
Sourcing displays the lead bid on the bid console, to the right of the ceiling and reserve value information:
2 The rule “Hide the number of bidders by using the same participant alias” is set to Yes - generic aliases.
• All participants’ ranks – Participants can always see the rank for every bidder. This option is not available
(or reverts to Their own rank when leading, when:
1 The rule “Show participant responses to other participants” is set to Yes or After participants first response
is accepted, and the rule “Hide the number of bidders by using the same participant alias” is set to Yes -
generic aliases, or
If you choose Other email address, you can specify the email address at which to receive email responses
from participants to whom you have sent an email during the event. That is, this is the “Reply To” address in
emails you send to participants.
Your administrator can set it up so that if a mail sent from the system to a participant bounces back, the
project owner gets an online message along with a bounced mail. This function can be configured by your
administrator by updating the System.AQS.MailBoxReader parameters.
When set to No, the message board is still enabled, but participants cannot compose a new a message or reply
reply to an existing one.
This rule does not affect the Message tab on the project owner’s Monitor page in any way.
When the event type is Auction or Forward Auction, and there is a preview period during which pre-bidding
is allowed, the default value for this rule is Pre-bidding start. In any other case the default is Preview start. The
other options for opening are Open, Pre-bidding end, Bidding Start, Pending Selection start, Completed, and
Specify a time.
The default setting is Completed. The other options for closing are Pre-bidding end, Bidding start, Pending
Selection start, and Specify a time.
If you specify a time for either opening or closing, you can select a date from the calendar, which inserts the
date and sets the hour to 12:00 AM by default. You can edit the hour and minute. The To and From times are
validated against these rules:
• Neither the From nor the To times can be in the past.
• The To time must be after the From time.
This specifies which users will receive user-created emails with the details replaced by a link. Use this rule
to ensure that team members and event participants can access the message details for user-created emails
(i.e. emails that are not system generated) only from the event. This encourages users to reply to such emails
from the event rather than from external email clients.
The default setting is None. This setting ensures that user-created emails are sent to all users with the details
visible.
If you select Team members or Participants, the corresponding set of users will receive emails with a link to
access the message details. Select Both to replace message details in emails sent to both team members and
event participants.
The Team page specifies who can see and interact with the event when the project’s access control is set to
“Private to Team Members.” The project creator can only edit the Active Observers and Project Owners,
unless the project creator is also a member of one of the other groups.
The system grants each group permissions to perform various tasks. A user can be in multiple groups.
• Active Observers can view and modify events, create and edit documents, tasks, and announcements,
access participants’ messages and see the audit logs. They get event notifications as Project Owners do.
• Administrators have permissions to edit the event such as to delete irrational bids that block the progress
of the event. You cannot change the members of this group.
• Global Observers can view all projects, Edit and Create Announcements, view audit logs, and access
participants messages. The head of your sourcing organization might be a member of this group.
Members of this group do not receive event notifications and cannot edit documents and tasks. You cannot
change the members of this group.
• Observers can create and edit announcements, but nothing else. (Announcements are described in the
Ariba Sourcing Process Management Guide.) You cannot change the members of this group.
• Project Owners can edit this project. You can have multiple project owners, but the one listed on the
summary page is the one that appears in reports.
• Surrogate Bidders place bids for participants who are unable to place their own bids, perhaps because of
technical problems. This group contains Ariba customer support personnel to ensure proper market
neutrality. You cannot change the members of this group.
Each group in the left column of the Team page is a local group with permissions relevant to this event only.
By contrast the groups that are members of the local group are System groups with permissions across
multiple projects or events. A System Administrator can add users to system groups, as described in the
Ariba Upstream Platform Configuration Guide. See the chapter entitled “Managing Users.”
For example, if you are a Surrogate Bidder you would be able to add to members of the this event’s
Surrogate Bidder group on the Team page. But anyone you add is just a Surrogate Bidder for this event. The
members list for Surrogate Bidders would show the system group of Surrogate Bidders plus the user you
added, who would not be a member of the system Surrogate Bidders group.
Note: To globally replace a team member with a different team member, contact your administrator. The
procedure is documented in the Ariba Upstream Platform Customization Guide. Look for the topic entitled
“Replacing Users.”
2 Recently-selected users (for any group) appear in the pull-down menu. Choose Search for more.
3 Check the box to the left of the user you would like to add and click Done in the lower right corner.
2 Recently-selected users (for any group) appear in the pull-down menu. Choose Search for more.
3 On the Currently Selected list, uncheck the user you would like to remove and click Done.
4 In the list of Roles, check the box next to the roles you want to select and click Done in the lower right
corner.
5 For more information on any Role, click on it to see which permissions it has.
Note: Permissions, roles and groups are described in the Ariba Upstream Platform Configuration Guide.
Look for the chapter entitled “Permissions, Roles, and Groups.”
Inviting participants to your event is done on the Suppliers page for an RFI, RFP, and reverse auction, and on
the Participants page for a forward auction.
Note: A forward auction is a sales event, as described in “Forward Auctions” on page 23, so “participant”
replaces “supplier” in many places throughout Ariba Sourcing.
When you publish your event, invited participants receive email invitations. See “Notifications” on
page 209. You can add participants already registered in the system or register new participants to invite. If
you invite a new participant, you must add them to an existing organization or create a new one.
You can also flag incumbent suppliers, to remind you of which suppliers have this status. This information is
useful when making your awarding decision. For example, in many cases, switching from an incumbent
supplier incurs additional costs. You can flag the incumbent supplier at the line item level.
Note: For information on how to invite suppliers to your Supplier Discovery Posting, see “Searching for
Suppliers on Ariba Discovery” on page 142.
2 Click Invite Participants. Alternatively, you can click Excel Import to import a list of suppliers. Excel
import/exports are described in “Microsoft Excel Import and Export” on page 249.
3 If you have already registered the supplier in Ariba Sourcing, search for them by entering information into
the fields and clicking Search. Display a list of all suppliers registered in the system by clicking Search
with no information entered into the search fields.
To add search criteria or perform an advanced search, click Options and choose which fields to use in your
search. Advanced searches allow you to search on supplier profile questions.
4 Select the suppliers that you want to add from the list returned from the search. Click OK. You are returned
to the Suppliers page.
Before you can invite a supplier to an event, you must have registered or created the supplier in Ariba
Sourcing. The following procedure describes how to do this.
Before you create a new supplier, search to see if they are already in the system.
1 Click Suppliers on the left side of the page.
4 In the Participant User Information area, enter details about the supplier. Be sure to enter the correct email
address; Ariba Sourcing sends the supplier’s invitation to this address, introducing them to the application
and allowing them to set their initial password.
5 In the Participant Organization Information area, enter details about the supplier’s company. If the
supplier’s company already exists in Ariba Sourcing, click Select Existing to search the registered
organizations. Be sure to add the commodities areas for the supplier. This enables you to perform
commodity area searches for suppliers and quickly find the supplier appropriate to your needs.
6 You can add profile information as needed.
Note: When you create a new Sourcing project, you can specify whether there is a predecessor project. If you
specify a predecessor project, it creates a multi-round project, and you can choose what to import from the
predecessor project. This includes importing participants from the predecessor project. For details see
“Importing from Predecessor Projects” on page 88.
Note: To globally replace a participant with a different participant, contact your administrator. The procedure
is documented in the Ariba Upstream Platform Customization Guide.
3 Click the Excel Import button at the bottom of the page to open the Import Content from Excel page.
This page enables both importing from and exporting to Excel spreadsheets.
4 In Step 4 in the screen above, select whether to add this data to the project or to replace the data selected
in step 1 with the same type of data from the spreadsheet.
5 Go to Step 5 and click the upper Browse button to find the Excel spreadsheet file you want to import.
If there are errors, you will get a message listing them, up to about two dozen per import attempt. If an error
occurs, you must correct the problem in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Clicking cancel takes you back to
the Import Content From Excel page. Browse to your file again and re–attempt to import it.
The content of your event is the information that participants see and respond to. For example, typical
content you might create includes:
• Introductory text, information, and instructions for participants
• Terms to define your relationship with participants
• Questions for participants to answer
• Requirements that participants must meet
• File attachments for participants to view
• Line items or lots for participants to bid on
Ariba Sourcing includes an area called the Content Library where you store content to include in your event.
You can also copy content from past events. For an introduction to content creation, download the video
tutorials “Creating Sourcing Events: Basics and “Creating Sourcing Events: Adding Content.”
Content Types
On the Content page, create content by clicking Add and choosing the type of content to create. See these
sections for details on the content types:
• “Questions” on page 58
• “Lots and Line Items” on page 58
• “Terms” on page 65
• “Historic Price” on page 62
• “Requirements” on page 71
• “Attachments” on page 71
• “Sections” on page 72
• “Formulas” on page 73
Questions
Use questions to solicit information from participants. Define the options associated with questions on the
Add/Edit Question page:
In the following graphic, 3.1 through 3.4 are line items created outside of a lot. Notice how Ariba Sourcing
places them into the Choose Lot list separately. In a staggered auction, each line item receives the focus of
the auction for a period.
3.5 is a lot that groups copies of the same four line items together. In a staggered auction, participants bid on
them simultaneously. They do not individually receive the focus of the auction.
Organizing your auction correctly into line items and lots is a very important factor in having a successful
auction. To read more about this topic, see “Lots and Line Items Compared” on page 59.
To create a lot:
1 In the Content page, select Add > Lot.
4 Click OK.
Types of Lots
The following table defines the different types of lots. For a lot type to be available when creating a project,
it must have been added to the project template. In the template, you can only have one lot of each type, so
the options that appear are for the types that do not yet exist in the template.
When the event is finished, suppliers fill in the individual line item prices in a process known
as Lot Reconciliation. Be sure to examine the item prices before you make your awarding
decision in case participants raised some prices while lowering others to get a better lot price.
Bid at lot level, compete Choose this if you do not want to collect line item pricing information for your lots. You
at lot level (do not cannot add line items to this type of lot. The bids are always on the extended price or total cost.
collect item pricing)
Bid discounted value at This is for Bundle lots. A bundle is a container into which the project owner can create copies
item level, compete at lot of line items. These line items can have a different price when sold as part of the bundle.
level (collect item Bundles are described in more detail in “Bundle Lots” on page 64.
pricing during bidding)
3 Click OK.
Line items can specify a quantity that you can split between participants when awarding, or during bidding,
for some auction types. Correctly organizing your event into line items and lots is important for a successful
auction.
Ceiling/Floor/Initial Price
A ceiling price is the highest price that participants can bid for a line item in a reverse auction. In a forward
auction, it is the floor, or lowest price. In a Dutch Auction, it marks the last price before the event closes.
It is the initial or starting bid in all types of auctions, including Dutch. The value you enter in an item/lot
Price field becomes the ceiling/floor price. Leave it empty if you do not want to set one, except in a Dutch
auction, where it is required.
Reverse Auction
Forward Auction
Dutch Auction
For a reverse auction, for example, the system displays the ceiling price in the participants’ bidding console.
If they try to submit a bid higher than the ceiling, they get an error:
You can also set a floor price participants cannot bid below. You can use a floor value to prevent bidders
from bidding zero. You would not want to set an initial price of Zero in a Dutch reverse auction if the price
adjustment is a percentage, or the price and the adjustment remain zero.
You can set participant–specific ceiling prices, meaning, a different ceiling value for each participant. To set
these values, in the Item Terms area, click Set Participant–Specific Values, and enter the prices in the List of
Invited Suppliers area. See “List of Invited Participants” on page 64 for details.
The system enforces ceiling prices for both RFPs and Auctions. This concept does not apply to RFIs; the
system does not enforce ceiling prices for RFIs.
If you allow prebids during the preview period (see “Enable preview period before bidding opens” on
page 28) of your RFP or Auction, the system enforces any bidding rules that you defined, such as not
allowing tie bids, or having a ceiling price.
If you want to have a ceiling price during the main bidding, but not during the preview period, leave the
ceiling price field blank when you create and publish the event. Then, during the prebid review period (see
“Prebid End Time” on page 29), edit the event (see “Editing Events” on page 173) and set the ceiling prices.
You can choose whether to discard any bids above the new ceiling price when you update the event.
Historic Price
The system uses historic prices to calculate your savings or, for a forward auction, earnings. Enter the price
that you paid for the item or service you are sourcing with the line item, the last time you sourced it. When
suppliers enter their bids, the system automatically calculates the savings you achieve. Historic prices are
typically required for any lot or item that you add.
Reserve Price
The reserve price is the price at which it begins to make sense for you to award your business to a new
participant and they help to manage participant expectations. They understand that you may not award
business to bids that do not meet or improve on your reserve price.
The system can hide the reserve price until it has been met by a participant. Then it exposes the reserve price
only when the participant meets the price. Contact Ariba Product Support to enable this feature.
Decimal Precision
The Set Precision button enables you to edit the number of decimal places for line items, lots, and questions
in the event, individually or globally. The button is located at the bottom of the Terms area, to the right of the
other buttons. See “Number of decimal places” on page 75.
If you enter a number with more decimals places than the set precision, Ariba Sourcing automatically rounds
the number down for RFPs and Auctions and rounds the number up for Forward Auctions. For example, if
you enter 5.167 and the precision is set to two decimal places, Ariba Sourcing rounds the number down to
5.16 in RFPs and Auctions to ensure you receive the lowest price. Ariba Sourcing rounds the number up to
5.17 in Forward Auctions to ensure you receive the highest selling price.
3 On the Set Precision page, enter the number of decimal places that you want to use.
4 Choose which content to apply the specified precision. There are two options:
• Change the number of decimal places for this item only: Choose this option to set the precision for only the
lot or line item that you are currently editing.
• Change the number of decimal places for all content: Choose this option to set the precision for all lots, line
items, and questions (with terms of type Money, Decimal Number, or Percentage) in the event. This is
superseded individually by any items that have an their own setting.
Commodity
Your company might refer to commodities as categories, UNSPSC codes, or by some other terminology.
Complete this field to allow your organization to sort your purchases.
Optionally, this field can be required, which forces the project owner to fill in a commodity code for every
line item. To enable this feature, ask your administrator to set the
System.UI.CommodityCodesRequirement.CommodityCodesRequirementDefault parameter to true. Also, read
about the Commodity field at the event level, discussed in “To create an event:” on page 14.
Choose Participants bid on all units (extended bidding) to cause participants to enter their bids for the extended
price. The system divides by the quantity to calculate the item price. There is no particular strategy in
making this choice; choose the option that is most convenient for your participants.
Note: Clicking on an Fx link in a table displays the formulas used to calculate the value at that location. A
sample is shown below.
Bidding Rules
In an auction event, you can define bidding rules for lots and line items with the following values:
• Improve bid amount by: This rule shows the value specified on the rules page for the “Improve bid
amount by” rule: it can either be percentage or nominal amount. To change it, change the rule setting.
• Bid decrement: Define how much participants must improve their own bids (in nominal amount or
percentage) before being allowed to resubmit.
The Bid Decrement specifies percentage or amount that each participant must improve their own bid.
Setting the bid decrement correctly is important. Generally, participants improve their bids by the smallest
amount possible. If the bid decrement is too small, the auction progresses too slowly.
If the bid decrement is too large, you may lose potential savings. Each participant has an absolute best
price beyond which they cannot improve. If a seller’s best price is $550, and the bid decrement is $100,
they might stop at $600. They can’t go to $550 because it does not meet the decrement requirement and
$500 is too low for them. You therefore might end up buying at $600 instead of $550.
• Protect the lead bid with front buffer / back buffer: This option appears when the rules “Must
participants improve their bids” and “Create a buffer to protect lead bid” are both set to Yes. Define a
buffer around the lead bid (in nominal amount or percentage) that defines how closely other bidders can
approach. The system rejects bids placed within the buffer.
• Can participants submit tie bids: Set this to No if you do want to prevent a participant from submitting a
bid that is the same as another bidder.
Certain bidding rules apply only to specific lots or line items. Configure them when creating or editing a lot
or line item. Also, see “Ceiling/Floor/Initial Price” on page 61. Ceiling prices are also a form of bidding
rule.
The button Set Participant–Specific Values turns on participant specific values for the price term. To set
participant specific values for other terms, edit the term and enable the rule Use participant–specific initial
values.
Item Terms
Item terms are line item elements to which you assign a numerical or string value. Line items can contain
various numerical terms that roll up to a line item price as well as string values, or string values that map to
numbers. For more information refer to “Terms” on page 65.
Bundle Lots
The lots described as “Bid discounted value at item level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing during
bidding)“ is a bundle lot. A bundle is a set of items that cost less when they are bundled with other items.
Bundles are useful when you want to give event participants an opportunity to give discounts not just for
volume, but for For this type of lot to be available for a Sourcing project, it has to exist in the event template
that the project is using.
Bundles work by simply dragging an item into a bundle lot. The item in the bundle becomes a copy of the
original and it can have a different price than the same item outside the bundle or the same item in another
bundle.
Whether participants can create bundles is independent of project owners creating bundles and is controlled
by the rule: “Can participants create bundles” on page 37.
Notes:
• The bidding has to be parallel for supplier bundles to operate. See “Specify how lot bidding will begin and
end” on page 29 for information on setting parallel bidding. It does not have to be parallel for bundles that
you create.
• You can optionally set a rule to allow participants to create their own bundles. See “Can participants
create bundles” on page 37. A bundle lot does not have to exist in the event template for suppliers to
create their own bundles under this rule.
• When you define terms for items in a bundle, you have to decide which term the participant can change.
Generally it would be the price. Since most terms are not editable, the default is Not Editable, so do not
forget to make at least one term editable by the participant.
• It is helpful to create an item definition in the template for this event, so that the editable term is preset and
the project owner does not need to set it for each item.
• The bundle lot is available in the standard event template called Extended Reverse Auction. You can make
the bundle lot available in other templates by adding this lot type to the template’s Content page.
Terms
Terms have specialized functions including:
• Collecting participants’ pricing information:
Price or Extended Price, Index Percentage or Amount
• Collecting other information from participants:
Shipping terms, or any other term that you define
• Containing owner defined information about the line item:
Quantity, Index Name
• Displaying calculated information about line item:
Total and Unit Cost, Savings or Earnings, Discount Amount and Percentage
• Containing cost information. The cost terms used to calculate total cost are specialized item terms. See
“About Cost Terms” on page 107.
• Adding a matrix dimension to a term in Sourcing. See “Is this a matrix term?” on page 67 for details.
Term Description
Price The amount that the participant receives for selling an individual item. This term is used in the
TotalCost formula in the Total Cost term in the Total Cost Auction template. It is also a term that
appears in reports, even if you change its name.
Quantity The number of items (defined by the line item) that you want to buy. Like Price, this term is also
used in the Total Cost Auction template and reports.
Extended Price This term uses a formula that is the Price term times the Quantity term, or the total price of the line
item. This term appears in reports.
Shipping Terms A line of text describing the shipping terms. For example: COD.
Savings In a reverse auction, Savings is the historical value of a term minus the current value; the total
amount that you have saved.
Earnings In a forward auction (“Forward Auctions” on page 23), Earnings is the actual value minus the
historical value of a term.
Unit Cost The amount that the buyer pays to purchase a single item. Unit Cost = Total Cost / Quantity.
Total Cost In a transformation auction, participants’ prices are transformed into your total cost using a
transformation equation that you create with one or more cost terms. See “About Cost Terms” on
page 107.
If you use the Total Cost Auction template you can create new terms and specify whether they are
adders, subtracters, multipliers, or % discount terms. When you do, they are automatically applied
to this Total Cost term.
Index Name The index used in an index auction.
Index Percentage In an index auction, the competitive term representing the participant’s bid, in percentage above or
below an index. See “About Index Auction Concepts” on page 127.
Index Amount In an index auction, the competitive term representing the participant’s bid, in nominal amount
above or below an index. See “About Index Auction Concepts” on page 127.
You can edit terms in the previous table by clicking on the term in the Item Terms area and choosing Edit.
You edit existing terms or create new terms in much the same way that you edit or create questions. Most of
the fields on the Add or Edit Term page are discussed in the section “Common Content Fields” on page 73.
If you change the name of a term, it is automatically changed in any formulas where it is used.
The most common use of custom item terms is as cost terms. Cost terms are used in bid transformation. See
“Bid Transformation Auctions” on page 105.
To add a term:
Check the box next to the term(s) you would like to add and Click OK, or choose the New Term tab.
The following sections discuss Item Term fields that are unique to terms. If a term is not listed, check
“Common Content Fields” on page 73.
• “Include in Cost” on page 66
• “Apply to cost for” on page 66
• “Rollup in section summary” on page 67
• “Is this a matrix term?” on page 67
• “Display term in column or row” on page 69
• “Has Historic Value” on page 70
• “Has Reserve Value” on page 70
• “Is term editable in bundles?” on page 70
• “Will participants compete on this term?” on page 71
Include in Cost
This option only appears if the template you are using allows formulas. The options are:
• No – non-numeric answer types such as text cannot be used in formulas.
• Custom – enables you to map the non-numerical answer types (text, date, and yes/no) to numerical values
so you can use them in formulas.
• Adder, Subtracter, Multiplier, or % Discount – These options determine how the term is used in the various
functions described in the Formulas chapter.
To see how these values are used refer to the Formulas chapter. See the topics on the functions; “Aggregate
Costs (AGGREGATECOSTS)” on page 101 and “Total Cost (TOTALCOST)” on page 102.
5 The Is this a matrix term? selection must be set to Yes. Yes is only available only if these conditions are met
with the values on the Add Term page:
• Answer Type is a simple numeric, text, or date value.
• Acceptable Values is set to Any Value.
• Response Required is set to Yes, Owner Required.
• Visible to Participant is set to Yes.
• Use participant-specific initial values? is set to No.
6 Display term in a column or row should generally be set to row. The term will already display a column for
price, initial value, historic value, and reserve value. If you make region a column, the number of columns
becomes the number of regions times four. You can always go back and change this setting later.
7 Click OK to return to the item. the new Region term appears with the value APAC, as entered in the
example. This is the prototype factor for the Region dimension. After providing the required fields for bid
decrement and initial, historic, and reserve values, you must return to the Content page to edit the line
item. Matrix is a new option that appears when a term is defined as a dimension.
Note: Now that you have created this matrix term, it will appear by default in any new line items you
create.
10 The Matrix Edit page is where you define the different values for the dimension term you created. In this
case you are defining the region rows you want for this line item, Select the Region radio button.
When you select a matrix term, the factor you created as a prototype (the APAC region, in this example)
appears in the Matrix Factors list.
11 Click Add in the Matrix Factors list to create additional regions. Create one for Europe (EUR) and USA.
12 Click Apply.
13 Now your pricing terms will appear in a table for which there is a row of pricing terms (Initial, Historic
and Reserve) for each region. Check the different views available in the Display menu:
You can also set it up so that the regions are shown as columns, but each region would show up as a three
columns for initial, historic, and reserve prices. If you have many factors (different regions, in this case)
the table would be very wide.
14 Continue adding term dimensions to cover all aspects of the dimension you want to include (for example,
various regions).
To change the bidding rules for a line item term, see “Bidding Rules” on page 63.
You can choose three options when setting this field. Each has a different impact on how savings are
calculated. This is not a cost term.
• No (the default) means there is no historical value for this term, so it is not used in savings calculations and
does not affect the Historical Total Cost fx formula link.
• Yes means you have to supply a historic value for savings calculations. If left blank (zero), any values that
participants enter result in negative savings.
• Yes and required forces you to enter a historic value, so there is no danger of flawed savings calculations.
Cost terms are only in effect in the templates RFP with Price Breakdown and Reverse Auction with Bid
Transformation. See “Bid Transformation Auctions” on page 105 and “RFP with Price Breakdown” on
page 137 to read more. The chapter Bid Transformation Auctions chapter contains more information about
cost terms: “About Cost Terms” on page 107.
Note: An item has many terms. You decide which term the participant can change. Generally it is the price.
Since most terms are not editable, the default is Not Editable, so do not forget to make at least one term
Editable by owner and participant.
In some cases you may wish to make none of the terms editable except a discount term. However you do it,
make sure you remember to set at least one term to be editable, or the bundle will not provide any advantage
at all.
You must choose one of the Yes options if you want to require participants to improve their bids on this term,
even when it is a non-competitive term (not selected to be the competitive term). For details see “Allow
owner to require improvement on non-competitive terms” on page 39.
This option also enables you to create a term that bids in the opposite direction of the auction as a whole. For
example, in a reverse auction, where bidding gets lower, you could use this to create a a discount that lowers
total cost by getting higher.
Choose Yes, Downward bidding if improving the bid means lowering it or Yes, Upward bidding if improving the
bid means raising it.
Requirements
A Requirement is a statement you can add to the event to communicate information about your expectations.
Participants do not need to respond to these statements. For example, at the beginning of the section
containing your Commercial Terms, you might add a requirement stating, “You must read and comply with
these commercial terms,” which Ariba Sourcing presents in read-only text.
Requirements can also have attached reference documents. When you export the event to a spreadsheet,
attached reference documents are exported in an accompanying zip file.
Attachments
You can select a file for participants to view. For example, if you are running an event for automobile parts,
you might attach CAD files detailing the design of the parts.
You can either upload the file directly from your computer, or attach a file from the sourcing library. For
example, if many events at your organization have the same file attached, it would make sense to upload that
file to the sourcing library. See “Uploading a File to the Content Library” on page 92.
Participants click a link to download and view the file on their own computer. Communicate to your
participants the file format of your attachments and the applications they need to view them.
Attachments can also have attached reference documents. That is, you can only specify one file to be an
“Attachment,” but the Attachment object can have multiple reference documents attached to it. When you
export the event to a spreadsheet, attached reference documents are exported in an accompanying zip file.
Note: If you want to collect information from participants in the form of a file attachment they upload,
choose Add Question and set the answer type to be File Attachment as described in “Questions” on page 58.
Whenever a participant downloads or views an attachment, an entry to that effect is added to the Audit log.
Sections
Use sections to organize your content. They are similar to folders or directories. You can create any kind of
content inside of a section. You can nest sections by creating sections within sections. If you are using
scoring, nested sections require additional understanding. See “Nested Sections” on page 232.
Building Envelopes
Sections at the root level can be made part of envelopes, if the event is a non-competitive event (an RFI or an
RFP) and the Number of Envelopes rule specifies one or more envelopes. This rule is covered in “Number of
Envelopes” on page 27.
You can place as many sections as you want within an envelope. Any other type of content you want to put in
an envelope has to be in a section. When using envelopes to comply with regulations, make sure the content
of each envelope is correct, and consider whether you should explain to event participants that you are using
them. Events with envelopes do not look any different to event participants.
You can tell that a section is part of an envelope by looking for he envelope icon, as shown below. If you
hover the cursor over the icon, it displays he envelope number.
Formulas
Formulas enable you to create terms in an auction or forward auction event and then use the term values
provided by event participants or the project owner in calculations. For example you could create terms for
price, quantity, shipping cost, discount, and tax, and then create a formula that uses these terms to calculate
the total cost. Formulas are covered in detail in Chapter 7, “Using Formulas.”
Name
For questions, enter the question that clearly indicates what answer is required. For example, write “How
many employees do you have?” rather than “Number of employees.” If the question is to be used in a
formula, keep it short to keep the formula readable.
For lots and line items, use unique names that are descriptive of the type or content.
For terms, use a unique name that is clear but, if used in formulas, is not so long that it makes it hard to
decipher the formula.
Answer Type
Specify the answer type. The default is a single line of text. However, with other answer types, such as date,
you can:
• Accept only an answer of that type.
• Restrict the answer to a range.
• Assign scores that affect the grade the participant receives during the evaluation stage. See “About
Pre-grading” on page 222.
These features allow you to ensure that suppliers provide appropriate answers and do not accidentally leave
information out or answer in a confusing or irregular format.
2 In the Question field, enter text to communicate that users must upload an attachment. For example:
“Upload a CAD drawing of your part.”
3 In the Answer Type field, select Attachment.
Acceptable Values
This option enables you to restrict the answers to a list of choices, which allow you to score the answers
more easily. For information on scoring participant responses, see “Scoring” on page 217. The options are
Any Value and List of Choices.
Any Value provides a text entry field that accepts any entry.
List of Choices enables you to create multiple choices. When you select this option, two additional sub–
options appear:
• Allow participants to specify other value?
If you enable this option, an Other field will appear below the question, allowing participants to enter their
own value. The Other field is not displayed while creating content. It is displayed to participants during
the event. You can view it by selecting View as Supplier from the Action menu on the Content page.
Note: The Other field cannot be pre-graded. You must manually grade these.
Limited Range allows you to specify a range of acceptable answers to the question. For example, for a Whole
Number: 0–10. For a Date: Dec. 1, 2004–Jan. 1, 2005. This option is only available for numerical answer
types (Numbers, Date, Money, Percentage, Quantity).
2 Set the option Acceptable Values to List of Choices. An area appears at the bottom of the screen where you
enter possible choices for the multiple choice question.
3 Enter the choices and click Add after each one to display a field for another choice.
4 Set Allow Participants to specify other values to Yes if you want to let participants enable an Other check box
and type in their own answer. The check box is not visible when editing content. To preview it, click
Actions > View as Supplier.
5 Set Allow Participants to select multiple values to Yes to allow participants to select multiple answers. Yes
changes the list from a drop–down list to check boxes.
To create a question that only accepts numerical answers within a certain range:
1 On the Content page, click Add > Question.
2 Select a numerical Answer Type.
3 Set the option Acceptable Values to Limited Range. A field, Range, appears at the bottom of the screen where
you can enter the range of acceptable values. You can also use this for dates.
Response Required
You can choose from the following options:
• Not Required – Participants can leave the answer field blank. Use this option to create questions that can be
implicitly answered by being left blank, such as “If your business is a publicly-traded corporation, how
many shares of stock are outstanding?” Another example would be questions about a product that not all
invited participants produce.
• Yes, Participant Required – Participants must enter an acceptable answer or they get an error message.
• Yes, Owner Required – Participants see a read-only answer field. The project owner must answer the
question before publishing the event. You could use this option to add data for internal analysis or
reporting purposes. For example, you can specify an ID #, a classification code, or a shipping location.
This option is useful for content stored in the content library and copied into many events. In this way, the
internal buyer users of an organization must answer certain, internal facing, questions each time they
create an event.
Reference Documents
Click Attach a File and choose whether you want to upload a file from your computer or select a file from the
content library. If you choose to upload, you can browse your hard drive or network for any file. If you
choose to select from the content library, you can either search for a document title, or simply browse the
hierarchy of content.
Visible to Participant
This option controls whether participants can see this section, item, question, or term.
The options are Yes, No, and Yes, after participant accepts the agreement.
• Choose No to hide content from participants at all times. This option is only available if Response
Required? is set to Yes Owner Required, or Not Required. Use this option to hide content that you regard as
confidential or sensitive from potential participants.
• Choose Yes to reveal content that you think might induce the participant to bid, or help him make a
bidding decision. This option appears by default.
• Choose Yes, after participant accepts the agreement if you do not want participants to see this content item
until after they have accepted the bidding agreement.
If you would rather that all content in (all events) be automatically hidden until the participant accepts the
agreement, ask your administrator to set the Application.AQS.RFX.HideContentUntilAgreementAccepted
parameter to “true.” When the parameter is “false,” the Yes, after participant accepts the agreement. option
does not appear. When that parameter is “true,” this option does not appear, and the Yes option always
means that this content appears after the agreement is accepted.
To control whether content is hidden from participants who have not accepted the agreement:
1 Add a section, item, question, or term.
2 Under Visible to Participant, select Yes, after participant accepts the agreement.
If the controlling parameter is set to true, the Yes, after participant accepts the agreement choice is not
available. See your administrator if you want to use this functionality and it is not yet implemented.
3 Complete the content as needed and save.
Also, you can use this option to create internal questions that the project owner must answer for internal use
only. Place information that is invisible to participants after visible information, otherwise gaps appear in the
hierarchical numbering viewed by participants.
By default “Hide participants’ responses from each other” is Yes in new event and No in events that have
been migrated from previous releases in which this option did not exist.
If you specify a Team Access Control, only members of the team who have the specified access control can
see the content.
Check the boxes for the groups to which you want to grant access and click Done. The Owner has access to
everything regardless of the Team Access Control. Keep in mind that this control relates to team members
only. If you choose Finance Information, for example, members of the Finance group can only see this
content if they or the Finance group itself, is a member of the team, as specified on the team page.
Notes:
• If the person who logs in to see the event or its reports does not have access to one or more content
elements, then they are not visible. If the Price term is not accessible, for example, the Scenario and
Award tabs on the Monitoring page do not appear at all. The term would be missing from reports that
would otherwise contain the term. It would not show up on the content page or on any other page related
to the event.
• When you create a term, it is available for use in all line items. Therefore, if you set Team Access Control
on a term, it applies to that term in every line item in which the term is used, as well as reports and
relevant monitoring tabs.
You can choose from the following five Team Access Controls:
Finance Information Members of the Finance group can view the object if the Finance Group or a member thereof
is on the Team page.
Legal Information Members of the Legal group can view the object if the Legal Group or a member thereof is
on the Team page.
Owner Only Sourcing event project owners re users in the Project Owner project group. Owner Only also
means anyone who is allowed to manage projects, such as Commodity Code Managers,
Commodity Managers, and Event Administrators can view the object.
Private to Team Team members listed on the Team page can view the object.
Members
Team Access Controls are affected by the controls set at a higher level. If any parent of this level has an
access control set to Private to Team, then this team access control can only restrict access to those who are
on the team.
Here is an example: Most templates have their access control (set from the summary page’s overview
section) set to Private to Team. If you set access control for a price term to Finance, then you have to add the
finance group (or someone in it) to the Team page.
If the project has no access control set at all, then access is free for all. You can set a price term Team Access
Control to Finance and only the Owner and people in the finance group will be able to see it, regardless of
the Team page.
Range
To limit the range of possible values, specify the upper and lower limits here. this appears for the following
answer types: Whole Number, Decimal Number, Date, Money, Percentage, and Quantity.
Initial Value
Communicate your expectations to participants by setting a default value. For example, for the question “Is
your company ISO-9000 compliant?” set an initial value of “Yes” to communicate your expectation that
participants be ISO-9000 compliant.
For example, you might ask “How quickly can you deliver?” knowing that the industry standard is five
weeks. If you know that a participant is capable of delivering an order in three weeks, you can use a
participant-specific initial value just for them.
Note: If you do not enter a participant-specific value, they see the default value specified in the Initial Value
field. This allows you to set a global default value, and only enter a participant-specific value for selected
participants.
In the following graphic, Ariba Sourcing assigns Teri Brown an initial value of 3 weeks, but assigns the rest
of the participants the default initial value of 5 weeks.
Compete on term
For lots you can specify on which term the participants are competing.
Bid decrement
This is a percentage (%) if “Improve bid amount by” is percentage. Otherwise it is a value.
If you select No tie bid options, the “Can participants submit tie bids during preview” rule appears, which
allows you to set the preview period differently.
If you select one of the options for No tie bid for rank n (or better), the preview period works exactly the same
way.
Conditional Content
Event owners can now hide questions, requirements, sections, and attachments from participants until
they respond to a question or a number of questions in a certain way. The content for which a visibility
condition is defined is only displayed to participants when they have fulfilled the condition that controls if
that content is displayed to them.
Conditions are based on answers to questions. Conditional content is applicable to sourcing events,
surveys, supplier profile questionnaire, and content documents in the sourcing library.
Initially, the participants cannot view content that is hidden by a condition. When the participants answer
a question where their answer controls what other content will be displayed, the page refreshes and
conditional content appears. That conditional content can be another question, a requirement, a section or
an attachment. PrintRFX for the participants also hides questions and items that are hidden by visibility
conditions.
Participants can export the content using Microsoft Excel. Only the visible content is exported, and more
content may become visible after they have imported their updated spreadsheet back into the event, which
they can export again and import after providing answers to the now visible content.
You can create basic conditions, which are based on one question, or advanced conditions that combine
conditions on multiple questions. All conditions can be stored in the library along with the content and
copied to events.
Sample Scenarios
The following examples describe typical scenarios in which you can use conditional content:
• You might want to ask suppliers of construction materials and services a set of specific questions. You
can create a visibility condition to display the questions only to suppliers that specify that they supply
commodities and services in those categories, and hide them from other suppliers.
• You might want to ask US suppliers to supply a taxpayer identification number. You can create a
visibility condition to display the question only suppliers with corporate addresses in the US, and hide
it from non-US suppliers.
Limitations
• Visibility conditions cannot be set on line items, lots, and sections that contain line items.
• Conditions cannot be created using questions with multi-line answer type or Attachments.
• Questions associated with conditions cannot be used in formulas. You will not be able to select such
questions in the Create/Edit Formula page.
• Conditions cannot be added to questions available out of the box in a Supplier Profile Questionnaire
(SPQ). You can add conditions to sections available out of the box in the SPQ, but not to individual
questions.
• Conditions are not supported in Excel spreadsheet bidding.
2 Choose Create Condition. The Create Condition pop-up page lists all available questions that you can use to
build a condition. Multi-line answer type questions cannot be used to create conditions.
3 Click the question you want to use in your condition. For questions with numerical answer types or a date
answer type, enter a From: and To: value in the Expression field to create a range of values. For questions
with a text answer type, enter the string to compare participants’ answers to. The participant’s answer
must be an exact match to satisfy the condition.
4 Click OK.
6 Click Undefined and choose an expression (All of, Any of, or None of) and a question. The order in which
you add expressions and questions determines the nested structure of your condition:
• If you choose a question first, specify the matching value, click Content Match, and choose an
expression.
• If you choose an expression first, click Undefined, then choose a question or another expression.
7 Continue adding nested expressions as needed. Each new level is inserted to the left of the expression.
You can delete a level of an expression by clicking the expression’s link and choosing Delete. Note that you
can only delete a level if you have deleted all content from that level.
To edit a condition:
1 Open the sourcing project or profile questionnaire for editing.
For example, consider a simple condition like “Region=North America”, to control the display of one or more
related fields, assuming the base language of the event is English. If a supplier from Germany responds to
the question with “Nordamerika”, it will not display the related fields as the response does not match the
expected value of “North America”. The application cannot dynamically translate a user-entered value and
match it with the value in the condition expression.
To ensure that such questions can be used to create conditions, you must create a complex condition using
several OR conditions. For example, “Region=North America OR Region=Nordamerika OR Région=Amérique du
Nord”. This way multiple locales can be catered to using a single condition and further localization can be
handled by adding more OR conditions. Alternatively, you can select List of choices as the answer type and
provide translations for each of the choices.
The Excel spreadsheet contains the new Conditions worksheet with the visibility conditions as shown in the
following image. You can add more conditions to this worksheet, which will be imported into the event
along with the other content.
The Content worksheet contains a new column Visibility Conditions as shown in the following image. You
can specify the visibility conditions defined in the Conditions worksheet in this column, for the
corresponding questions. When you import the event content from this Excel file, the specified conditions
are applied to the questions.
If you specify a predecessor project when you create a new project, it creates a multi-round event, and you
can choose what to import from the predecessor project:
• Selected content
• Whether to copy participant invitations for the content being imported
• Whether to import participant responses as initial values (Ceiling, for example)
• Whether to import participant responses as initial bids
Importing data from a predecessor project is different from using the Copy from Project option on the
project header, which does not include supplier response data.
Whether you specify a predecessor project or not, you can also copy other content from the Content Library.
Either way, copying content a allows you to reuse it in events. It helps you by:
• Saving you from having to recreate identical content multiple times.
• Allowing you to standardize the questions you ask in your events. For example, if you must ask certain
legal questions, create a library document including them.
• Aiding communication. If your organization has multiple employees creating many events, the content
library enables them to share the content of their events.
To create a multi-round event, create the first project, and then, when you create the second project, specify
the first one as a predecessor project on the project-creation page.
2 In the Content page, you may want to delete the content that is included as a default from the event
template. Just check the boxes to the left of the content to delete and choose Delete.
5 Since the project knows that you have selected a predecessor project, it displays the content from that
project for you to select. In addition, it provides check boxes so you can select additional data to import
and what to do with it:
Check the boxes for the desired import choices and the content you want to import and click Copy in the
upper right corner. to import the data.
If you select Cancel, it changes the page to show the Content Library. You can return to this page later to
add additional copies of predecessor content items or to switch to the Content Library to import content
from there. For more on copying from the Content Library see “Copying Content From the Content
Library” on page 90.
Notes:
• Checking the boxes only works if you have selected content to copy.
• Copy participant invitations for content being copied imports all participants from the predecessor project,
regardless of whether they responded to the selected content. However, they are only invited for
individual content items if you select those items.
• Copy participant responses as initial values means that a participant bid from the predecessor project
becomes their ceiling/floor value in the successor project.
• Submit participant responses as initial bids automatically submits the bid for each content item for which
there is a bid imported from the predecessor project. That bid is becomes the participant’s initial bid as
soon as the bidding opens for that item.
• The participant response options do not appear until/unless the first event is Completed or Pending
Selection. If the first event completes after you created this event, just refresh the screen to see these
two check boxes. You do not need to have permission to be a surrogate bidder to see the participant
response options, when copying from a predecessor project.
• If you do not check any content you get an error that there is nothing to copy. For these check boxes to
work you have to include at least one content item.
2 On the Add Content From Library page, find the Content Library document you want to import. Either
Browse by the document by choosing Explore Library, or Search for the document by choosing Search
Library or Events.
3 Search for the event from which you want to copy and click Select.
4 On the Add Content from Library page, you have these options:
5 Select which specific lots and line items from within the previous event to copy forward.
Notes:
• Checking the boxes only works if you have selected content to copy.
• Copy participant invitations for content being copied imports all participants from the predecessor project,
regardless of whether they responded to the selected content. However, they are only invited for
individual content items if you select those items.
• Copy participant responses as initial values means that a participant bid from the predecessor project
becomes their ceiling/floor value in the successor project.
• Submit participant responses as initial bids means that for each content item for which there is a bid
imported from the predecessor project, that bid is automatically submitted as the participant’s initial
bid as soon as the bidding opens for that item of content.
• The participant response options do not appear until/unless the first event is Completed or Pending
Selection. If the first event completes after you created this event, just refresh the screen to see these
two check boxes. You must have permission to be a surrogate bidder to see the participant response
options, when copying from the Content Library.
• If you do not check any content you get an error that there is nothing to copy. For these check boxes to
work you have to include at least one content item.
6 Click Copy. You return to the Content page of the new event. Verify that the information from the previous
event is copied forward correctly by editing the individual line items and lots and seeing that the supplier
invitation and ceiling price is set accurately in the List of Invited Suppliers area:
Note: Pay special attention to currencies. If you copy content containing prices into a project that uses a
different currency, the currency notation changes to the new currency, but there is no value conversion and
the price amount remains unchanged.
3 Complete the Create New Content Document page and click Create.
5 Click Done. You see the Sourcing Library page with the newly created content document added.
3 Complete the Create New Content Document page and click Create.
6 Search through the past events to find the correct event. Choose it and click Select.
7 Select the content that you want to copy into the new library document. Note that the hierarchal structure
of the content is in force. For example, if you choose to copy a certain line, you also copy all content
nested in that line.
8 Click Copy. You see the create content page with the selected event content added.
9 Modify the content if required. Click Done. You see the Sourcing Library page with the newly created
content document added.
Normally only the creator of a content library document is able to edit it. However, the document owner can
grant edit access to add additional users by setting the Editor field.
3 On the details page, set the Editors field to the group or user that you want to grant edit access. Note that
you can only select one group or user.
4 The specified user or group can now edit your content library document.
3 On the Create New Document page, you can either upload a new document on the New Document tab, or
you can click the Copy Document tab to create a new copy of an existing document.
• Set the base language of the document’s description. For details, see “Base Language” on page 158.
• Check “Announce the creation of this new document” to add an Announcement to the Dashboard of all
sourcing library team members who have the Ariba Sourcing Library marked as a Watched Project. To
learn more about Announcements, see the Ariba Sourcing Process Management Guide.
The availability of an event for reporting in Ariba Analysis can be determined by the event size. Large events
are not pulled into Ariba Analysis for reporting until the Event Status is Pending Selection, Closed, or
Cancelled.
In a competitive event, participants can see market information, such as their own rank, the lead bid, and
other competitors's bids or ranks. An event is non-competitive if participants cannot see any market
information. Typically, auction events are competitive, and RFPs are non-competitive. The following table
describes the event element limits:
Suppliers 100
Sum of all lots and line items (regardless of type of lot or if line items are inside or outside lots) 1,000
Items in lots where the lot type is “Bid at item level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing during 200
bidding)”
Note: Items in lots of type “Bid at lot level, compete at lot level” are not counted toward the 200.
Maximum date-limited elements: “Date-limited” means elements at the top hierarchical level (n.0), 100
regardless of whether the event is parallel, staggered, or serial. It includes the sum of:
• Items that are not inside a lot
• Lots
Suppliers 200
• Not allowed in competitive events if the lots are of type item lot or bundle lot, since the maximum
number of items in item lots or bundle lots is 100.
• Allowed in competitive events (serial, staggered, or parallel) if the lots are of type basket lot (with item
pricing collection after bidding).
3 Event with 2 item lots with 45 items each, and 10 basket lots (with item pricing collection after bidding)
with 90 items each:
• Not allowed. Exceeds the total number of lots and items limit for any event type:
2 item lots + 90 items in item lots + 10 basket lots + 900 items in basket lot = 1,002.
The formulas feature enables you to use terms you have defined in your event in calculations. You can use
formulas in any type of event. Either participants or the project owner can specify the values. For example
you could create terms for price, quantity, shipping cost, discount, and tax, and then create a formula that
uses these terms to calculate the total cost.
If you are in the Template Creator group, you can create formulas in event templates and control whether or
the extent to which project owners can create or edit templates formulas for events.
‘Price’*’Quantity’ or (‘Price’+’InstallationFee’)*’Quantity’
Formulas support all the common mathematical operators and selected pre-defined functions. You can add
as many terms as you need. You can use terms that are derived from other formulas, so you can make
formulas as complex as necessary to calculate values necessary for any purpose you find useful for the event.
Note: Event content is arranged in a hierarchy of numbered elements in which some elements, such as lots
and sections, can have child elements such as line items and terms.
• In a section that is at the top level (but not in a section within a lot)
• In a line item
• If you try to add a formula to any other content type, it is added after that content, at the same level.
When you add a formula, the formula editor presents a list of other content elements that are available for
use within the formula. The content that is available depends on where the formula is and where and how the
other content was defined.
Notes:
• For a question to be available for use in a formula, “Answer type” has to be a numerical value. To map text
(or yes/no, or a date) to a numerical value, you have to specify that the term be included in the cost as
Custom.
• For a term to be available in a formula, it has to resolve to a numerical value. See “Include in Cost” on
page 66 for information on mapping non-numerical terms to numerical values.
If you are planning an event that uses formulas, organize the content so that each formula has access to the
content elements that it uses.
Enabling formulas in a template is controlled by the rule “Can initiator create formulas” on page 41.
To create a formula:
1 To add a formula at the top level, make sure no boxes are checked and choose Add > Formula.
To add a formula to an item of content, click on the item name and choose Action > Edit. Then choose Add >
Formula.
3 In the lower section of the Formula pane set up the formula properties as follows:
• Result Type: – The choices are Money or Decimal Number. Money will have the appropriate currency
symbol.
• Number of decimal places: – The default is two.
• Response Required? – Set this to Not Required. A participant cannot supply a value for a formula.
The following options appear only for formulas added to lots or line items.
• Visible to Participant: – This option only appears if participants are not required to respond. If you
choose Yes, they can see the computed value of this formula. If the template from which this project is
created has set the “Show formulas to all participants” rule to Yes, they will be able to see the value and
the formula from which it is computed.
• Will participants compete on this term? – Yes means that the participants rank is based on the value
computed by this formula. If you choose No, this formula can still be used in another formula in which
they compete, so it still could be a competing term, indirectly.
• Rollup results in section summary: – Yes means that this formula name and value appear in the
section summary. If you create a formula with the same name in other line items in this section, the
sum of their values appear in the section summary. This is a key concept. Since you cannot create a
formula that can see all the terms in other line items, this is how you can total them up.
• Display formula in column or row: – If you choose Column, the name of the term appears on the top
row with the name of the line item and the value is below it. If you choose Row, the name is to the left,
below the name of the line item with the value to the right of it.
• Has Historic Value: – If you choose Yes this value can be used to compute savings over past
purchases. To use the historic value for the formula, you must also specify a historic value when you
define the term.
• Has Reserve Value: – If you choose Yes, this specifies the maximum you are willing to pay. To use the
reserve value for the formula, you must also specify a reserve value when you define the term.
You build the formula in the field below the name field.
The content section lists all the terms in the line item in which you are creating this formula, which in this
example, is 3.2 Printer. It also lists Questions from other sections, such as 2.1 and 2.2. These terms and
questions are set to “Include in Cost.” The lists scrolls, so there are other elements that you can use.
2 Click the button for the operator you would like to place after this term. For example, if you want the
formula to multiply Price times Quantity, click the asterisk (multiplication) button.
3 In the Content section, find the next term you would like to use in the formula and click the Insert button.
For example, if the formula is to multiply Price times Quantity, the formula field would now look like
this:
You can type directly into the Formula field without selecting operators or terms from below. It does not
check to make sure that the terms already exist, so you can create the terms later, if you want. Be sure to
use single quotes for all terms, use underscores instead of spaces, and avoid typographical errors.
4 The formula is now complete. Click Done to validate the formula and return to the page from which you
started.
Note: For a question or term to be available for use in a formula, you have to set “Include in cost” to Custom.
You can set a term or a question to be a list of text items or dates, but if you set “Include in cost” to Custom,
it allows you to map each list item to a value so you can use the term or question in formulas.
You could create a total cost that is the price times the quantity, plus the installation time times the hourly
labor rate times the quantity.
‘Price’*’Quantity’+’Installation_Time_(in_hours)’*’Event.What_is_your_hourly_labor_rate?’*’Quanti
ty’
Using Functions
The formula engine supports a number of other functions, which may be useful in certain circumstances. For
all of these functions you may use all upper case, all lower case, or initial cap, such as TOTALCOST,
totalcost, or TotalCost. Initial cap means each whole word within the function name gets a capital letter.
Aggregate Cost = UA * UM + AA * AM
Where:
• UA are per-unit adders, minus the subtractors
• UM are per-unit multipliers including % Discount
To get a 10% discount you multiply by 0.9 or 1-%D
• AM are all-unit multipliers including % Discount
• AA are all unit adders, minus the subtractors
TotalCost=(P*UM + UA) * Q * AM + AA
Where:
• P is Price
• UM are per-unit multipliers including % Discount
• UA are per-unit adders, minus the subtracters
To get a 10% discount you multiply by 0.9 or 1-%D.
• Q is Quantity
• AM are all-unit multipliers including % Discount
• AA are all unit adders, minus the subtracters
Where:
• P is Price
• UM are per-unit multipliers including % Discount
• UA are per-unit adders, minus the subtracters
• To get a 10% discount you multiply by 0.9 or 1-%D
• Q is Quantity
• AM are all-unit multipliers including % Discount
• AA are all unit adders, minus the subtracters
The logical operators below can be used as the B parameter in the IF function. These logical operators
resolve to true or false, where true is 1and false is 0.
• ! Logical NOT; !1 is False (zero) and!0 is True (one)
• > Greater than; 3>4 is False (zero)
• < Less than; 3<4 is True (one)
• <= Less than or equals; 3<=4 is True (one)
• >= Greater than or equals; 3>=4 is False (zero)
Function Parameters
Any of the parameters for these functions can be terms, expressions, other functions, or values.
For example, an expression as a parameter in the IF function is valid: IF(‘Price’>4), 100, 10)
Some operators cannot be used as parameters, as noted above. For example you can not use
IF(‘term1’&’term2’, 33, 66), but you can use IF(‘term1’>’term2’, 33, 66).
Some functions resolve to a number. If you use one as a parameter in another function that is expecting a true
or false, values that are less than or equal to zero are false and values that are greater than zero are true.
If a numerical term has no value assigned to it, it is treated as zero or “false.” (This is not the case with
undefined text fields.) You could use this feature in an IF statement that checks to see which of two alternate
fields a supplier provided, and then use that field in further processing, such as calculating extended price.
A function parameter cannot be a string or a term that is not available for use in the formula.
If you would like to test a proposed formula to make sure it is valid, try typing in the formula using actual
numbers and then clicking the Validate button.
You can also go back to the Contents page and choose Actions > View as Participant. Here you can plug in
values and check to make sure the results of the formula are as you expect.
Cost Components
Cost components are content elements that you can set up to automatically contribute to total cost. The Total
Cost Auction template already has these components set up, but you can set them up manually if you are
using a template that allows you to create formulas.
Cost components are terms that contribute to the total cost of a lot or line item. they can include not only the
price of the item, but also shipping costs, import duties, cost of switching suppliers, storage cost, retooling
costs, taxes, discounts, or anything else that you can apply to each unit or all units collectively.
You can control whether the cost component feature is turned on when you create the template by using the
Initiator Actions rule called “Can initiator create formulas” on page 41.
If the cost component feature is enabled, then when you create a term you see the option “include in cost:”
and among the choices are Adder, Subtracter, Multiplier and % Discount.
If Formulas are also enabled, then you must hook up the cost component feature manually by creating a
Total Cost term and using the TotalCost function in its formula.
Bid transformation allows you to transform participant’s bids by adding cost terms you define. These terms
can be different for different suppliers, such as adding an import duty for one supplier and a switching cost
for another. Yet it enables each bidder to see a “bid to beat” that is adjusted for them.
Bid transformation allows participants to see the auction from their own perspective:
• Participants see their own prices as they enter them.
• The bid that they have to beat is adjusted to their own cost transformation.
• You see participant bids and the cost to you for each participant.
• Bid transformation auctions have only one value to bid on. The other costs are not visible to them. In a
total cost auction participants bid on the item price, and other costs that contribute to the total cost.
• In bid transformation, the bid to beat, is adjusted for each participant according to the cost components
you added. For an example of how this works, see the “Bid Transformation Example” topic, below.
In Total cost, the cost components are not hidden and all participants see the same bid-to-beat.
• With Bid Transformation, the bid decrement value is adjusted for each participant, so that each sees a
different bid decrement value. Total Cost auctions do not adjust bid decrement value.
When A.K. Consultants starts bidding they see a ceiling value of $9,259.25. They do not see the 8 percent
you will add to make the ceiling price of $10,000. The bid decrement they see is $92.60. Note that the bid
transformation feature has transformed both values to hide the cost component you added for them.
If A.K. Consultants submits the highest starting bid it can, it would be $9,259.25, as shown above.
When Apex Corporation logs in to bid, they see the leading bid and the required decrement transformed into
their own terms. When they bid to take the lead, it looks as shown below:
The required decrement is $95.24. When the bid transformation adds Apex Corporation’s transformation of
5 percent, it comes out to about $100. At this point A.K. Consulting sees the leading bid as $9,166.65.
The buyer sees these bids as the adjusted costs, as shown below. Fractions of a cent are not computed, so in
this example each value is off by a cent:
So, bid transformation transforms participants’ bids into your total cost as an adjusted value that is different
for each participant.
Ariba Sourcing models the adder and multiplier terms of the formula using cost terms, a type of line item
term (see “Item Terms” on page 64).
To learn how to create a cost term, see “Step 2: Create New Cost Terms” on page 111.
When creating cost terms, verify that they are behaving as you intend by validating the changes in suppliers’
Ceiling Price using Supplier View. See “Step 3: Validate Cost Terms In Supplier View” on page 112.
Adders
Adders represent costs that you incur by working with a supplier. Adders are simply added to the supplier's
bids during the auction. The cost of switching suppliers is an example of an adder. Adders and multipliers
force suppliers to lower their bids in order to compete.
For example, if the preparation or processing cost for some commodity is different for different suppliers,
place an adder processing costs into the transformation equation:
Define in advance the different processing costs for each supplier in the List of Invited Suppliers area. When
transforming a supplier’s price into your cost, Ariba Sourcing inserts the supplier-specific costs you define.
Subtracters
Subtracters represent savings that you gain by working with a supplier. Subtracters are simply taken off of a
supplier's bids during the auction. Use subtracters and percent discounts to reward suppliers who are cheap
to work with. Since you save money by working with these suppliers, they remain competitive even when
charging a higher price.
Subtracters are costs that Ariba Sourcing subtracts from the supplier’s price. You might use a subtracter to
model a supplier refund. For example, if a supplier offered to pay $5 of the shipping for each item you buy,
you could create a subtracter cost term shipping refund.
Note: You can also create a subtracter by entering negative values into an adder.
Multipliers
Multipliers also represent costs that you incur by working with a supplier. They cause suppliers bids to be
multiplied by a certain number. Sales tax is a multiplier. Adders and multipliers force suppliers to lower their
bids in order to compete.
The example used earlier of adding a percentage for import duty also works for sales tax. The formula is:
Your cost = (price * (1+import duty/100)
Note: To cause a multiplier to have no effect, set it to 1. If you set it to be greater than 1, it acts as a cost and
penalizes the supplier. You can also reward the supplier (and cause the multiplier to act as a percent
discount) by setting it between 1 and 0.
Percent Discount
Percent discounts represent savings that you gain by working with a supplier. Percent discounts cause
suppliers' bids to be reduced by a percentage. Use subtracters and percent discounts to reward suppliers who
are cheap to work with. Since you save money by selecting these suppliers, they remain competitive even
when charging a higher price.
For example, a certain supplier consistently delivers a week early. You might reward this supplier by creating
a % Discount early delivery award. To lower the supplier’s cost by 5%, set the % Discount term to 5%.
Per Unit
Ariba Sourcing applies per unit cost terms to prices before multiplying the price by the quantity. For
example:
Buyers cost = (price + per-unit adder) * quantity
All Units
Ariba Sourcing applies All Units cost terms to the extended price of a line item. The extended price of a line
item is the price times per unit cost terms times the quantity. For example:
Buyers cost = price * quantity + all-units adder
The rules of algebra dictate that multiplication operations are calculated first, so parentheses around price *
quantity would be redundant.
When adders and multipliers are used together, there are four possibilities:
Adder: per unit Adder: all units
Multiplier: per unit (price * multiplier + adder) * quantity (price * multiplier) * quantity + adder
Multiplier: all units (price + adder) * multiplier * quantity (price * quantity) * multiplier + adder
When you arrive at the Content page, create lots or line items as you normally would to solicit pricing
information for the goods or services you want to buy.
In our example of sourcing coal, we created a line item named Parts and entered a quantity of 1, for a large
crate full of parts.
Click the Fx link at the right (circled) to see what the extended price is to start.
The formula consists of Price * Quantity because you have not created any cost terms yet.
2 On the Edit Item or Edit Lot page, in the Lot or Item terms section, click Add > Term.
4 On the New Term tab, enter the name of the cost term. For example, Import Duty.
5 Set the Include in cost option to multiplier.
6 Set the Apply to cost for term to Per unit, for this example.
8 If you are creating an adder or subtracter, set the Initial Value field to 0. If you are creating a Multiplier or
% Discount, set the Initial Value field to 1.
9 In the List of Invited Suppliers area at the bottom of the New Term tab, fill in the value of the cost term for
each supplier. In this example, A.K Consultants is from Country A (8 % import duty) and Apex is from
Country B (5 % import duty).
Note: You can also enter the supplier–specific values for cost terms on the Cost Terms tab of the Content
page. See “Step 3: Validate Cost Terms In Supplier View” on page 112.
When you return to the Content page, Import Duty appears as a new term.
Click the Fx link next to the Total Cost figure. Now the total cost formula should be filled in with the Import
Duty term that you created.
Since the point of a transformation auction is to create competition by equalizing your total costs, unless
overridden, Ariba Sourcing ensures that each supplier’s maximum possible bid, plus costs, equals the value
you define as your maximum total cost for the line item. The supplier’s maximum possible bid is also called
the Ceiling Price. In effect, in a transformation auction (unless overridden, see “Step 4: Override
Transformed Ceiling Value (optional)” on page 113) each supplier has a different Ceiling Price.
To verify this number in Ariba Sourcing by using the View as Supplier feature:
1 On the Content tab of the Content page, click Actions > View As Supplier, and click the name of one of the
suppliers invited to the auction.
2 Check to see that the ceiling value is equal to the value that you calculated with the transformation
formula.
2 Click Set Participant–Specific Values, located at the bottom of the Item Terms area. This causes the Price
column to appear in the List of Invited Suppliers area at the bottom of the page.
3 In each supplier’s Price field, you can enter your value for the Ceiling Price.
Note: You might find that it is not possible to create this kind of competition. If even after the costs are taken
into account, the companies cannot offer similar prices, then competition cannot take place and you should
re-evaluate your decision to use bid transformation.
When considering bid transformation, it is important to focus on hard costs that you can quantify for both
you and your suppliers.
The intent is to bring suppliers’ bids into real competition, even when the goods and services are different,
not separate the bids. That could predispose the outcome and stifle competition.
Engineered Items Quantify the long-term value of the equipment’s efficiency, engineering compliance, and
constructability; then adjust in relation to the optimal requirements for each factor.
Services Quantify the experience of the workforce, capability of the organization, and financial
strength of the company.
Point of Solution
dissimilarity
Transportation costs These costs can vary between different suppliers, especially if some suppliers are overseas.
Quantify the additional transportation costs and add those costs to a supplier’s bid in the
auction. This could include duties and customs charges if dealing with overseas suppliers.
Performance Difference equipment solutions can meet the same functional requirements. Reward higher
outputs or efficiencies, higher reliability rate, or greater feature sets.
Other possible cost terms might include capital cost, depreciation, tax shields, payment terms, risk, travel,
and quality inspection.
If you feel that your factors were quantified in a true cost manner and the supplier cannot adhere to your
prices, perhaps you should not invite that supplier to participate in the auction. You need to ensure that you
are working with qualified suppliers who can meet your business needs.
Communication Guidelines
• Tell suppliers that you are doing a total cost evaluation to ensure that all suppliers are evaluated fairly. Bid
transformation ensures that you compare suppliers’ offerings fairly.
• Tell suppliers that their standards, quality, or location are important and that bid transformation gives
them appropriate credit for these factors.
• If suppliers want to know what the exact factors are and how they are calculated, simply tell them that
numerous criteria were considered and calculated based on true costs to your organization.
If you do decide to communicate with suppliers the exact basis of your factors, do so before the auction gets
started to avoid questions and concerns during your bid.
Suppliers might question the bid transformation process. Giving your suppliers too much information or
incorrect information about the format can cause them to lose interest and suspect that your markets are not
run with integrity and fairness. The most typical solution to supplier resistance is to set up the Market
Feedback rules to only display rank (see “Market Feedback Rules” on page 42), thus masking the
transformation altogether.
Common Problems
Auctions with bid transformation work best when you can quantify data that is necessary for making award
decisions. Setting up bid transformation for the wrong reasons or with inaccurate data can cause a number of
problems. For example:
• If you do not calculate your factors based on real costs, you might set them too aggressively. Setting
factors too aggressively could create an unfair market which causes:
• Suppliers to lose interest because they feel they cannot meet your requirements.
• Less competition as potential competitors fail to interact.
• If you do not calculate your factors based on real costs, you might set them too leniently and misjudge the
true costs to work with a specific suppliers. This leads to poor award decisions.
This section describes how to use the Total Cost Auction and Total Cost RFP event templates.
Total cost modeling is a way of accounting for the costs of a bid that are in addition to the bid’s simple price.
Total cost lets buyers or category managers include all the factors they need to assess and compare the total
cost of ownership of the goods and services that they source.
A Request for Proposal with Total Cost is used to qualify suppliers or collect pricing information. You can
add cost factors such as taxes or shipping costs and calculate the total cost for each supplier. You can score
each supplier and decide whether they can see one another’s responses.
By breaking out the cost components and examining them under different scenarios, total cost helps identify
new opportunities for sourcing savings. Ariba Sourcing defines total cost as the addition of multiple cost
components for an item. Each cost component consists of individual cost items (or terms), combined
arithmetically, which are then applied to the line items in your auction. For example:
You can apply different total cost formulas to different line items. You can also apply the same formula to a
group of line items. A standard set of cost terms is tracked in the system by default, such as price and
quantity. The project owner can create other cost terms when they create the event.
When you create a term in a project that uses the Total Cost template, it enables you to specify whether the
term is to be included in cost. If so, you can also specify whether it is to be treated as an adder, subtracter,
multiplier or percent discount. You can also specify whether these then apply to each price unit individually,
or all units taken together. Within each line item any such terms are automatically applied to the Total Cost
term.
You own a brewery and want to create an auction event for beer bottles. You are considering switching from
your incumbent supplier, but you know that switching to a new supplier will be an additional cost for you.
You also want your vendor to manage your inventory of bottles, so you request a quote on inventory charges
per case of bottles.
The first step in creating this total cost event is to identify the terms that have an impact on total cost. In this
business case, the following cost components might impact your total cost:
• Switching cost
• Inventory cost
The switching cost will depend on which supplier you choose. The inventory cost depends on the quote the
supplier provides for that negotiable term.
How Total Cost Auction and RFP with Price Breakdown Differ
For an RFP with price breakdown, suppliers do not enter the value of the Price term; they supply the values
of price components and the price is calculated by adding them.
For Total Cost, suppliers provide the Price and other terms that you define as adders, subtracters, multipliers,
and dividers, each on a per-unit or per item basis. This enables you to create much more elegant Total Cost
calculations, which the price breakdown method cannot duplicate.
3 From the list of event templates, choose Total Cost Auction (or Request for Proposal with Total Cost).
4 Set the rules for this auction. The rules are described in Chapter 3 “Event Rules.”
5 Set up the event team as described in “Changing Team Members” on page 49.
You are now ready to configure the total cost auction content.
For this example we create a line item called Bottles. Then we define two terms for this line item. One term
is called Inventory Charge per Bottle. The other term is called Supplier Switching Cost. These terms have to
be defined differently, as shown in this example.
The default total cost formula is Price * Quantity. We would like to add some cost components to this
formula so that it becomes
(Total cost = Price + Inventory Charge) * Quantity + Switching Cost
6 Set the decrement and bid buffers as you see fit; they are required fields.
8 Name the term “Inventory Charge per Bottle.” Set the rest of the fields as shown below:
11 Name the term “Supplier Switching Cost.” Set the rest of the field as shown below:
2 Click the Formula link (Fx) to the right of the Total Cost value:
5 Check the value for the switching costs for the suppliers. The switching cost for the incumbent are zero.
7 Review the summary of this event. You can go back and edit any rules or other settings that you wish to
change, but this event is ready to publish.
If necessary, you can add complexity to your formulas by using functions, as described in “Using Functions”
on page 101.
2 Enter test values in the fields provided or select suppliers from the Supplier Specific Costs menu on the right
side (3.39 for price and 1.45 for shipping costs, as shown above).
3 Do one of the following:
• To test the selected component only, select Current Component from the Test menu (Extended Price in the
example above).
• To test the entire cost formula, select Total Cost Formula from the Test menu (Extended Price + Shipping
Cost in the example above).
4 Reset the test values to run another test of another value or another component.
2 Select Current Component or Total Cost Formula from the Test pull-down menu.
3 Reset the test values to run another test of another value or another component.
Separating total cost formulas into components allows the side-by-side comparison of suppliers’ responses,
on a per-component basis.
3 On the Items tab, from the Display menu, choose Total Cost or Unit Cost.
4 Click Show Details to see the cost components for each bid or response.
You can also monitor the total cost of bids or responses on the Activity tab and Suppliers tab.
I changed my cost formula, but the changes did not save. Why?
When you change your formula, make sure to click Save before you click OK.
I added suppliers to an event after I launched the event. Can I add supplier specific costs for these new
suppliers?
No. And you cannot edit your cost formula after you launch the event.
How do I control what total cost information shows up for buyers and suppliers? Do I have to show
suppliers what their total cost is?
Buyers can see everything, but what suppliers can see is determined by permissions. You do not have to
show suppliers their total cost.
Can you add costs that are not dependent on a supplier’s response or profile attribute?
Yes, the buyer can define a constant to enter a supplier-specific attribute.
Can I include a cost component that I have already created as a cost in another component formula?
No.
In an index auction, suppliers bid in discounts or premiums relative to a market index. Typical index prices
follow this format: price/unit of measurement. For example, $6000/Metric Ton or $300/Thousand Board
Feet.
Amount
You can choose to have suppliers place bids in terms of a nominal (currency) amount above or below the
index. For example, $5 above the index value. If the index value is $50, the bid would be for $55.
Percentage
You can choose to have suppliers place bids in terms of a percentage value either above or below an index.
For example, 5% less than the index value. If the index value is $50, the bid would be for $47.50
Discount Bidding
In discount bidding, suppliers compete to offer you the highest discount off of a standard fluctuating market
index.
For example, you are purchasing diesel fuel and, due to a fuel surplus, and you anticipate that the price of
fuel is going to decrease. Discount bidding is the most appropriate for the current market conditions.
The following bid graph is an example of this type of market. Notice how the bids increase from the starting
value of $ -2 (a negative discount, also known as a premium) to the final value of $7. In this type of bidding,
higher bid amounts equate to more savings. Take note that the bidding direction is upward and relative to the
identified index.
Premium Bidding
In premium bidding, suppliers compete to offer you the lowest premium added to a standard fluctuating
market index.
For example, you are purchasing natural gas and due to rising demand you anticipate that suppliers might
submit bids above the current index price. Premium bidding is the most appropriate for current market
conditions.
The following bid graph is an example of this type of market. The bids start at a 5.5% premium above the
index value and then decrease as suppliers lower the premium charges added onto the index. The final bid is
for -1% (a negative premium, also known as a discount). In this type of bidding, lower bid amounts equal
higher savings. Take note that the bidding direction is downward, similar to a reverse auction format.
2 Choose Event Type > Auction. The list of templates at the bottom of the page refreshes.
3 Choose the template Index Based Auction by Amount or Index Based Auction by Percentage. Click
Create.
To set the unit of the bid improvement rules (percentage or nominal amount)
1 During event creation, on the Rules page, set the rule Improve bid amount by to either Percentage or Nominal
Amount.
Note: Index Based Auction by Percentage auctions cannot set this value, it is automatically set to Nominal
amount.
2 Edit the item term Index Amount or Index Percentage within the line item
3 Set the rule Will suppliers compete on this term? to either Yes, Downward bidding for a premium format
auction, or to Yes, Upward bidding, for a discount format auction.
Example:
You are a buyer responsible for purchasing lumber. Due to fluctuations in the price of lumber, it’s difficult to
negotiate a specific price with you suppliers. One week, the lumber might cost $500 / Thousand board feet,
and the next week it might cost $650 / Thousand board feet.
In order to account for these fluctuations and still have a competitive online market, you decide to use index
bidding. Your strategy is to use premium bidding format and base it off of the index value found in the
Hardwood Market Report.
Example:
You are sourcing rental car services among five different rental companies. You create an auction using
Discount bidding format. This allows you to define what you want the starting per day rate to be (the index)
and then have suppliers bid a percentage discount off of this rate.
In this type of auction, you can evaluate suppliers by the percent discount that they give you. For example,
one supplier might give you a 7% discount off what you are currently paying and another supplier might give
you an 11% discount.
If you are evaluating bids against an index that has significant fluctuations, you might decide to determine
final pricing by using the average index value instead of the value on the ship date. If this is the case, you
will want to make sure suppliers understand in advance how this value will be calculated.
In a Dutch auction the project owner sets the starting price as follows:
• Set the starting price just below the absolute lowest price for which they anticipate the seller would be
willing to sell it. This is a reverse Dutch auction.
• Set the starting price just above the absolute highest price for which they anticipate the buyer would be
willing to buy it. This is a forward Dutch auction.
At specified intervals set by the project owner, Ariba Sourcing adjusts the price until one of the participants
accepts the price. At that time bid goods are sold and the next item opens. If a participant wants the business,
they are under pressure to bid as soon as they can, which favors the project owner. If the Dutch auction
allows partial-quantity bidding, there may be other opportunities to do business with the unsold quantity.
Dutch auctions are best suited for events in which cost is the primary concern. Use this type of event when
suppliers are pre-qualified and when there are few suppliers. A Dutch auction pressures participants to bid
the best price they possibly can and to bid before their competitors can take the business away.
3 From the list of event templates, choose the Dutch Reverse Auction template, if you are buying or the
Dutch Forward Auction template if you are selling.
4 Click Create. You are now ready to configure the Dutch auction.
You can add content as described in “Creating Content” on page 57. However there are a few important
differences for Dutch auctions.
4 For Acceptable Values, you may select Limited Range. When you select Limited range, the Range option
appears in which you can specify a range of quantities that participants may specify. Use this to set
minimum and/or maximum quantities.
The running time for the lot, as mentioned above in “Running time for the first lot” on page 134, might be
shortened if the price cap is reached before the running time expires.
Changing Quantities
If you change the quantity of a lot or line, the system automatically adjusts the remaining quantity shown to
participants. You should be careful when changing the quantity for two reasons:
• If you specified a minimum bidding quantity, be careful that your change cannot result in a leftover
quantity smaller than this minimum. Participants would not be able to bid on it.
• There is some time lag in the system. If you reduce the quantity at the same time that a participant is
bidding on the remaining quantity, the bid and the change may not show up until after the next refresh,
resulting in a negative quantity. To fix it, you must delete the last bid and reopen the lot/line.
Changing Price
If you opened the lot/line at the wrong price and need to change it after a participant has already bid, you
may have to delete their bid. For example, in a reverse Dutch auction, suppose you start the bidding for a lot
at $500, then realize that you meant to start it at $50. If a supplier has already taken the lot at $500 you must
change the price, delete their bid, and reopen the lot.
The RFP with Price Breakdown template allows you to create RFPs that, instead of soliciting total prices
from suppliers, collect a breakdown of the supplier’s price. The additional information helps you to:
• Learn more about your suppliers’ businesses.
• Compare suppliers’ prices more critically.
• Decide if the supplier’s price is reasonable.
In a standard RFP, a line item prompting suppliers to enter their price might look like this:
When creating an RFP with Price Breakdown, you create fields for suppliers to fill out to provide you with
the elements of their price to you. The line item might look like this:
An RFP with Price breakdown and a Total Cost auction are different. For an RFP with price breakdown,
suppliers do not enter the value of the Price term; they supply the values of price components and the price is
calculated by adding them.
For Total Cost, suppliers provide the price and other terms that you define as adders, subtracters, multipliers,
and dividers, each on a per-unit or per item basis. This enables you to create much more elegant Total Cost
calculations that the price breakdown method cannot duplicate.
Once you have created an event using the RFP with Price Breakdown template, follow the normal steps
outlined in “Quick Start for Events” on page 13. The only additional difference when you create an RFP
with Price Breakdown is how you create line items:
• In a standard RFP or Auction, you use line items to collect the pricing for complete items.
• In an RFP with Price Breakdown, you add terms to line items to collect the costs that make up a line item.
Those costs are also called price breakdown information.
5 Enter the name of the price breakdown term. For example, Tooling.
7 You can modify the other fields on the page. To read about those fields, see “Terms” on page 65.
8 Click OK. You return to the Add Item page. Repeat steps 3–8 to add all of the terms. When you have
finished, the Item Terms area might look like this (note the created terms):
9 If you click Done to exit the Add Item page at this point, you will receive an error: You must provide a
Historical Value for Item 1, ‘Total Cost’. There are two ways to resolve this error:
• Enter an historic value for the Total Cost.
Click the name Total Cost and choose Edit.
Change the field Formula computation to Compute for bidders. Click OK.
In the Item Terms area, the term Total Cost now has fields where you can enter historic and reserve
values. In the Historic field, enter a figure representing the price that you paid for the line item in the
past. Leave the other fields blank.
• You can also enter historic values for each cost term.
To do this, edit each cost term individually and set the field Has historic value to equal either Yes or Yes
and required. See “Has Historic Value” on page 70 to read more about this field.
When you have done this, you will see that each cost term now has a field where you can enter its
historic value. Fill in those values, and refresh the page somehow; clicking Done and then re-editing the
line item is one way to do this.
10 Click Done to exit the Add Item page.
11 You see the Line Item created on the Content page. A quick way to validate that the content will appear as
you intend to suppliers is to use the View as Supplier feature. Click Actions > View as Supplier (supplier
name). Enter values for the cost breakdown terms and click Update Totals to see how they add together into
the total price.
Note: Although Ariba Sourcing can easily connect and interoperate with Ariba Discovery, Ariba Discovery
and Ariba Sourcing are separate products.
You can create postings to solicit interest among suppliers of specific commodities and services on Ariba
Discovery. A posting lists the commodity or service, project amount, contract length, and the territory where
the business will occur. Before you can create a posting, your Ariba Sourcing solution must be connected to
Ariba SN.
When you publish a posting, Ariba Discovery sends an email inviting all suppliers in the Ariba Network
Directory that match the specified commodity area and territory to respond. That way, you are not limited to
suppliers in your own supplier database, though you can include any of your own suppliers in the invitation.
With a posting you can access a wide group of suppliers.
When a supplier responds to the posting, you receive an email. When you check the responses in Ariba
Discovery, you can also review the supplier’s profile, qualifications, and rating, and then import their profile
data into Ariba Sourcing if they qualify.
You cannot invite suppliers to events through a posting. To invite suppliers to events, use the event
functionality described in “Quick Start for Events” on page 13, or supplier registration features described in
the Ariba Supplier Management Guide.
To search for suppliers, mark suppliers as favorites, and import profile data into Ariba Sourcing:
1 Click the Home tab.
2 Choose Suppliers from the Search menu in the navigation bar. The Search Suppliers page appears.
3 Click Search Network Directory. You are automatically logged in to Ariba Discovery.
4 Enter a search term, such as a commodity or territory, in the text box and click Find. You can further refine
your search using criteria in the left margin or click Advanced Search for a more precise set of search
criteria. Ariba Discovery displays your search results.
5 Click Add to Favorites in the Ratings/Details section to add the supplier to your list of favorites in Ariba
Discovery.
6 Click the My Account tab and click Favorites.
7 On the Favorite Suppliers page, click the check box beside the supplier’s name that you want to import
and click Import to Sourcing.
Note: If you specify an event as a test within your Ariba Sourcing solution, only the suppliers you have
explicitly invited can view the event in Ariba Discovery. For more information, see “Creating a Test
Posting” on page 148.
To create a posting:
1 Choose one of the following methods:
• After you publish an event in Ariba Sourcing, click Publish in the Supplier Discovery Posting box in the
right margin. This initiates the posting with the same name, description, commodity, and region
associated with the original sourcing event but does not include the details provided in Ariba Sourcing.
• Click Supplier Discovery Posting in the Common Actions panel.
2 Complete the posting in Ariba Discovery. You can modify the posting name as needed and invite specific
suppliers or rely on Ariba to notify suppliers that match your commodities and territories.
3 Modify the brief description as needed. You can refer to any attachments that you add to the posting.
4 Add any attachments required. These can be documents that describe the posting in detail. Suppliers must
have the required applications to open your attachments.
5 Enter an end date for the posting. This date specifies how long the posting is open to supplier responses.
The end date can be carried over from the Sourcing event, if that is how you created this posting.
6 Specify the commodities for the posting. The commodity categories that you specify determine which
suppliers are notified about the posting. You can search by UNSPSC commodity code. Commodities can
be carried over from the Sourcing event.
7 Enter the contact email address. The email address can be carried over from the Sourcing event.
9 Enter the region that pertains to the work mentioned in the posting. For example, North America. The
region address can be carried over from the Sourcing event.
10 You can also enter the potential value of the posting, the potential volume, and the contract length.
Following is an example of a completed posting in Ariba Discovery:
11 Click Continue.
12 On the Invite Suppliers page, specify which suppliers to invite. You can include other suppliers by
searching the Ariba Discovery directory or by providing their name and email address. You can also
specify requirements and any information about the posting that you want to remain private.
Note: Suppliers you invited in your sourcing event cannot be carried over to a posting on Ariba Discovery.
In other words, you invite suppliers to your postings in Ariba Discovery.
You can state a preference for suppliers that have diversity certifications or green initiatives in the
Supplier Preferences section. Suppliers that meet your criteria are notified after your posting is published.
The privacy settings are as follows:
• Hide participating supplier list—Keeps your invited suppliers private from other Ariba Discovery users.
• Hide my company name—If you click this check box, Ariba Discovery displays a text box in which you
can provide a company alias which all other users see instead of your company name for this posting.
Enter a phrase that accurately describes your company. If you click this check box, your contact name
is also hidden.
• Hide my contact name—Hides your contact name for this posting.
13 Click Continue.
14 On the Review and Publish page, you can change the display to see how suppliers will view your posting.
To make changes, click the Previous button to navigate to previous pages. When you are ready to publish
the posting, click Publish.
3 Click the supplier name in the Responses section to view the response.
4 You can specify that you are interested in a supplier’s response by clicking the check box.
6 Click Import to Sourcing to import the supplier’s profile into your Sourcing database. If the supplier already
exists in your Sourcing database, the data is not updated.
7 After importing a new supplier, you receive a notification message in the Dashboard Notifications area.
8 Click the link to approve this supplier. New suppliers cannot be invited to events until they are approved.
If you approve a supplier and later reconsider, you can always reject them.
To edit a posting:
1 In the Common Actions panel, click Supplier Discovery Posting. The Supplier Discovery Postings page lists
the postings that belong to you.
4 Edit the supplier list, requirements, and privacy settings and click Continue.
5 Review your changes and click Update.
Ariba Discovery republishes the modified posting and notifies any suppliers that already responded that
they might want to revise their responses.
Note: As a best practice, clearly indicate your changes so that suppliers that have posted responses can easily
identify the changes you have made and update their responses accordingly.
To award a posting:
1 In the Common Actions panel, click Supplier Discovery Posting. The Supplier Discovery Postings page is
displayed.
2 Click the check box next to the supplier that you want to award the business to and click Award.
4 Click Done.
Note: The supplier is notified about the award. The other suppliers that responded are notified that the buyer
has awarded the business to another supplier.
To close a posting:
1 In the Common Actions panel, click Supplier Discovery Posting. The Supplier Discovery Postings page is
displayed.
2 Click an open posting.
3 Click Close. This closes (cancels) the posting.
You can also close a posting while editing it. Suppliers that responded are notified that you have closed
the posting without awarding it.
To delete a posting:
1 In the Common Actions panel, click Supplier Discovery Posting. The Supplier Discovery Postings page is
displayed.
2 Click an open posting.
3 Click Delete.
Suppliers that responded are notified that you have deleted the posting without awarding it.
To send messages:
1 After you are logged in to Ariba Discovery, click Contact Supplier on a Supplier Profile page.
Ariba Discovery displays the Compose Message page.
2 Enter your message and click Send.
Ariba Discovery sends an email notification to the supplier, alerting them that they have a new message.
Ariba Discovery sends you an email notification when you receive a response from a supplier.
2 Click Messages.
Ariba Discovery displays the Messages page.
The Organization Activity page enables you to sort your organization’s postings by user or commodity.
2 Click Activity.
Ariba Discovery groups the postings by user name. You can click any of the column names to sort the
data.
4 Click a posting name to view or edit the posting details.
5 Click Postings by Commodity to view the postings created by users in your organization grouped by
commodity.
2 Click Activity.
Ariba Discovery displays the following information on the User Activity page:
• Number of postings created on Ariba Discovery.
• Number of times the user logged in to Ariba Discovery.
• The last log in date and time.
2 Click Activity.
4 Choose one of the Export to Excel options. If your internet browser tries to block the download of the file,
choose to permit the download.
The file automatically opens in Microsoft Excel.
You can create an event for an international market in which participants can view the event in the language
of their choice. You can set up the event in a specific currency, and allow You can also choose the currency
on a per-event basis.
Note: You might not see the complete list of languages, depending on the configuration of your site. Please
contact Ariba Product Support to change the configuration of your site.
Ariba Sourcing marks translatable business data elements with a Translations link; these are:
• The project name and description
• Content names or titles
• Content descriptions
• Text initial values (including participant specific initial values)
• Text multiple choice questions
Base Language
When you create an event, your language (the language specified in your user profile) becomes the base
language of the event. You create the content of the event in the base language. Then, you or your translators
translate the content into the other supported languages. You cannot change the base language after the event
is created.
When suppliers log in, they see the event in their language (the language specified in their user profile), if
available. If you have not translated the event into their language, they see the event in the base language.
This gives you the option to translate only part of the business data. For example, suppose your base
language is English, and you are translating your event into French, but you only have budget to translate the
introduction, and not the names of the line items. Suppliers that have specified French as their preferred
language see all the translated text you provide, as well as the application interface, in French. Untranslated
text (in this case, line item names) displays in English.
If you do not see the translations link, ask your administrator to assign you to the Translator group. (See the
Ariba On-Demand Administration Guide for Sourcing, Reporting, and Contract Management for
information on what members of different groups can do.)
To assign a user the Translator role (users with Administrator privileges only):
1 In the Common Actions panel, click Manage > Administration.
4 Click Search.
5 To the right of the Translator role that search returns, click Edit.
7 Click Add/Remove.
8 Search for the user you want to add. Enable the checkbox next to their name. Click OK.
2 Enter translations for languages you have decided to support. You do not have to enter translations for all
available languages. When localized users log in, they are presented with translated data, if present.
Otherwise, they see the base language data.
Use this feature to create larger markets, which give you the potential for greater savings.
Note: Ariba Sourcing only allows you to choose certain currencies as Event Currencies. You can only use
currencies supported by Ariba Reporting and Analysis.
Ariba Sourcing applies the precision that the event creator sets for terms in the event currency to terms in all
bidding currencies. Suppose, in an event with USD as the event currency, the event creator adds a monetary
term with a precision of 4 decimal places. For that term, Ariba Sourcing presents four decimal places of
precision to all participants, regardless of which currency they bid in.
2 You must choose a set of Currency Conversion Rates. An administrator user must initially add these rates
(see the chapter Defining and Importing Your Own Data in the Common Data Import and Administration
Guide). If an administrator user has not performed the initial configuration, you cannot choose a
conversion rate set, and cannot add or edit bidding currencies.
3 After choosing an exchange rate set, you can Edit and adjust the rates. You can remove exchange rate pairs
from the event or from specific lines within the event, but you cannot set up new exchange rate pairs that
do not exist in the exchange rate set. If you need a currency pair that is not part of an existing exchange
rate set, ask an administrator user to create it.
For example:
4 Choose a setting for Show currency exchange rates to participants. Setting the rule to Yes causes the Currency
Conversion Rates table to appear on participant users’ Event Details page.
Note: Use the View as Participant feature to view the rates as participants see them:
3 In the preview, click the Event Details link, in the upper left. Note the Exchange Rates table.
5 On the Content page, you have the ability to customize the available currencies and exchange rates for
each lot or line item that you create.
If you customize exchange rates at the lot or line item-level, and then make changes to the event-level
exchange rate, the application does not overwrite the lot-level exchange rate with the change.
Click Reset Lot Rate, located in the Multi Currency section of the Rules page, to erase all customized lot-level
exchange rates and replace them with the event-level exchange rate set.
4 The participant chooses OK and proceeds to the Bidding Console. Bidding proceeds on a lot by lot basis.
Suppliers see all bidding in the currency they selected for each Lot. Ariba Sourcing displays all bids (by
the participant or by competitors) in the participant’s bidding currency for that lot, no matter the currency
the bid was placed in. Besides for extra steps on the Select Lots page, the multi–currency feature is
invisible to suppliers.
Exchange Rates
Sourcing immediately converts participants’ bids into the event currency using exchange rates that you
define for that event. Sourcing stores participants’ bids in the event currency.
Exchange rates used in Ariba Reporting and Analysis are defined separately from the exchange rates used in
Ariba Sourcing. This might cause fractional discrepancies suppliers’ original bids and the values displayed
in the reports. For example:
For an event, the Event Currency is USD; a supplier places a bid for 100 EUR. For that event, the event
creator defined the exchange rate to be 1.24 USD = 1 EUR. The system converts the bid into the event
currency and stores it: 80.64 USD
In Ariba Reporting and Analysis, a user using a European locale views a report which contains data (in
aggregate) from the event. Ariba Reporting and Analysis happens to have a different USD / EUR exchange
rate defined: 1.20 USD = 1 EUR. Ariba Reporting and Analysis converts the bid amount back into Euros,
and the reported amount is slightly different from the original bid: 96.76 EUR
Locale
Locale determines the language in which users see the interface text. It also determines the formatting of
dates and numbers, which is not necessarily tied to language. For example, although English is the language
of both the United States and the United Kingdom, Americans write January 15th, 2005 as 01/15/2005,
placing the month before the day, whereas citizens of the United Kingdom write 15/01/2005, placing the day
before the month. For that reason there is a locale English–United States and a locale English–United
Kingdom.
You can set a supplier’s locale when creating a new supplier. Once you create the supplier, however, they
must maintain their own preferences.
1 On the Supplier Search page, click Create New Supplier.
Time Zone
Ariba Sourcing determines your time zone in two ways.
• When you log in to Ariba Sourcing, the system sets its time zone to match your computer’s clock. Make
sure that your computer’s clock is set correctly, otherwise the system could display incorrect times.
• You should also set up your time zone in Ariba Sourcing’s preferences page. The system uses this time
zone information to determine the times to place in system generated emails.
The system tries to display the time that is most appropriate to the user; in email messages, it sets the times
based on the time zone set in the user’s preferences, and in the interface, it sets the times according to the
user’s computer’s clock.
If a user is travels away from the time zone set in their preferences, this could cause confusion. For example,
a user from the United Kingdom (with preferences configured as such) might receive an email notifying
them that an auction will start at 12 noon (GMT). If he or she is travels to California (and changes their
computer’s clock), then when they log on, Ariba Sourcing will show the auction start time as 8 PM (PST).
This is the intended behavior of the system, however, the system does not specify the time zone, which could
cause confusion.
Event time zone handling and Daylight Savings Time are covered in “Time Zone Handling” on page 171.
Both enterprise and supplier users can modify their globalization preferences using this procedure.
1 Click Home. Suppliers return to the Event List page. Owners return to the Dashboard.
When you go to the Summary page, it checks for errors. Once they are fixed you can publish the event.
Publishing an event exposes it to participants. Whether or not the event has a preview period, accepts
prebids, or immediately opens for bidding depends on how you configured the event’s timing rules. To read
about rules, see the chapter “Event Rules” on page 25.
You cannot publish the event until the errors are fixed.
If there are errors, return to the appropriate rule or content to fix errors and then come back to the Summary
page. You might encounter event limits when you attempt to publish an event. See “Content Limits in
Different Events” on page 93 for details.
Below the Overview section, shown above there are also sections for reviewing the event settings for:
Review each section to make sure the settings are as you expect. In addition there are certain settings you can
change from the Edit Overview page. Click Actions > Edit Overview to edit the overview.
All the editable settings are described earlier except the access controls for the event as a whole.
Draft Access Restricted Only the Owner can access the document when its status is Draft. Once it is
published, this restriction no longer applies.
Finance Information Members of the Finance group can view the object
Legal Information Members of the Legal group can view the object
Owner Only Sourcing event project owners can view the object. These are users in the
Project Owner project group.
Private to Global Catalog Reports Users with access to global catalog reports can view this project
Users
Private to Internal Users Internal users of Ariba Sourcing can view the object.
Private to Spend Visibility Opportunity Spend Visibility Basic users can view the object.
Analysts
Private to SPM Users Supplier Performance Management users can view this project
Private to Team Members Only team members listed on the Team page can view the object.
Project Description
By default the project description is only available to team members, not event participants. To make the
description visible to participants, ask your administrator to change the
Application.AQS.RFX.ShowDescriptionTo Participants parameter value to true.
Suppliers can only see and print the Overview, Timing Rules, and Market Feedback allowed by the event.
To produce the output in HTML format, ask your administrator to change the
Application.AQS.RFX.PrintRFX.PrintRFXImpl parameter value to ariba.sourcing.rfxui.HTMLPrintRFX.
Once the event is in Word or HTML, you can format it as you like it and print it. There are no differences
between the output formats other than how they are formatted and how you can edit and display them. The
choice is personal preference.
Note: Spreadsheet events are large events and result in a large file after export. It is cumbersome to open and
edit large files in DOC format so Ariba Sourcing automatically produces the output in HTML format in such
cases.
If you are a member of a group that does not have permission to publish an event, such as the Junior
Sourcing Agent group, you see a Submit button instead of a Publish button, and you see a highlighted
message:
Before Ariba Sourcing publishes the event, you must submit it to be approved, for example, by a member of
the Sourcing Approver group.
Publishing the event triggers notifying all participants that they are invited. If you must re-send an invitation,
simply delete the participant and then add them back, then republish the event.
3 On the approved or denied screen, you can write a message and add an attachment to communicate why
you approved or denied the event. Click OK when you are finished composing your message.
4 Ariba Sourcing immediately publishes the event after your reviewers have approved it.
All times in Ariba Sourcing are stored in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) format. When times are
displayed to a user who is logged in, they are adjusted to reflect the user’s local time based on their profile
settings. Every time setting in a profile has a certain adjustment from UTC, either adding time or subtracting
time. One exception is the “Local Time” setting. That means use the computer’s time setting and the
adjustment is derived from that.
Even in notification emails, times or dates are converted to the recipient’s time zone as specified in their
profile.
If you have an event scheduled to start at 8:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time, it is stored in the system as 1:00
PM UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). When displayed to a user, whether a buyer or a supplier, it is converted to
their profile setting, so a supplier in France, for example, would see an event start time of 2:00 PM.
When Daylight Savings time occurs in your time zone, the adjustment from UTC changes to accommodate
it. Essentially your local time is changing to a different time zone. If you set up an event to start at 8:00 AM
next week, and by next week the start or end of Daylight Savings Time will put you in a different time zone,
the system is aware of that change and sets the start time to the correct UTC for that date. That way when
Daylight Savings Time occurs, nothing has to change.
Depending on what stage your event is at in the event process, there are certain conditions associated with
editing an event.
To edit a published event, click Actions > Edit on the Monitoring page.
When you edit a published event, the system creates a draft version of the event. You change the draft
version without affecting the published event. When you are finished making changes, replace the published
version of the event with the draft version by updating the event. Alternatively, you can discard the draft
version. When you update the event, the draft version replaces the published version, and there is nonce
again, only one version.
To switch the view to the published version of the event, click Actions > View Published Version. View the
published version to perform Event Administration tasks such as deleting bids or extending and reducing the
timing of lots or line items.
When you view the published version of an event that has a draft version, the system displays a message
informing you that a draft version exists.
To view the draft version, click Actions > View Draft Version. You can also immediately access the draft
version by clicking Actions > Edit. This does not create a new draft version, it returns you to the existing draft
version.
When you view the draft version of a published event, the system displays a message informing you that a
published version exists:
2 On the Summary page of the event wizard of the draft event, click Update.
Note: You can also update the event by viewing the published version of the event and clicking update in
the warning message at the top of the screen.
For envelope events the only edit you can perform is to discard everyone’s responses and start over. For
other events, you can change anything about it. If suppliers have already submitted bids, you might make
changes that invalidate some of their bids. For example, perhaps you lowered the ceiling price on a certain
lot. For this reason, when you update the event, the gives you the option to notify the suppliers that you
have changed the event, and also the option to discard suppliers’ existing responses.
Note: See “Automatic Notification Addressing” on page 211 to learn about the notification message that
the system sends and how you can modify it. The notification Event edited and republished is sent when
you republish your event.
4 Click Update Event. The system immediately updates the event with your changes, unless you need
approval before publishing an event. In that case, the system submits your updates for approval. When the
appropriate person provides approval, the system updates the event with your changes.
User 1 is editing the event. User 2 tries to edit the event. The system displays the following confirmation
screen to user 2:
If user 2 chooses to ignore user 1’s lock and edit the event in spite of the warning, then user 1 sees this error
message:
You should never ignore another user’s lock on an event when they are actively editing it. If two users make
changes to an event at the same time, the event in Ariba Sourcing’s database can be irreparably damaged,
making it unusable.
However, occasionally users who are editing events simply close their browser windows without correctly
exiting from the event. In this case, the event remains locked, and the next person who tries to edit it receives
the Remove Lock Confirmation message. Since the event is locked in error, it is correct to break the lock and
edit the event. However, before doing so, be sure to contact the user named in the error message and verify
that they are not actively editing the event.
After you publish your event, Ariba Sourcing exposes it to participants, and they can respond. Now you can
monitor the event. This section covers the following topics:
• “The Monitoring Interface” on page 177
• “Monitoring Interface Tabs” on page 178
• “Actions Menu” on page 199
The monitoring interface has two parts, the Actions menu, and a set of tabs. The Actions menu allows you to
take event-wide actions. The tabs allow you to monitor and interact with lots, bids, suppliers and other
elements of the event.
The Bid Clock in the top right corner shows the event status. If a bidding period is open, it shows the time
remaining. The screen is refreshed every 20 seconds, except in Dutch auctions, where the screen is refreshed
every five seconds.
For all of the Monitoring tabs, if any of the content has been restricted using the Team Access Control field,
you cannot see that content element unless you are in the group(s) granted access.
• If an award term is not specified for items, then the user cannot see the Scenario and Award tabs. This
means that in an auction, if you cannot see the bids, you will not be able to see the Scenario and Award
tabs. This applies to auctions only. The Scenario and Award tabs are always visible in RFIs and RFPs.
• You cannot optimize scenarios if doing so requires a term to which you do not have access.
• Access filtering includes the log, which amends entries about content to which the user does not have
access.
• For information on setting the Team Access Control see “Team Access Control” on page 78.
In Envelope events you cannot see responses in envelopes that have not ben opened, and when participants
are disqualified or discarded, all of their previous responses are deleted.
Overview Tab
This tab allows you to view overview data such as:
• The event’s creation date
• The template used to create the event
• The Target Savings %
• The version of the event
• The rules that determine how the event runs
Note: The Bid Console tab is not available for RFIs or RFPs because participants do not submit bids in those
events.
Totals
The totals row in the event information table does not appear by default. To see the totals row, Click on the
Table Options Menu in the upper right and choose Totals. Totals list the total of all the leading bids, except it
does not include pricing from envelope items.
Note: The bid graph and the totals column only show information for participants who have bid on all
biddable items. If a participant failed to bid on one biddable item, all their bids are excluded from this total.
Bid Graph
The bid graph shows the bids for the row selected in the table above it over a period of time. If you show the
Totals row, as described in the previous topic, and select it, the graph shows the extended price totals for
participants who bid on all biddable items. Select one line item in the table to show a graph of the bids for
just that item.
• View – Choose “Selected Participants” to specify which participants’ information you want to include in
the graph. This does not affect the Bid History list, which shows all participants.
• Term – This enables you to view the price or the extended price. This option only appears when you select
an individual line item in the table above. If you show the Totals row, as described in the previous topic,
and click that row in the table
• Period – Choose the time period that the bid graph covers. If you choose a time period during which there
were no bids for the selected participants, the graph displays a message to that effect.
3 The status of the lot moves to Pending Selection. You can reopen the lot or line item to solicit more bids
(see below), or you can close it without awarding any business. When event is Pending Selection, you can
award the lot or line item if suppliers have submitted acceptable bids.
On the Bid Console tab of the monitoring interface click on the name of the lot or line item and choose
Reopen Item.
If you have permission, you can reopen a lot or line item after it is closed. When you do this, Ariba Sourcing
reopens the lot without affecting the timing of the other lots. For example, if you have two lots, and lot one is
closed, and suppliers are bidding on lot two. This graphic shows an example:
If you reopen lot one, it reopens immediately if you are using staggered bidding, with its default end time set
to 10 minutes after the closing time of lot two. Lot two continues with no disruption. For serial bidding, lot
one would reopen after lot two closes. If there was a lot three, it would open after the reopened lot one
closes.
Deleting Bids
If you have permission, you can delete bids. Suppose, for example, that one of the participants in an auction
is confused, and submits a bid that is drastically higher or lower than the competitive prices. This could also
happen if they inadvertently leave out (or add) zeros. Even though the bid is not reasonable, the system
might define it as the leading bid, and base the bid improvement rules on that bid. In this case, you can delete
erroneous bids in order to allow the auction to progress.
Note: You can set floor or ceiling prices to make it impossible for participants to submit bids that are
drastically high or low. See the question “How can I set a minimum allowed price so that suppliers cannot
bid zero?” in the Ariba Sourcing FAQ.
Note: After a supplier bid is deleted, their previous bid becomes active within the market.
Content Tab
This tab allows you to compare supplier responses and send individual suppliers messages by item. By
changing drop down and table options menus, you can sort and organize supplier responses to your event in
a several ways. For example, you can:
• View the responses for a single supplier only.
• Choose which columns to display in the table (up to 13), such as Supplier Name, Leading Supplier,
Historic Price, Reserve Price. You can add or remove them to shown only the information you want.
• View scoring results and event totals.
• Use the Content tab to compare supplier responses to an RFI or an RFP. Use the table options menu to
choose the suppliers to compare.
• Close a line item.
• Send messages to individual participants after they have bid. Click the message icon for a specific item
and participant to send a message to the participant about that item. You can use this feature to negotiate
terms with an individual supplier. The message icon only appears in the participants view for participants
who have bid. Messages only go to that participant, replies are seen by the project team.
From this tab you can view formulas, if there is one associated with an item. When an Fx link appears, you
can click it to see the formula used to calculate that value.
The Content tab is also a convenient place to export participant responses to Excel, as described in
“Exporting UI Tables to Excel” on page 264.
This tab does not show up for RFP events that used the “Optimization for Request for Proposal” template.
That template is designed for large events where the content is entirely imported from Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets.
When the event has envelopes, the envelope icon shows which envelopes have been opened, as shown in the
simplified example, below:
To the right is generally a column for every participant and their response for each content element. For
Envelopes you can only see the responses for open envelopes.
If, when opening an envelope, you do not select a participant, their column is entirely removed from the
Content tab.
Suppliers Tab
This tab allows you to view supplier information and take actions related to event participants:
• See whether or not the supplier is currently connected to Ariba Sourcing.
• See status information about how far suppliers have progressed through the bidding process.
• Lock a supplier out of the event.
• Submit a surrogate bid for a supplier, if you are a member of the Surrogate Bidders group.
• See the date and time of participants last login to Ariba Sourcing.
For envelope bidding, you can only see suppliers who have not been deselected, when opening an envelope.
Participant Status
The status column tells you where each participant is in the bidding process. Possible statuses include:
Status Meaning
No status indicates that the supplier has not yet accepted or declined the supplier agreement.
Accepted Agreement The supplier accepted the supplier agreement, but has not yet indicated intent to bid on specific
items.
Declined Agreement The supplier actively declined the supplier agreement and does not intend to participate in the
event.
Decline to Respond The participant has clicked the Decline to Respond button and cannot respond to the event.
Intends to Participate The supplier accepted the supplier agreement and has expressed interest to bid on one or more
lots.
Reconciled Lot The supplier has provided lot-level details after the auction status moved to pending selection.
Details This status applies only to auctions in which the supplier bids at the lot level and competes at
the lot level.
Decline to Respond
If any participant clicked their Decline to Respond button, the project owner receives an email and a
message to that effect, and this status appears on the Suppliers tab:
A yellow icon to the right of the status indicates that the supplier added a comment. Click the icon to read it.
The Decline to Respond button is available until the participant accepts the bidder agreement, or selects
Intend to Respond. The participant can also decline to respond by clicking the link provided in the
event-notification email. Decline to Respond statuses are reset when published events are updated. This
allows participants to review the changes to the event before deciding to respond. Participants can enter a
comment when declining either directly by clicking the link provided in the email invitation message, or
when clicking Decline to Response on the Event Details page. In both cases, a Reason for Declining to
Respond comment box is displayed, where the participant can enter a comment, which is then sent to the
event owner as an email message.
Locking Participants
Suppose you determine that one of the participants you invited to your event is not serious about competing.
Perhaps they are attending your event in order to learn about their competitors’ prices, or for some other
reason. You can lock these participants out of the event, completely removing their ability to access any
information associated with the event.
2 Click Lock/Unlock. The locked column changes to Yes to indicate that the participant has been locked out of
the event. The participant is immediately returned to the Event List screen and can no longer see your
event. They receive a notification message informing them that they have been locked out of the event.
Locking Participants Versus Removing Them From an Event With a Run Time Edit
Locking participants out of an event is a reversible action. Choose to lock a participant when you need to
remove their ability to access the event, but you might restore it in the future. If you unlock the participant,
their access is restored as if they had never been locked. Locked participants’ bids remain in effect:
• The system counts them in bidding rule calculations.
• If they are leading bids they remain leading.
• You can award business to a locked participant.
You can also remove a participant’s access to an event by performing a run time edit of the event (see
“Editing Events” on page 173) and removing them from the Supplier or Buyer page, or by editing individual
line items and uninviting them. Choose to remove a participant using this method when you are confident
you will not need to restore their access to the event. When you remove a participant’s access in this way:
• Ariba Sourcing revokes their access to the event. If they are currently viewing the event, they see an error
page.
• Ariba Sourcing invalidates their bids. The bids disappear from the bid history, and become black in the
bid graph, signifying that the bids existed, and influenced the progress of the market, but are no longer
associated with a participant and are invalid. If the participant had placed the leading bid, Sourcing makes
the next best bid the leading bid, and indicates that change by placing a new black bidding mark at that
point on the bid graph.
• Ariba Sourcing removes their Lot participation choices (the selections they made on the Choose Lot
page).
• Ariba Sourcing removes the record of their having accepted the Event Agreement. If you re-invite them to
the event later, they have to re-accept it.
• Ariba Sourcing does not delete notifications and messages from their Notification and Message Center. If
you re-invite them to the event, any notifications they received are still accessible.
Surrogate Bidding
The Surrogate Bid button enables a team member to act as a participant for the purpose of placing bids if the
participant cannot do so themselves, perhaps because of technical problems.
You must have permission to surrogate bid, for example, by being a member of the Surrogate Bidders group,
in order to see the Surrogate Bid button to act as a supplier.
2 Click Surrogate Bid. You see the event as the supplier would. Note the line at the top of the screen that lets
you know that you are acting as a participant: Welcome <your name> as <participant’s name>.
3 Use the Supplier’s interface to place the surrogate bid.
4 Click your event in the event list. Navigate to the console and place the participant’s bid.
5 Click on the orange circle containing an X located at the top right of the screen, as shown in the graphic
below, to stop surrogate bidding and to return to your own view of the event.
Team Tab
This tab allows you to view information about team members and groups. Changing team members is
described in “Changing Team Members” on page 49.
Report Tab
This tab allows you to view summary information about the event, including financial, invitation, bidding,
and lot details. Report data is real time, so as the event progresses you see the data change. Use the pivot UI
to adjust the content table.
Bids Report
This report lists all of the supplier responses (and the scores for those responses), and allows you to filter the
data by supplier. The filtering can help you work with large amounts of data resulting from numerous bids.
You can use this report to export all supplier bids to Microsoft Excel.
Note: This report will work only in Internet Explorer as it uses ActiveX controls.
3 Select Active Bids or All Bids. This filters the report by the type of bid. Active bids are accepted bids; all
bids means all submitted bids, whether accepted or not.
4 Specify the suppliers to include in the report.
5 Click OK. Ariba Sourcing exports the data to Microsoft Excel. The Bids Report includes these sheets:
• Price
• Extended Price
• Savings
• Rank
• Unit Cost
• Total Cost
• Data (raw data used to generate the report, which you can use to generate custom reports)
Scenarios Report
The Scenarios Report allows you to compare award scenarios side-by-side, and to determine savings on
various lots and line items in the event.
Note: This report will work only in Internet Explorer as it uses ActiveX controls.
Ariba Sourcing exports the data to Microsoft Excel. The Question and Terms Report includes these
sheets:
• Questions and Terms
• Instructions
On the Report tab, click Download Reports and select the name of the external system to which you are
exporting the reports.
This menu option initiates the HTTP request to the specified URL. If you specified a direct-action URL, it
opens that URL in your browser window. You are free to design the receiving URL to handle the file in any
way necessary. The name of the file is <eventname>.csv, where <eventname> is the name of your event.
Message Tab
Ariba Sourcing allows the project owner and participants to communicate using messages, which are useful
for technical problems or questions. Received messages display in the browser window and are archived in
the My Messages or Message tab screen. Messages are also sent to each recipient’s regular email address.
Notes:
• Select an individual message and click the View, Respond, or Delete buttons at the bottom.
• View the message text by clicking the Subject, on the right.
• If you click the name in the From or Contact column, a properties dialog appears.
• To sort the list by any column, click on the column heading.
• Messages that you have not read, yet, are shown in Bold.
Messages can go to all participants or none. If Private Messaging is enabled, you can also choose to select
specific participants. For that choice, a dialog appears from which you can check the participants you want
to select. Private Messaging only adds the ability to select participants. You always have the option to select
individual team members. To enable private messaging, ask your administrator to set the
Application.AQS.EnablePrivateMessaging parameter to “true.”
Note: Messaging is only available with participants during an event when the message board is open. See
“Allow messages between the project team and participants” on page 46 for more information.
When a participant sends a message, it goes to all team members but no other participants. When a
participant replies, it goes to the sender and any other team members who also received the message.
When a team member sends a message, it only goes to the selected recipients. When a team member replies,
the reply goes to the person who sent it, plus any other recipients the replying team member selects.
2 Select the recipients. You can send to all participants, select specific participants (if Private Messaging is
enabled), or you can not select either of those if you do not want any participants to get this message.
Similarly, You can choose to send to all team members, specific team members, or none.
3 Give the message a title. By default the subject is prefixed with the event ID, but you can change or
remove it, if necessary.
4 Type in the text of the message, as you would in any email client, and click Send. When you send a
message, the recipient sees:
• A pop–up in the lower right hand corner of their browser window.
• An message on their My Messages or Message tab list.
• A regular email, if they correctly entered their email address in their user profile.
When a user is logged off, Ariba Sourcing continues to forward received messages to the user’s email
address, and also archives the user’s messages in the Messages tab or My Messages page.
2 Choose which messages you would like to see by clicking on the type of messages under Show.
3 Export all the rows in the messages list by selecting Export all Rows. If you have enough rows that the list
has multiple pages, you can click Export Current Page, to just include the data on the current page.
4 You can show the text and envelope information of all messages by clicking Show Details. If the details are
showing, they are exported. If they do not show they are not exported.
Status Description
Yes The logged in user has replied to the message.
Yes, by Team A team member other than the logged in user has replied to the
message.
Yes, by both Both the logged in user and another team member have replied
to the message.
Status Description
Yes The logged in participant user has replied to the message.
In the case of surveys, where internal users are invited as participants, such users can monitor events as
internal users and also respond to events as participant users. In such cases, the status will be as follows.
Status Description
Yes The logged in user has replied to the message as an internal
user or as a participant user.
Yes, by Team A team member other than the logged in user has replied to the
message.
Yes, by both Both the logged in user (acting either as an internal user or a
participant user) and another team member have replied to the
message.
Status Description
Yes, by Participant Only a participant user other than the logged in user has replied
to the message.
Log Tab
This tab displays a list of significant event actions performed by participants, the project owner, system
administrators, and the system. Use the log to verify that users participate, when they downloaded
attachments, or help you resolve disputes. The audit log contains the following information for each event–
related action:
• The time the action occurred.
• The name of the user who performed the action.
• The user’s name if the action was performed on behalf of another user.
• The name of the action.
• A description of the action.
• Sometimes users take actions that only apply to a single lot within the event. When this is true, the Scope
column indicates the lot to which the action applies.
The Log tab also displays messages that result from rejected supplier bids, such as:
• Improvement rule violation
• Buffer rule violation
• Tie bid rule violation
• Required attribute value violation
• Invalid attributes value violation
• Ceiling value rule violation
• Duplicate bid submission
• Change in event status while the event is in progress
Note: Role changes and Full project team changes are not
tracked.
Scenario Tab
Using award scenarios, you can create alternative winner scenarios and save them in the event. In each
named scenario, you can vary the awards lots and suppliers, compare scenarios, and export them to
Microsoft Excel for analysis. You can award business based on one or several scenarios. The Scenarios
Report displays the various award scenarios for your review. See “Scenarios Report” on page 185 for details.
Note: The Scenario tab is available for competitive bid events that have line items.
There are manual and optimization scenarios. See Chapter 20 ”Using Optimization to Award Events” for
information on using award scenarios. For more details, see the following:
• “Using Manual Scenarios to Award to Suppliers” on page 237: Use to award business to suppliers for
relatively simple or small events. Manual scenarios are available in Sourcing Basic and Sourcing Pro.
• “Using Optimization Scenarios to Award to Suppliers” on page 238: Use to award business to suppliers
for large or complex events with specific awarding requirements. This is available in Sourcing Pro.
Note: This tab does not appear if a the awardable term is set with a Team Access Control that you do not
have permission to view.
Lot Reconciliation
If you have lots in your event of type “Bid at Lot Level” or “Compete at Lot Level,” your suppliers must log
back into the system after the event moves to the Pending Selection state in order to submit their line item
pricing. The prices they enter for the line items should add up to the total price they bid for the lot. This
process is known as lot reconciliation. Educate your suppliers about this step in the sourcing process.
You cannot award lots until the supplier completes lot reconciliation. Suppliers who are not getting an award
do not need to reconcile their lots before you can award to others. However, it is good practice for all
suppliers to reconcile their lots, since reconciliation can play a part in the award decision.
3 Under Award Participants, select the award participants for the various lots. You can split the award for a
lot by percentages among multiple suppliers.
4 View the prices and savings for this scenario on the Summary tab
5 You can return to the Award Proposal Details tab and adjust the award as needed. Click Update Totals to
modify the prices and savings you adjust the award percentages.
6 You can click Save As to save a copy of the scenario you are working on.
7 Click Done to save and exit the scenario. The scenario is listed on the Scenarios tab. You can update the
scenario and submit it when you are ready.
8 When you are finished with the scenario, click Submit for award. This triggers the award approval task.
When this task is complete, the awards display in the Award tab.
Optimization can be useful decision-making tool, however you must know your baseline first to understand
the scenarios that optimization can provide. To get the most out of the optimizations, run a first scenario
without constraints, to determine what Ariba Sourcing offer as the optimal choice without the influence of
the constraints. After obtaining that result, create scenarios with constraints to see how they vary from the
unconstrained result.
3 Select the goal for the scenario. The goal is what you are optimizing. Examples of goals include price or
transport time. For RFPs and RFIs, the most common goal is to minimize total price. Other common goals
are to minimize total cost and to maximize savings. The goals can be influenced by the terms you defined
when you added content.
4 Specify whether to have minimum coverage. This means the smallest group of suppliers that can supply
everything you need. The minimum coverage specification does not take price into account. The
minimum coverage goal takes precedence over the price goals you select, and is calculated first by the
optimization. So, when you select the minimize total cost goal, and the minimum coverage goal, what you
will get is the smallest number of suppliers that can provide the lowest total cost. This might cause you to
have to make choices about certain line items. For example, your optimization of lowest total cost and
minimum suppliers offers you Supplier A and Supplier B, for line items 1 though 7. You find that
Supplier A can supply line items 1 though 4, and Supplier B can supply line items 4 through 7. Your
choice is clear for items 1 through 3, and also for items 5 through 7. You will have to make a choice about
item 4 however, because both suppliers can provide you with that item.
5 Click Add Item Group to add an item group. An item group is a group of lots or line items that you select
and then apply specific constraints the group. You can have multiple item groups, with constraints for
each item group. For example, if you were purchasing computers and their various components, you
could have an item group that focused on printers, another that you used to determine pricing on
peripherals such as keyboards, and yet another item group to use for software purchases.
6 Click Add Items to create the item group. Select items from the list of line items or lots. You an use item
groups to create various scenarios that focus on specific groups of goods.
7 Select the items to add to the group and click OK.
Select the constraints you want to use for the optimization scenario.
Some examples of constraints are:
• Allocate exactly 100 computers to Supplier A
• Allocate at most 50 monitors to Supplier B; none to Supplier C
• Allocate business only to suppliers who have been in business more than 10 years
• Allocate 50% of the business to two suppliers
An optimization scenario can have as few as one defined objective, and you can add any number of
constraints. Note that adding numerous constraints does not make the optimal value of the objective
better. In other words, if you are optimizing total price then adding a new constraint to an existing
scenario will not make the lowest total price better. Also, removing constraints can not make the optimal
value worse.
Do not specify mutually exclusive constraints. For example if you request that at least 75% of the
computers be from Supplier A and at least 75% of the computers be from Supplier B, then it is not
possible to satisfy both of these constraints at the same time.
Constraints include:
• Total Amount: Allows you to specify that the total amount of the business be awarded according to the
constraints you specify.
• Per-Item Quantity: Allows you to specify that the quantity of items are awarded according to the
constraints you specify.
• Supplier Count: Allows you to specify the number or percentage of suppliers to receive the award.
You can specify that the constraints apply for specific supplier choices:
• Each supplier: Apply the constraints to all of the suppliers in the event.
• Incumbent: Apply the constraints to the incumbent supplier.
• Selected Supplier: Apply the constrains to suppliers you select from a list of active suppliers.
• Supplier Matching Criteria: Use matching criteria to determine a list of suppliers to choose from.
You can filter the active suppliers by their answers to questions posed during the event, supplier profile
criteria, or line item terms, such as Price or Quantity.
The text version of the constraint restates the constraints you have chose in a sentence. Review this
sentence before deciding to optimize, to be sure that you have chosen the constraints you want.
9 When you are finished with the scenario, click Optimize. This runs the optimization on the scenarios,
applying the constraints you specified.
10 After optimization completes, select the scenario name and click Edit.
11 Click the Award Proposal Details tab. Select the award participants for the various lots.
13 After you run the optimization, you can select Display > View Only to view the scenario in read only mode.
You can select Display > Edit to edit the scenario title, set an optimization goal, and edit constraints. If you
decide to modify the award allocations, you can save the optimization scenario as a manual scenario,
modify the allocations, and submit the scenario for award.
14 When you are finished with the scenario, click Submit for Award. This triggers the award approval task. See
“To view the Award Approval Task:” and “To approve an event for award:” for details.
When this task is complete, the awards display in the Award tab. From the Award tab, you can export the
award information to Microsoft Excel. Also, see “Scenarios Report” on page 185 for details on the
Scenarios Report.
If you change your mind about an award scenario after you submit, you can modify the scenario and
submit again. The scenario you submit later will overwrite the previous value of the award.
Create as many optimization scenarios as you want to model various results for your award. Be sure to
create one scenario with no constraints so you can use that result as a baseline and compare that result to
other scenarios that have constraints.
Your award can be based on multiple scenarios. For example you can have one scenario that focuses on
item group1, the and another scenario that focuses on item group 2. You can eventually submit both of
these scenarios for award.
2 Click Approval Flow. You can view the status of the task and see which reviewers have approved.
3 On the approved or denied screen, you can write a message and add an attachment to communicate why
you approved or denied the award. Click OK when you are finished composing your message.
Optimization Example
Here is an optimization example with three suppliers, several constraints, and six scenarios.
The table below shows the items and final bids from an auction:
The following table lists the optimization scenarios for the final bids listed in the table above
Scenario 2: Two At most, two suppliers for $429,000 Supplier C Supplier B Supplier B
Suppliers the entire event (100%) (100%) $72,000 (100%) $12,000
$345,000
Scenario 3: One At most, one supplier for 436,000 Supplier C Supplier C Supplier C
Supplier the entire event (100%) (100%) $78,000 (100%) $13,000
$345,000
In the table above, Scenario 1 is a scenario with no constraints. Since this scenario has no constraints, it is
the lowest cost solution.
Dealing with several suppliers has costs, so the buyer wants to know if having three suppliers is worth the
expense. Scenarios 2 and 3 provide the prices for limiting the number of suppliers to one or two. Using two
suppliers costs $400 ($429,000 - $428,600) and limiting to one supplier costs an additional $7000 ($436,000
- $429,000). If the buyer finds that each added supplier costs approximately $5000 then limiting to two
suppliers makes sense but limiting to one does not.
The buyer assumes that older companies are more reliable than newer companies. To verify the cost of using
only suppliers that have been in business for 10 or more years the buyer ran Scenario 4. This result shows that
using only older companies costs the buyer an additional $15,000 ($443,600 - $428,600). The buyer must
decide if it is worth the extra money to avoid using a supplier who has been in business for a shorter time.
Scenario 5 models not buying monitors from Supplier B while still limiting the selection to older suppliers.
The buyer might run this scenario if they know that Supplier B’s monitors are lower quality. We see from the
results that this costs an additional $3,000 on top of the $15,000 for choosing older suppliers.
In Scenario 6 the buyer tries to reduce the risk of using the younger supplier by limiting the purchase to no
more than 50 percent of the computers. This constraint adds $7,500 to the cost over the best price scenario 1.
Notice that as the scenarios become more constrained that the cost for the buyer goes up. For example
Scenario 3 costs more than Scenario 2, which costs more than Scenario 1. Similarly, Scenario 5 costs more
than Scenario 4, which costs more than Scenario 1.
Award Tab
On this tab you can view the awards for an event that you made in the Scenarios tab. This tab lists the line
item or lot, the winner, the price, and other information regarding the awarded suppliers. It also shows the
award status for awards that are pending approval, or have been approved and awarded.
Note: This tab does not appear if you may not view the awardable term, as set by a Team Access Control.
Use the pivot UI to adjust the content table. See “Using the Pivot User Interface for Content Tables” on
page 205.
After you award an event, you can use that event information to export a draft contract to your local desktop
using the Contract button. If you are in a group with permission to create contracts and have the Ariba
Contract Management solution, you can also create new contracts or add this event data to an existing
contract.
If you have permission to export award data to external systems, you can create additional menu items such
as the “External System” option, shown below. See “Export Draft Contract to External System” on
page 198.
1 Click Contract and select: Export Draft Contract > To Local Desktop.
3 Click Done.
This option exports a draft contract, if the event has been awarded to an external system by HTTP request.
To set this up you need the URL of a web server that accepts a zip file containing this data. Call your Ariba
representative with this URL to have them enable this feature.
On the Award tab, click Contract and select Export Draft Contract > [external system name]. When you
set this option up, you can define the names to appear on the menu for each external system you define.
This menu option initiates the HTTP request to the specified URL. If you specified a direct-action URL, it
opens that URL in your browser window. You are free to design the receiving URL to handle the zip file in
any way necessary. The name of the zip file is ResultData_nnn.zip, where nnn is a generated sequence
number to keep all subsequent zip file names unique. An example is shown below:
Note: The zip file contains a contract spreadsheet for every supplier to whom you made an award.
3 Click Done.
The Contract Management Create Contract Workspace page displays. This information carries over from
the event to the contract:
• Supplier name
• Pricing terms (in the Documents tab)
• Project owner (as the contract workspace owner)
• Ariba Sourcing project name (as the predecessor project)
See the Ariba Contract Process Management Guide for details on creating contracts.
3 Click Add to Existing Contract. You can view contracts for the supplier you selected, that have no supplier
specified, or for all suppliers. In this example, there is one contract for the supplier Digi Storage:
Click Select to select the contract to modify. The contract displays in Contract Management. See the
Ariba Contract Process Management Guide for details on creating a contract.
Actions Menu
Available event-wide actions depend on your permissions and the event state. During bidding, you can edit
the event, export content to an Excel spreadsheet, pause, stop, or cancel the event. When the event is Pending
Selection, you can grade supplier bids. The Action menu items are described in the following sections:
Document
• “Editing Events” on page 173.
• “Opening Envelopes” on page 202
Version
• “Viewing the Draft or Published Version” on page 173
• “Viewing the Change History” on page 205
• “Using the Pivot User Interface for Content Tables” on page 205
Note: You must be a member of the Event Administrator group to perform many of the actions described in
this section.
Participants are notified when the event is paused, and they only have read-only access to an event while
paused. The event close time is extended by the paused period.
To resume a paused event, click Action > Resume. The clock reappears and participants can submit responses.
The application notifies participants that the event has resumed.
During an Auction, where timing is based on lots, you can click a lot and choose Extend Timing or Reduce
Timing.
While you are in this preview period, if you extend or reduce its duration, that would change the length of
the prebid review period. When you extend or reduce a preview period, you see an additional option to
Adjust bidding start time, so that you can restore the review period to its intended size (even if it is zero).
If you enable this option, the system delays or advances the bidding start time to match the extension or
reduction of the preview period, so that the length of the prebid review period remains the same.
Stopping an Event
If you have permission, you can stop an event by clicking Action > Stop Event. All lots close and the event
moves to Pending Selection status, and participants are notified. Stop an event when you know there are no
more responses coming in. You might also stop an event if the buyer does not want a particular item to run or
be bid on, but doesn't want to cancel an entire project. This option is visible until the bidding periods are all
closed.
Cancelling an Event
If you have permission, you can cancel an event by clicking Actions > Cancel Event. You can undo a
cancellation and return an event to Pending Selection state, then edit the event, reopen the lots or line items
for bidding, and so on.
To undo cancellation from the details or monitoring view of a cancelled event, choose Actions > Undo Cancel.
Closing an Event
If you have permission, you can change to the Completed state by clicking Actions > Close Event.
Opening Envelopes
If the event has envelopes you can open them by clicking Actions > Open Envelope. The system only allows
you to open the next envelope that you are allowed to open. Every time you open an envelope you must
select which participant responses you want to include.
When you click Open Envelope, you can specify who should be notified.
You can also click the Table Options menu and choose one of the Export to Excel options. This type of export is
available in tables on the Content and the Bid Console tabs. Although this exports a wider variety of data, it
cannot be re-imported into the system.
Once the event is in Word, you can format it and print it.
To produce the output in HTML format, ask your administrator to change the
Application.AQS.RFX.PrintRFX.PrintRFXImpl parameter value to ariba.sourcing.rfxui.HTMLPrintRFX.
Once the event is in Word or HTML, you can format it as you like it and print it. There are no differences
between the output formats other than how they are formatted and how you can edit and display them. The
choice is personal preference.
Note: Spreadsheet events are large events and result in a large file after export. It is cumbersome to open and
edit large files in DOC format so Ariba Sourcing automatically produces the output in HTML format in such
cases.
The link View Publish Approval Task allows you to track the progress of the approval, as described in “To
approve an event publish approval task:” on page 171.
This link is disabled for Sealed RFP events (events where the Marker Feedback rule “Can owner see
responses before event closes” is set to No. When the event goes to Pending Selection state, this link is
re-enabled.
Deleting an Event
The project owner can delete projects with the following limits:
• You can delete a draft event
• You can delete a full project with draft event that does not have any started tasks
• You cannot delete a quick project that is published
• You cannot delete a full project with a published event
To expand this capability, ask the Administrator to set the parameter Application.ACM.ProjectDeleteLimited
to false. When this parameter is false, you can delete a quick or full project regardless of the state of event,
as long as it does not have any started tasks.
To delete an event, click Actions > Delete while viewing the event details. When you delete an event you do
not remove it totally from the system. However, the only way to search for deleted events is if you have the
“acm.SearchDeletedDocument” permission.
Click Download Attachments to download the attachments for the selected participants and items. If there are
attachments, to download, you can specify where to save them. Attachments are in a zip file organized into
folders by event, supplier organization, and participant name. The format is:
<EventName>_<EventID>/<OrgName>_<ParticipantName>/<FileName>
If there are no attachments, a message to that effect appears when you select the action.
All team members have permission to use this action. However if the access control settings prevent a team
member from seeing certain content, then any attachments to that content are not downloaded for that team
member.
For events containing envelopes, the download action does not download any Supplier attachments for items
within a sealed envelope. Only when the envelope is opened and the contents visible in the UI does the
action download its attachment.
Using the pivot UI allows you to filter content data and control the data display for your event content in the
various monitoring tabs. For example, here is event content data in the conventional display:
The content is arranged in a continuous list. You must scroll down through this list to see all of the data.
The pivot UI allows you to compare groups of data side by side, as shown below:
Pivot UI allows you to view the data horizontally. In this case, the dimension Region has been added to the
data (Asia and Europe). This dimension allows you to view the data for the two dimensions (the region) side
by side, for a quick comparison.
2 To filter, click the table icon and select a value under Select/Filter.
3 For this example, you can filter by participants or regions. For example, to filter by region:
The filtering available to you depends on the dimensions you specify, or other terms that you added to line
items or lots in your content.
4 To configure, click the table icon and select Configure Layout. The Layout Editor appears:
You can drag and drop values shown in the Layout Editor to change the layout of the content table.
Note: You cannot drag and drop the Name field. It must remain under Row Fields.
5 To show additional details, click the table icon and select Show Detail Rows.
Ariba Sourcing automatically generates notifications to inform users about the state of an event. Depending
on the situation, Ariba Sourcing sends notifications as instant messages, emails, or both.
Ariba Sourcing also lists notifications on the Log tab, to serve as a record of your event. For example:
• When you publish an event, the system automatically sends invitation email to invited participants. The
system does not send instant messages, since generally your participants are not logged into the system at
that time. The system generates different emails depending on whether or not a participant has used the
system before. The system also logs this action to the Log tab.
• If you cancel an event while in progress, the system automatically sends participants both an instant
message and an email, since they are probably logged in at that time. The system also logs this action to
the Log tab.
Subject:
Content:
Thank you,
[SPONSOR_CORPORATE_NAME]
The capitalized phrases contained in brackets, for example [EVENT_TITLE], are variables that the system
replaces with information specific to the event when generating a notification. For example, in the following
sentence from a messaging template “Event [EVENT_TITLE] has been extended by [TIME]” the system
replaces the bracketed phrases with specific information: “Event RFP 3 GHz laptops has been extended by
30 minutes.” The variables are described in “Notification Template Variables” on page 210.
You can edit the template to alter the generated notifications. As you edit the text, add or remove the
bracketed, capitalized variables, but be sure not to change them, or the system cannot recognize them and
will not substitute the desired values.
2 In the Common Actions panel, click Manage > Administration. The administrator home page displays.
5 Change the text and rearrange any bracketed phrases. Click Save.
Note: Be sure to choose the Apply Template to setting before editing the template. Changing this field causes
any edits you make to be lost.
Variable Description
BID_ERROR_CODE This is a brief phrase that explains why a bid was rejected.
BIDDING_FORMAT This is the name of the template that was used to create this event.
Variable Description
CANCELLATION_TIME_AND_DATE This is the time and date that the event was canceled. The value of this
variable is null until the event is cancelled. All dates and times are set to
the time zone in the recipients profile.
DENY_TO_RESPOND_URL This is the URL to which suppliers are directed if they do not want to
respond to the event.
EVENT_END_DATE The is the date on which the event is scheduled to end. All dates and times
are set to the time zone in the recipients profile.
EVENT_START_DATE This is the date on which the event is scheduled to start. All dates and times
are set to the time zone in the recipients profile.
EVENT_START_TIME This is the time at which the event is scheduled to start. All dates and times
are set to the time zone in the recipients profile.
EVENT_TITLE This is the name of the event specified by the project owner.
EVENT_TYPE The possible event types are RFI, RFP, Auction, and Forward Auction.
EXTEND_REDUCE This is the word “extended” or “reduced” and is used when the bidding
period or event is made to last for a longer or shorter period of time.
ITEM_NAME This is the name of the lot or item to which the notification refers., for
example, if the bidding is extended, or the lot is awarded.
PARTICIPANT_FULL_NAME This is the full name of the participant to whom this notification is sent or
refers.
PARTICIPANT_USER_NAME This is the user ID of the participant to whom this notification is sent or
refers.
PASSWORD_URL This is the URL to which new suppliers are directed to log in for the first
time. Suppliers need to set a new password to continue.
SITE_URL This is the URL of the site where you log in to an event.
SPONSOR_BUYER_ NAME This is the name of the person who is publishing the event.
SPONSOR_CORPORATE_NAME This is the name of the company that is publishing the event.
SPONSOR_EMAIL This is the email address of the person who is publishing the event.
SPONSOR_PHONE This is the phone number of the person who is publishing the event.
TIME This is an amount of time used, for example, when a bidding period is
extended or reduced.
Note: Participants must maintain an accurate email address in their user profile. Participants whose email
addresses are incorrect do not receive automatic notification emails from Ariba Sourcing.
The following table details the notification trigger actions for buyers:
The following table details the notification trigger actions for suppliers:
Bid Collision; occurs when two bids Bid (ID=[BID_ID]) in event [EVENT_TITLE] X
are submitted simultaneously. has been rejected by the system
(Error=[BID_ERROR_CODE]).
Bid deleted: Notification to let supplier Your bid in event [EVENT_TITLE] has been X X
know their bid has been deleted. deleted by [SPONSOR_BUYER_NAME]. See
bid history for details (Reference
Number=[BID_ID]).
Lock Supplier: owner removes a You have been locked out of the event X
supplier’s access privileges. [EVENT_TITLE].
Publish event: Notification for invited You are invited to participate in event: X
suppliers who have never participated [EVENT_TITLE].
in a Ariba Sourcing event and must
create a Ariba Sourcing account before
logging in.
Publish event: Notification for invited You are invited to participate in event: X
suppliers who have participated in [EVENT_TITLE].
Ariba Sourcing events before.
Unlock Supplier: owner restores a Your access to the event [EVENT_TITLE] has X
supplier’s access privileges. been restored.
Remove supplier from event during Your access to the event [EVENT_TITLE] has X
runtime edit. been revoked.
Following is a graphic of the notifications page. Note that it contains notifications from various events:
Most of the notifications that you can turn on and off are related to Sourcing Process Management
functionality, which your organization might not have as it is licensed separately from Event Management
functionality. However, some notifications are related to Event Management functionality, for example, the
notifications related to the approval of an event for publishing.
To edit your notification profile and select which notifications you want to receive:
1 On the Dashboard, click Preferences.
2 Click Change notification preferences. You see the Email Notification Preferences page.
3 Change the settings on this page to determine which types of email notifications you receive.
Notifications that concern Event Management functionality are related to approval tasks.
The notification method, and the recipients for the notification, can be changed. Administrators can
configure these settings for the following event actions:
Bid rejected X X
Envelope declined X X
Envelope opened X X
Event canceled X X
Event closed X X
Event paused X X
Event published X X
Event opens X X
Event reopens X X
Event resumed X X
Event scheduled X X
Lot reopens X X
Prebid extended X X
Prebid review X X
Supplier locked X X
Supplier unlocked X X
Bid submitted X
Business non-awarded X
notification
Event republished X
Message created X
Message undelivered X
Supplier invites X
Supplier un-invites X
Use scoring to create an objective comparison model to help you choose between suppliers. Weigh the parts
of your event content according to their importance by assigning scoring points, and then grade suppliers’
responses to produce an overall score for each supplier. To turn on scoring see “Allow scoring on participant
responses” on page 37.
First, compile a list of questions about cars. Ask questions that are as specific as possible. By asking for
factual information instead of subjective information, you make the results of scoring more meaningful. For
example, rather than asking “How fast is the car?” ask “What is the top speed of the car in MPH?”
Assign each question a number of scoring points based on how important it is to your decision compared to
the other questions. Use a simple rating system, from 0–10 points, with 10 being the most important. To
calculate the percentage contribution that each question makes towards the overall score (the overall
percentage), divide the number of scoring points assigned to that question by the total number of scoring
points.
Next, collect information about potential cars to buy and grade them based on how well they fulfill the
various questions. For example, using a range of 100–180 MPH, the top speed of Auto A is 176 MPH, or
95% of the range. The top speed of Auto B is 120 MPH, or 25%
Once you complete the matrix, calculate each car’s overall score. For example, the Porshe receives 95% of
the 2 scoring points available for speed, 86% of the 3 points available for braking speed, 14.8% of the 10
points available for low cost, and 25% of the 5 points available for low financing APR. That gives Auto A
7.2 scoring points out of the 20 available points, or an overall score of 36%.
Auto B receives a score of 15 points, or an overall score of 75%. The scoring matrix indicates that, for this
company, Auto B is a better company car than Auto A.
This is a very simple example to explain how a scoring matrix works. As the complexity and number of
involved factors increases, scoring becomes a valuable tool to help you make difficult decisions.
About Weight
The Weight is the relative level of importance of this content element. It is used with the score you assign
each participant’s response and contributes to the overall score for each participant. Assign Weight points to
“container” content types such as sections and line items (for scoring purposes, a line item “contains” its
terms). Altering a section or lot’s weight allows you to alter the Overall % for all the section content.
For example, in the following graphic, there are 30 scoring points assigned to the Car Performance section,
and 70 to the Car Financing section. (Assign a total of 100 scoring points to cause the Overall % to be equal
to the number of assigned scoring points.)
Ariba Sourcing calculates the importance of each piece of content to the overall score, and displays this
information in the Overall % column. Use the following formula:
Use the formula to verify the Overall % of the Car Financing section in the previous graphic:
If you do not assign exactly 100 weight scoring points, it complicates the math. For example, in the
following graphic the total of the weight scoring points is 115:
Use the formula again to verify the Overall % column for Section 1:
Tables similar to the following example appear throughout this chapter to break down scoring calculations:
Number Name Weight (base Overall %
level)
1 Section 1 – Car Performance 27 27 / 115 = 23.48%
2 Section 2 – Car Financing 88 88 / 115 = 76.52%
Maximum total points 115
About Importance
Assign importance scoring points to content types that require supplier answers, such as questions and line
item terms. Assign each question between 0–10 importance scoring points, with 10 being the most
important. Content to which you assign zero scoring points does not count towards the score.
In the following graphic, question 1.2 has the highest importance with 10 importance points, and question
1.1 is half as important as question 1.2 with 5 importance points.
The Overall % of questions changes depending on how you weight the section they are located within. To
calculate the overall % of the questions in the Car Performance section, first calculate their percentage
within the Car Performance section, and then multiply that by the overall % of the Car Performance section.
Here is the formula written out for question 1.1:
The following table combines section weight and question importance to calculate the overall % of the
questions within section 1:
Number Name Weight Importance Overall %
1 Section 1 – Car Performance 30 30 / 100 = 30%
1.1 Question 1.1 5 10% = 30%*5/15
1.2 Question 1.2 10 20% = 30%*10/15
Maximum total points in Section 1 15
2 Section 2 – Car Financing 70 70 / 100 = 70%
Maximum total points 100
Although questions 1.1 and 2.2 both have 10 importance scoring points, they do not have the same overall %
because the two questions are in different sections, and section 1 has fewer weight scoring points. This
causes the questions inside section 1 to be relatively less important than the questions in section 2.
Number Name Weight Importance Overall %
1 Section 1 – Car Performance 30 30% = 30 / 100
1.1 Question 1.1 5 10% = 30%*5/15
1.2 Question 1.2 10 20% = 30%*10/15
Maximum total points in Section 1 15
2 Section 2 – Car Financing 70 70% = 70 / 100
2.1 Question 2.1 5 23.3% = 70%*5/15
2.2 Question 2.2 10 46.7% = 70%*10/15
Maximum total points in Section 2 15
Maximum total points 100
About Pre-grading
Pre-grading allows you to define rules in advance of an event to automatically assign grades. When you
enter the grading page after the event you can modify the pre–grades.
Use pre-grading to save time and to remove bias from your grading. For example, you might be tempted to
grade your incumbent suppliers more favorably than their responses merit.
Pre-grading is not available if the question does not have a pre-gradable answer type. For example, Ariba
Sourcing cannot pre-grade questions with answer type Text (single line) because it cannot read and interpret
sentences. However, questions with answer type Text (single line) can be pre-graded if you set the
Acceptable Values option to List of Choices.
Only quantifiable answers can be pre-graded. The different pre-grading scenarios are discussed in the
following sections:
• “Yes/No questions” on page 222
• “Multiple–choice questions” on page 223
• “Number and Date Questions” on page 223
Yes/No questions
To pre-grade questions with Yes / No answers, enable pre-grading and specify the grades for the answers in
advance:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades Yes and No based on the values defined. In this
case, Yes receives 100%, but you can assign it any grade value:
Multiple–choice questions
To pre-grade questions with a list of predefined possible answers, enable pre-grading and specify the grades
for the answers in advance:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades each possible answer with the grade that you
defined:
To expand on the case where the to and from values are set too far apart, consider this example: the
question is “What is the top speed of the car in MPH?” and you mistakenly set the range to be from 0 to
1000. The following graphic illustrates the example:
Most cars have a top speed of 100-200 MPH (the circled area on the graphic). With the range set
improperly, an answer of 100 receives a grade of 83%, and an answer of 200 receives a grade of 91%. All
likely answers receive the same grade, which is not useful.
Different combinations of the from, to, and ideal values produce different behaviors:
• “Assigning From, To, and Ideal values” on page 224
• “Assigning From and Ideal Values, but Not a To Value” on page 225
• “Assigning Ideal and To Values, but Not a From Value” on page 225
• “Assign Only an Ideal Value” on page 226
• “Assign Only a From Value” on page 226
• “Assign Only a To value” on page 227
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades starting at 0% for the from value, ramping up to
100% for the ideal value, and then dropping back down to 0% at the to value:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades 0% starting at the from value, ramps up to 100%
at the ideal value, and then continues at 100% for all answers greater than the ideal value:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades 100% for all values less than the ideal value, and
then drops down to 0% between the ideal and to value:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades 100% for the ideal value, and 0% for all other
values:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades 0% for all values less than the from value, and
100% for all values greater than the from value. The from value itself receives a grade of 100%. For
example, if from = 5, then an answer of 5 receives 100%, and an answer of 4.9 receives a grade of 0%:
The following graph shows how Ariba Sourcing pre-grades 100% for all values less than the to value, and
0% for all values greater than the to value. The to value itself receives a grade of 100%. For example, if to =
5, then an answer of 5 receives 100%, and an answer of 5.1 receives a grade of 0%:
Your scoring configuration reveals much about your priorities and intentions. You control the flow of
information – for example, by showing your scoring setup to suppliers, you communicate to them how they
can improve their bids. On the other hand, by hiding your scoring setup, you can learn about your suppliers’
strengths and weaknesses as they submit their most natural bids.
Once you finish grading, Ariba Sourcing uses the Overall % and the grades you assigned to calculate an
overall grade for each supplier. This grade is displayed in the Totals row of the Content tab. Factor the final
grades into your awarding decision.
Note: A team can consensus grade supplier responses. See “Using Team Grading” on page 234 for details.
To assign grades:
1 Create a Review for Team Grading task.
5 You see the grading interface. Ariba Sourcing lists the content of your event in rows. Each supplier has a
column where the system displays the responses they submitted and a drop-down list that you use to
assign grades. Assign a grade from 0%-100% depending on how well the responses meet your needs.
The following graphic displays a sample view of the grading interface:
Once you have assigned grades, return to the Content tab. Ariba Sourcing displays the overall grades. Factor
them into your awarding decisions:
Use the formula to verify the grade for Indus Consulting in the following graphic:
Here is the formula with the weights and grades filled in:
In the following graphic, the Maximum total points field does not equal the sum of the weight column. That
is because Maximum total points field is the sum of all the scoring points in the base level. Recall that both
weight and importance are scoring points.
Note: The base level is the root or beginning of the hierarchical scoring structure. Content in the base level
has a number with no decimal points, for example, notice “1 Section 1, or “3 A question created outside of a
section” in the following graphic. When content has a number with a decimal point, for example 1.2, it
means it is nested inside a section.
The Maximum total points field in the previous graphic equals 7, and not 2, because a question has been
created in the base level, outside of any section, causing its importance points to be added into the Maximum
total points field.
The Overall % of any piece of content is calculated in relation to other content in the same hierarchical
location. Since question 3 is in the base level, Sourcing calculates its Overall % in comparison to the weight
of the two sections. The total number of scoring points assigned in that hierarchical location is 7, five of
which belong to question 3. So the overall % of question 3 is 5/7, or 71.43%.
Place the question inside of Section 2, as shown in the following graphic, to cause the Maximum total points
to reset to 2. Then the Overall % of the question is calculated in the standard way (as described in the section
“About Importance” on page 220).
Nested Sections
If you nest sections inside of other sections, it complicates scoring. For example, in the following graphic,
Section 2 is nested inside of Section 1. The weight points of Section 2 do not count towards the Maximum
total points field since they are not located in the base level. Only the weight points of Section 1 are located
in the base level.
Ariba Sourcing indents the weight fields to illustrate the hierarchical scoring structure. For example, since
Section 1 is the only content located in the base level, it contributes all of the scoring points to that level and
receives an Overall % of 100%. Likewise with Section 2. It is the only content nested within Section 1 and
contributes all of the scoring points to that level, causing it to receive all of Section 1’s Overall %.
Notice:
• Ariba Sourcing calculates the Maximum total points field by adding the scoring points of Section (at base
level) and Question (at base level), the only content located in the base level.
• To understand how the Overall % values are calculated, examine the following table:
Total 100%
The above table illustrates how the scoring hierarchy works. The application applies each content item’s
scoring points in the level where it is located. This level is determined by which section it is nested within,
and whether or not that section is nested as well. Although in the application the Weight and Importance
fields are displayed in different columns, it is helpful to think of them as existing together in the same
structure of indentation, as the table shows.
For example, Section (at base level) and Question (at base level) are located in the same scoring level. It
could be difficult to realize this since, as Questions receive Importance scoring points, and Sections receive
Weight scoring points, the two input fields are not in the same column.
Note: In team grading, the project owner is treated as any other team member and participates in the
consensus grading.
To use team grading you must use a RFP or RFI event template, or customize a template to have:
• Scoring must be enabled
• Questions or terms in its content to grade, that are not pre-graded
• Review for Team Graders task created for the event
2 Select Grade.
3 Add your grades. You can click the comment symbol (which contains plus sign) next to the scorable item
and add comments to your grade to indicate your reasons for giving a specific grade to a supplier:
4 You are not required to grade. If you elect not to grade, you can not grade and click Complete Task to exit
the task.
5 Click Submit.
2 When all have responded, click Mark Complete to complete the task.
3 Monitor the project, and select Actions > Consensus Grade. The Consensus Grade page is available only to
event administrators or project owners. The reviewers can access the project and see their own grades
when grading is complete in a read only display. You can filter the content to display graded items only.
You can adjust grades for all graded content.
4 Modify the reviewer’s grades as needed, or click Submit if the grades need no modification. If you are not
satisfied with the grades in general, you can restart the event and initiate a new Team Grading Approval
Task.
If you want to exclude a team member’s response, you can adjust the consensus grade to subtract that
response from the overall grade.
When you are modifying grades, notice that the grade shown initially is the average grade. The average
grade in this example is 81.67%:
You can adjust this average grade. For example, you decide to change the average grade of 81.67% to
80%:
Notice that the average grade (provided by Ariba Sourcing) is shown in parenthesis under your modified
consensus grade.
5 Click the comment symbol (with the plus sign) to add a comment to any adjusted grade to explain the
reason you changed the grade.
Note: Event administrators can view the consensus grade page, and can also submit the consensus grade.
If you are an administrator viewing grades, be sure you do not accidentally submit the grades when you
are viewing the consensus grades.
7 Close an RFI or non-competitive RFP event to complete. For a RFP with line items, go to the Scenario tab
and review the scoring. Make the award from that tab.
About Scenarios
There are many factors to consider when awarding suppliers. You might decide to select a single supplier for
all lots, or you might want to mitigate risk and award the business to two or more suppliers. This can be a
difficult decision for a large event with numerous lots and line items, and with multiple suppliers bidding for
the business. Only project owners can create scenarios.
Using award scenarios, you can create alternative winner scenarios and retain them in the event. You can
name each scenario, award lots to suppliers in the context of the scenario, compare among scenarios, and
export the scenarios to Microsoft Excel to perform additional analysis. You award business to suppliers
based on one or several of your scenarios. The Scenarios Report displays the various award scenarios for
your review. See “Scenarios Report” on page 185 for details.
3 In the pull-down menu for each item or lot, select the participant to whom you are awarding the item. If
you select Split Award, you can specify the percentage for each participant.
4 View the prices and savings for this scenario on the Summary tab.
5 You can click Save As to save a copy of the scenario you are working on.
6 Click Done to save and exit the scenario. The scenario is listed on the Scenarios tab. You can update the
scenario and submit it when you are ready.
7 When you are finished with the scenario, click Submit for award. This triggers the award approval task if
approvals are required. See “To approve an event for award:” for details.
8 After you click Submit for award, you can send email to the awarded and non-awarded participants. When
this task is complete, the awards display in the Award tab.
Optimization can be a useful decision-making tool, however you must know your baseline first to
understand the scenarios that optimization can provide. To get the most out of the optimizations, run a first
scenario without constraints to determine what Ariba Sourcing offers as the optimal choice without the
influence of the constraints. After obtaining that result, create scenarios with constraints to see how they
vary from the unconstrained result.
2 On the Goals and Constraints tab, enter a name for this scenario.
3 Select the goal for the scenario. The goals you can choose from vary with the event. Examples of goals
include minimizing extended price or total cost or maximizing savings. The goals are controlled by the
terms you defined when you added content.
4 Specify whether to have minimum coverage. This means the smallest group of suppliers that can supply
everything you need. The minimum coverage specification does not take price into account. The
minimum coverage goal takes precedence over the price goals you select, and is calculated first by the
optimization.
So, when you select the Minimize Total Cost goal, and the Minimum Coverage goal is Yes, you get the
smallest number of suppliers that can provide the lowest total cost. You might have to choose certain line
items. For example, your optimization of lowest total cost and minimum suppliers offers you Supplier A
and Supplier B, for line items 1 though 7. You find that Supplier A can supply line items 1 though 4, and
Supplier B can supply line items 4 through 7. Your choice is clear for items 1 through 3, and also for items
5 through 7. You will have to make a choice about item 4 however, because both suppliers can provide
you with that item.
5 Click Add Item Group to create an item group. An item group is a group of lots or line items that you select
and then apply specific constraints to the group. You can have multiple item groups, with constraints for
each item group. For example, if you were purchasing computers and their various components, you
could have an item group that focused on printers, another that you used to determine pricing on
peripherals such as keyboards, and yet another item group to use for software purchases.
6 Id you choose All Items, the item group definition is complete.
7 If you choose Selected Items, click Add Items to add lots or line items to the group. You can use item groups
to create various scenarios that focus on specific groups of goods.
8 Select the items to add to the group and click OK.
Select the constraints you want to use for the optimization scenario.
Constraints include:
• Total Amount: Allows you to specify that the total amount of the business be awarded according to the
constraints you specify.
• Per-Item Quantity: Allows you to specify the business to be awarded at the line item level for quantities.
For example, you can specify to award 30% of a specified quantity to a specific supplier.
• Supplier Count: Allows you to specify a finite number of suppliers to receive the award.
Use the Supplier Matching Criteria Relation choices (And or Or) to specify if the criteria should be
inclusive or exclusive. For example, you would specify Or if you had matching criteria of Minority
Owned Business and Woman Owned Business, and would award business to a supplier who fulfilled
either criteria. You would specify And if you wanted to award business only to suppliers who matched
both criteria.
You can specify that the constraints apply for specific supplier choices:
• Incumbent: Apply the constraints to the incumbent supplier.
• Selected Supplier: Apply the constraints to suppliers you select from a list of active suppliers.
• Supplier Matching Criteria: Use matching criteria to create a list of participants. You can filter the active
suppliers by their answers to questions posed during the event, supplier profile criteria, or line item
terms, such as Price or Quantity.
• Participants Bid on All Items: Apply constraint only to participants who bid on all of the items that are
included in the group to which this constraint applies.
The text version of the constraint restates the constraints you have chosen in a sentence. Review this
sentence before deciding to optimize, to be sure that you have chosen the constraints you want. Click
Update to update the text after changing any constraint.
10 When you are finished with the scenario, click Optimize. This runs the optimization on the scenarios,
applying the constraints you specified. After optimization, you have the option to continue working or
view your scenarios.
By combining the ability to create an item group of selected line items, with the ability to create a
constraint on that item group, you can set up scenarios with constraints such as the ones below:
• Allocate exactly 100 computers to Supplier A
• Allocate at most 50 monitors to Supplier B; none to Supplier C
• Allocate business only to suppliers who have been in business more than 10 years
• Allocate 50% of the business to two suppliers
An optimization scenario can have as few as one defined objective, and you can add any number of
constraints. Note that adding numerous constraints does not make the optimal value of the objective
better. In other words, if you are optimizing total price then adding a new constraint to an existing
scenario will not make the lowest total price better. Also, removing constraints can not make the optimal
value worse.
Do not specify mutually exclusive constraints. For example if you request that at least 75% of the
computers be from Supplier A and at least 75% of the computers be from Supplier B, then it is not
possible to satisfy both of these constraints at the same time.
11 After optimization completes, select the scenario name and click Edit.
12 Click the Award Proposal Details tab. Select the award participants for the various lots.
14 After you run the optimization, you can view the scenario in read-only mode by going to the Scenario tab
and selecting View.
You can select Edit to edit the scenario title, set an optimization goal, and edit constraints. If you decide to
modify the award allocations, you can save the optimization scenario as a manual scenario, modify the
allocations, and submit the scenario for award.
15 When you are finished with the scenario, click Submit for award. This triggers the award approval task if
approvals are required. See “To approve an event for award:” for details. After you click Submit for award
you can send email to awarded and non-awarded participants.
When this task is complete, the awards display in the Award tab. From the Award tab, you can export the
award information to Microsoft Excel.
If you change your mind about an award scenario after you submit, you can modify the scenario and
submit again. The scenario you submit later will overwrite the previous value of the award.
Create as many optimization scenarios as you want to model various results for your award. Be sure to
create one scenario with no constraints so you can use that result as a baseline and compare that result to
other scenarios that have constraints.
Your award can be based on multiple scenarios. For example you can have one scenario that focuses on
item group 1, and another scenario that focuses on item group 2. You can eventually submit both of these
scenarios for award.
Optimization Status
There are four possible optimization statuses:
OPTIMIZATION FAILED There are conflicting constraints that prevent successful optimization. For example,
if there is a constraint that you must award more than 20% to Company A, and
another constraint that you cannot award more than 10% to Company A, it would
be a conflict.
2 Click Approval Flow. You can view the status of the task and see which reviewers have approved.
3 On the approved or denied screen, you can write a message and add an attachment to communicate why
you approved or denied the award. Click OK when you are finished composing your message.
Optimization Example
Here is an optimization example with three suppliers, several constraints, and six scenarios.
The table below shows the items and final bids from an auction:
The following table lists the optimization scenarios for the final bids listed in the table above
Scenario 2: Two At most, two suppliers for $429,000 Supplier C Supplier B Supplier B
Suppliers the entire event (100%) $345,000 (100%) (100%)
$72,000 $12,000
Scenario 3: One At most, one supplier for the 436,000 Supplier C Supplier C Supplier C
Supplier entire event (100%) $345,000 (100%) (100%)
$78,000 $13,000
Scenario 6: Only No more than 50% of the 436,100 Supplier B (50%) Supplier B Supplier A
Half of the computers to Supplier C $180,000; (100%) (100%)
Computers to Supplier C (50%) $72,000 $11,600
Supplier C $172,500
In the table above, Scenario 1 is a scenario with no constraints. Since this scenario has no constraints, it is
one of the lower cost solutions.
Dealing with several suppliers has costs, so the buyer wants to know if having three suppliers is worth the
expense. Scenarios 2 and 3 provide the prices for limiting the number of suppliers to one or two. Using two
suppliers costs $400 ($429,000 - $428,600) and limiting to one supplier costs an additional $7000 ($436,000
- $429,000). If the buyer finds that each added supplier costs approximately $5000 then limiting to two
suppliers makes sense but limiting to one does not.
The buyer assumes that older companies are more reliable than newer companies. To verify the cost of using
only suppliers that have been in business for 10 or more years the buyer ran Scenario 4. This result shows
that using only older companies costs the buyer an additional $15,000 ($443,600 - $428,600). The buyer
must decide if it is worth the extra money to avoid using a supplier who has been in business for a shorter
time.
Scenario 5 models not buying monitors from Supplier B while still limiting the selection to older suppliers.
The buyer might run this scenario if they know that Supplier B’s monitors are lower quality. We see from the
results that this costs an additional $3,000 on top of the $15,000 for choosing older suppliers.
In Scenario 6 the buyer tries to reduce the risk of using the younger supplier by limiting the purchase to no
more than 50 percent of the computers. This constraint adds $7,500 to the cost over the best price scenario 1.
Notice that as the scenarios become more constrained that the cost for the buyer goes up. For example
Scenario 3 costs more than Scenario 2, which costs more than Scenario 1. Similarly, Scenario 5 costs more
than Scenario 4, which costs more than Scenario 1.
This section discusses the Ariba Sourcing basic reporting functionality. It lists the reports and how to access
them. For details on report functionality, see the Ariba Sourcing Reporting and Analysis Guide.
About Reports
Ariba Sourcing comes prepackaged with basic reporting functionality that can summarize sourcing
activities. Examples of common reports might include the following:
• Have many events has John Doe run over the last quarter?
• Which events did Acme, Inc. have the opportunity to bid on or was invited to?
• Which events has my group run this month?
• How many completed events are there for IT equipment, covering the Midwest of the United States?
You can export your reports to Microsoft Excel using the Excel Template.
To see the Explore Prepackaged Reports link and be able to use reports, you must be assigned to one of the
following groups:
• Commodity Manager
• Sourcing Manager
• Event Administrator
Viewing a Report
You can view reports on published events.
To view a report:
1 In the Common Actions panel, choose Manage > Prepackaged Reports
3 Click the report name of the report you want to view and select Open.
You see the Refine Data screen, which allows you to refine which events are included in the report. For
example, you could choose to include only events that took place in Region: USA > Michigan.
4 Click View Report.
If you are requesting an exceptionally large report, it might take a long time to prepare. If you cannot save
the report at the moment, you can click Background to request that it generate in a cache.
Note: Reports that you run in the background are only in the cache as long as there is space in the cache.
After you click Background, you return to the Dashboard where you can continue your Ariba Sourcing
activities. Return to the Refine Data page at a later time, and request the same report. Click View Report to
display the report.
Note: If Ariba Reporting and Analysis is enabled, you see a full Ariba Reporting and Analysis report;
otherwise you see a limited version.
Performing Searches
You can search for various types of projects and for documents. You access the search pages from the Search
area on the Dashboard. You can search by keyword or object details. Select the type of object you want to
search for, and click Search.
Note: Searches are retained and when you return to the search area, your last search is displayed.
If you select the list display, you can sort each column by clicking the column heading and toggling the
arrow that appears. You can select which columns appear in the list using the Show/Hide toggles in the Table
Options menu. You can also use the Group by Column options to group together all the results with a
particular name, owner, commodity, or status.
Note: If you cannot find the item you are looking for, it is possible you do not have the group access to view
it. Search results only display items you have permission to view.
If you search for Region = China without advanced hierarchical match, the search only returns Project 2.
If you search for Region = China with advanced hierarchical match enabled, the search returns both Project
1 and 2.
When you enter these operators in the Keyword field when searching, the application does not search for
them. Rather, it recognizes them as special operators that you can use to create complex search queries. For
example:
• sourcing AND strategic returns only results that contain both of the words.
• sourcing OR strategic returns results that contain one of the words.
• sourcing NOT strategic returns results that contain the word sourcing but not the world strategic.
• sourcing NEAR strategic returns results that contain the word sourcing with the word strategic.
Enclose multi-word phrases in quotation marks to search for the phrase in exactly the specified order. For
example: “strategic sourcing”
Parentheses can be used for grouping to build up more complex searching queries, for example: sourcing
NOT (strategic OR “sourcing strategy”)
Using Wildcards
You can use the following search wildcards when searching for titles:
• Use the character % as the multi-character wildcard.
• Use the character _ as the single-character wildcard.
Saving Searches
You can save the searches you use frequently as saved searches. Once you have saved a search, you can
access it in your personal workspace or on the Saved Searches tab of the Search page. You cannot share
saved searches with other users.
To save a search:
1 Perform your search.
You can also delete a saved search by opening it on the Saved Searches tab and clicking Delete.
Ariba Sourcing allows you to import sourcing event data from and export data to Microsoft Excel
spreadsheets. This feature helps you enter a large volume of data quickly or save event information outside
of Ariba Sourcing or to collaborate with colleagues. Data that you can import and export includes content
such as event rules, lots, and line items, supplier invitations, attachments, exchange rates, pre-grades,
questions, and terms. Also event participants can export event data, formulate their responses off line and
then submit their response in the Excel spreadsheet.
Note: There is no need export old projects as a way to archive them. Ariba Sourcing keeps them indefinitely,
has backup copies, and you can use the search feature to find them at any time.
You can use an exported Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to import data later. The exported spreadsheet contains
a snapshot of content in your event. You can modify that data or add to it in Microsoft Excel, then import the
modified spreadsheet back to Ariba Sourcing to create a new project.
3 Click the Excel Import button at the bottom of the page to open the Import Content from Excel page.
4 Select the data you want to export in Step 1. Generally you would pick everything that you might want to
import later.
5 In Step 2, choose “Click here to open your auction in an Excel Spreadsheet.” This option enables you to
either create the file and open it in Microsoft Excel or just save the Excel file to a folder that you specify.
6 If you have attachments to this project and your intent is to create a new project later with this exported
data, choose “Click to download existing attachments into a zip file.” The event data spreadsheet does not
go into this zip file. You specify the folder to which the zip file is downloaded.
7 Click Done, on the right, to return to the project.
To enable this feature contact your Ariba representative and ask to have set the
Application.Integration.ExternalSystem.ContractExportURL parameter set. It should be set with a URL
that can receive an HTTP request containing a zip file.
When this parameter contains a value, the Contract button contains the option to Export Draft Contract To >
External System.
If you would like to write an integration program that exports event data out of some other application, such
as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, you can use the spreadsheet prototype as a model of
how to format the ERP data.
You may now add data to this spreadsheet that matches the content samples in that were exported in it.
Editing a Sourcing Event Excel spreadsheet is described in “Editing Spreadsheets for Import” on page 252.
When you are done, you can import the spreadsheet into a new project as described in “Importing Event
Data from Excel” on page 260.
Keep the following guidelines in mind when entering data into a Microsoft Excel template:
• Do not edit the fields that are blue. In the example below the System Id column and the header row are all
blue and must not be changed.
• Ariba Sourcing maps data into the input fields according to these column names. If you change the
column names, the data is not be recognized and is be ignored.
• The System Id column provides a unique identifier for each line of content. Ariba Sourcing uses this
System Id to update existing items. It works as follows:
• When imported content has a System ID, the system searches the project for content with that ID and
updates it with the revised values, if any.
• Content with no System ID is added to the project, so if you deleted the System ID after export and
then import, you end up with two items.
• You can create a new project from scratch in which no items have a System ID.
• If you check the box for destructive import, any content, suppliers or any other event specifications are
removed and replaced with the imported data.
• The headings of columns that must contain data are color–coded yellow. Columns with blue headings are
for optional information. Use them as needed.
• You must enter a valid value for a required column.
• If you do not enter a value for an optional column, Ariba Sourcing provides a default. This default is the
same default value as that displayed in the user interface.
• You can remove columns that are not required from the template.
• Terms which are defined in the event template do not have to be redefined in Microsoft Excel in order to
import.
• Terms that are not defined in the Attribute Details sheet and do not have the default value of the term set
under the term column are imported as non-negotiable terms.
In general a good method for learning how to import content into Ariba Sourcing using Microsoft Excel is to
first export an event that already exists in Ariba Sourcing to Microsoft Excel, and examine how the system
translates content into the Microsoft Excel format.
Make sure you do not exceed the size limits when building your spreadsheet. See “Content Limits in
Different Events” on page 93 for details.
The worksheet descriptions below describe what you can and cannot import on each worksheet.
The spreadsheet you import can reference attachments. You can import these attachments in a zip file when
you import the spreadsheet. For example, the Terms worksheet contains a column called Reference
Documents, where you can enter a file name of a file you intend to attach. There is also a Reference
Documents column in the Content worksheet.
Worksheet Descriptions
A typical auction project contains the following worksheets:
• Design Instructions – This worksheet contains general instructions for filling out the spreadsheet. This
worksheet is ignored during import.
• Content – The Content worksheet includes non-pricing content types such as Questions, Sections, and
Requirements. Do not edit the system ID column
• Pricing – Use the Pricing worksheet for the lot and line item content types. Ariba Sourcing separates lots
and line items into a separate worksheet due to the number of columns associated with pricing. The
sections listed in the Content tab are also shown on this worksheet so that any child pricing elements can
be shown in their proper hierarchy. If you need to create a new term for a line item, make sure it is defined
on the Terms tab.
• Terms – This worksheet lists all the terms defined in your event and all the details of their definition such
as acceptable values, decimal places, formulas, and so on. You can create new terms.
• Participants – This worksheet lists the username and name for the participants in this Sourcing event. In
some places, participants are also described as “suppliers.” You may import new event participants. The
rules for participant names and organizations that do or do not exist in your database are as follows:
• If the participant exists but the organization does not, you get an error.
• If the participant and organization exist and they match, the participant is invited to the event.
• If the participant and organization exist but do not match, the organization is ignored and the
participant is invited to the event.
• If the participant is new but the organization exists, the participant is mapped to the organization and
invited to the event.
• If the participant the organization are both new, they are both created in the system and the participant
is invited to the event.
Note: You cannot invite other users (non-participants) to the event using Excel import functionality.
• Item Participants – This worksheet has a column for each participant username and each row is an item
in the event showing whether the participant has been invited to respond.
• Rules – This worksheet lists each rule that is defined for this event and the rule value or setting. You can
set values, but you cannot create a new rule. If you export from a project created with a certain template,
be sure to import to a project created with the same template. Templates determine which rules are present
and rules in the spreadsheet that are not in the project to which you are importing are ignored.
• Participant initial Values – For each participant the rows for the various line items show the initial bid
set for each participant, if the these values are to be different than the event initial value. The participants
must match those on the Participants and Item Participants tabs.
• Currency Conversion –This worksheet lists the conversion rate for all the currencies in your Ariba
system converted to the currency for this event. You can change the exchange rates, but you cannot add
currencies that are not defined in your Ariba Sourcing solution.
On each worksheet, the columns contain specific types of information related to that worksheet. For help,
click the plus sign on the left. It expands the spreadsheet to add text under each column describing the
allowed values and default initial value of the column
.
If you are importing new records, the fields with asterisks in front of them are required, such as Number,
Type, and Name, in the example above.
There is error handling in the Microsoft Excel import functionality; if you enter incorrect numbers, Ariba
Sourcing simply adds that content in the base level of the event, assigning ascending whole numbers. You
can then drag and drop or copy and paste the content to order it as you like.
Note: By default, Microsoft Excel interprets 1.10 as a number and removes the trailing 0. In the Number
column, you want Microsoft Excel to treat 1.10 as text instead of a number. You can achieve this effect in
either of the following ways:
• When entering item numbers that end in 0, type an apostrophe first: Microsoft Excel treats the number as
a text entry. For example, if you want the item number 1.10, type ‘1.10.
• Format the entire column of numbers as text, by choosing the column and clicking Format > Cells. Click
the Number tab, and in the Category section, choose Text and click OK. All data entered in the column is
treated as text.
To create a section:
1 Choose the Content worksheet. That is where you create Questions, Sections, and Requirements. Fill out
a row on this worksheet with information to create one section.
2 In the Number column, enter a number. These numbers are associated with content on the Content page.
They indicate how items should be organized in Ariba Sourcing. If you leave the Number column blank or
provide an invalid number, Ariba Sourcing adds those particular sections, items, questions, lots at the root
level.
3 In the Type column, enter Section. Some columns in the template only accept specific values. The Type
column is one of these; it only accepts the names of defined content types. If you enter other text in this
column the system gives an error message when you try to import the template. See the help page linked
to from the Import Content from Excel page for a list of the values you can enter in this column.
4 In the Name column, enter the name of the section. Other columns in the template accept any value. The
name column is one of those; you can name the section whatever you like.
5 Enter the Description of the section. You can enter any description.
6 In the Answer Type and the Allowed Values column, enter nothing; sections do not accept answers.
7 If the section is an envelope, there is also a column for the envelope number. You can have more than one
section in an envelope.
8 When you finish entering the row, it might look like this:
When you import the template with these changes, Ariba Sourcing creates a section like this:
To create a question:
1 Choose the Content worksheet.
2 In the Number column, enter a number. You might want to nest the question inside a section. To do that,
specify a hierarchical number. For example, specifying 2.1 would cause Ariba Sourcing to nest the
question under section 2, assuming that you created a section with number 2.
3 In the Type column, enter Question.
6 Enter the Answer Type. See the help page linked to from the Import Content from Excel page for a list of
all the acceptable answers. For example, you might enter Yes / No.
7 In the Allowed Values column:
• To allow Any Value, leave the cell blank.
• To allow a Limited Range, enter the endpoints separated by a tilde character, for example, to allow
numbers between 0 and 100, enter 0~100.
• To allow a List of Choices, enter the choices you want to allow, separated by pipe characters: 1|2|3|4.
8 When you are finished entering the question information into Microsoft Excel, it might look like this.
Also shown is the section created earlier, so you can understand how the nesting works:
To create a requirement:
1 Choose the Content worksheet.
2 In the Number column, enter a number. You might want to nest the requirement inside a section. To do
that, specify a hierarchical number. For example, specifying 2.2 would cause Ariba Sourcing to nest the
requirement under section 2, assuming that you created a section with number 2.
3 In the Type column, enter Requirement.
4 In the Name column, enter the text of the requirement. For example: You must agree to the General
Commercial Terms.
5 Leave the Description column blank.
8 When you are finished entering the requirement information into Microsoft Excel, it might look like this.
Also shown are the section and question created in earlier procedures, so you can understand how the
nesting works:
To create a lot:
1 Choose the Pricing worksheet.
2 In the Number column, enter a number. Although the content and pricing information are on different
worksheets, when you import the template, Ariba Sourcing merges the two together. Be sure not to
specify numbers that you have already used on the content worksheet. Use the number column to describe
how you want the rows in both worksheets of the Microsoft Excel template to be merged and organized
when you import the template.
3 In the Type column, enter the type of lot to create. Choose from Biddable Lot, Basket Lot, and Basket Lot
(No Items). See “Lots and Line Items” on page 58 to read about the different types of lots.
4 Enter the Name of the lot.
2 In the Number column, enter a number. You might want to nest a line item inside of a lot. To do that,
specify a hierarchical number. For example, specifying 3.1 would cause Ariba Sourcing to nest the line
item under lot 3, assuming that you created a lot with number 3.
3 In the Type column, enter Line Item.
6 The remainder of the columns allow you to specify optional pricing information. Entering the Price or the
Quantity in Microsoft Excel is probably faster than using the application’s web interface.
7 When you are finished entering the line item information into Microsoft Excel, it might look like this:
Ariba Sourcing imports the line item in this way (notice how line item 3.1 can be nested inside lot 3):
3 You can define the detailed attribute definition in the Attribute Details sheet and set the default value of
the term under the term column.
If the term has been applied to multiple items, you only need to define the attribute definition in the
Attribute Details sheet once. If the attribute does not apply to specific item(s), then enter Not Applicable
in the item term column.
3 Click the Excel Import button at the bottom of the page to open the Import Content from Excel page.
This page enables both importing from and exporting to Excel spreadsheets.
4 In Step 4 in the screen above, select whether to add this data to the project or to replace the data selected
in step 1 with the same type of data from the spreadsheet.
5 Go to Step 5 and click the upper Browse button to find the Excel spreadsheet file you want to import.
6 If this spreadsheet lists reference documents on the Content or Terms pages, make sure all these files are
in a zip file. Then Click the lower Browse in Step 4 and find the zip file containing the attachments.
7 Click Import in Step 5 to import these files.
If there are errors, you will get a message listing them, up to about two dozen per import attempt. A sample
with a single error is shown below:
If an error occurs, you must correct the problem in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Clicking cancel takes
you back to the Import Content From Excel page. Browse to your file again and re–attempt to import it.
Note: Not all errors cause an error to be displayed. For example, if you accidentally changed an optional
column heading, the system ignores it during import, and the expected data under the column does not
appear. Always verify that the data you think you loaded is displayed online.
When the template is error free, Ariba Sourcing returns you to the page from which you opened the “Import
Content from Excel” window. Look through the imported information to see if it is what you intended. If
necessary drag and drop, or copy and paste the information to order it correctly.
Ariba Sourcing allows you to use an HTTP request to automatically create a Sourcing event project, upload
an Excel file, and optionally, a zip file containing project attachments specified in the spreadsheet. When the
system receives the HTTP request, it enables you to log in, specify the settings for your new event project,
and then checks and imports the uploaded file.
The upload can include a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file containing event content for a quick project, or
any kind of file for a full project.
For guidelines on creating a valid Sourcing event spreadsheet, see “Editing Spreadsheets for Import” on
page 252.
In addition, you can also export the bid report and a a draft contract back to the ERP or any direct-action
URL that will accept an HTTP request. These exports are described in “Exporting Bids Report to an
External System” on page 186, and “Export Draft Contract to External System” on page 198.
<html>
<body>
<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post"
action="http://[your_Ariba_Sourcing_URL]/ad/createProject/
ERPProjectCreationAction?realm=[realm_ID]">
<input type="hidden" name="realm" value="[realm_ID]">
Excel sheet: <input type="file" name="[fileName]"> <br />
<br />
Zip attachment: <input type="file" name="[zipFileName]"> <br />
<br />
<input type="submit" value="Create Project">
</form>
</body>
</html>
The <form> tag specifies your own Ariba Sourcing URL with the appropriate additions to create a new
project with the imported file(s). For [your_Ariba_Sourcing_URL] fill in the URL for your Ariba Sourcing
solution.
2 Browse to the Excel spreadsheet containing valid Ariba Sourcing event data. An Excel file is required.
3 Browse to a zip file of attachments if there is one. If you are using an Excel file that does not list any
reference documents, and do not need any documents attached to the project, no zip file is necessary.
4 Click Create Project. this opens the Ariba Sourcing login page.
5 Log in when the Spend Management login screen appears. Make sure you log in as a user who has
permission to create projects.
6 When you get to the Create Sourcing Project page, fill out the project details as you would any project.
If you make this a Quick project
• The Excel file is used to supply the event data.
• Make sure you specify the correct event type and select the same template used to create the prototype
after which the imported Excel spreadsheet is modeled.
If you make this a full project, the Excel file and zip file contents are imported as project documents.
7 You may now edit and manage the project as you would any other.
When Suppliers have logged into the event, reviewed the agreement, and gone to the Select Lots page, they
can choose the Select Using Excel tab to download the event as a spreadsheet.
Suppliers can Click Download Content to open or save the spreadsheet to their local hard disk.
When they have finished providing the requested information or bids, they can browse to it and Click Upload.
If Ariba Sourcing detects any errors in the spreadsheet it will report them upon upload. The messages should
help the supplier to fix the problems and upload again.
2 Choose one of the Export to Excel options. If Microsoft Internet Explorer tries to block the download of the
file, choose to permit the download.
3 The file automatically opens in Microsoft Excel. It appears in an alternative format as shown in the
following example. These files cannot be re-imported.
Note: If you want to export supplier bids (all bids or the active bids), you can use the Bids Report. See “Bids
Report” on page 184 for details.
Participants responding to surveys and RFXs can add comments along with each response. This capability
can be used to implement processes for responding to surveys and RFXs that are tailor-made for specific
business requirements. For example, consider a survey response process that requires participants to respond
to all the questions with numbers, percentages, or Yes/No, and add any supporting explanation / detail they
need to provide as a comment to the response. The survey owner or an administrator can export the data to
Excel and process it for further actions/approvals later.
Exporting the data to Excel using the functionality available out of the box (that is, without this function
enabled) results in both the response and the comments being placed in the same column separated by a
space. In addition, if there are multiple comments, they will be concatenated with a '|' character and exported
together. The survey owner needs to manually separate the responses and comments to be able to process the
data and derive the results. Enabling the Enhanced Excel Export ensures that the responses and comments
are exported to separate columns in the exported spreadsheet, and multiple comments are shown in different
lines.
When you export to Excel from the Content tab with this parameter set to Yes, the spreadsheet will have two
column attributes named Response and Comments. The columns will display the responses to questions
and any associated comments respectively. These two attributes will also be displayed in the search filter.
However, in the Content tab user interface, the column attribute headers will be blank for these two
attributes. This is because the Content tab user interface already displays an icon for comments. You can also
use these filters to show/hide the Response and Comments columns in the user interface and in exported
Excel spreadsheets.
Notes:
• This function is available only when you export to Excel using either the Export current page or the Export
all Rows options from the table options menu within sourcing events. It is not available when you export
events.
• The search filters are available only in the Content tab and not on any other page.
• The new behavior is not available for comments entered for line item terms. These comments will still get
exported along with the corresponding response into the Response column.
For more information on configuring the pivot table layout, see “Using the Pivot User Interface for Content
Tables” on page 205.
This section describes how to create a template for sourcing events. Creating templates is a separate feature.
If it is not enabled and you would like to obtain it, contact Ariba customer support.
To create a new template, you must be in a group that has permission, such as the Template Creator group.
The following related actions are covered in the Supplier Process Management Guide in the sections
indicated:
• Search is described in the section entitled “Performing Searches.”
• Upload document is described in the section entitled “Introduction to Sourcing Process Management.”
• Import template is described in the section entitled “Creating Sourcing Project Templates.”
2 From the Documents tab on the Templates page, select Actions, on the right.
3 From the Actions menu, select Create > Template, at the bottom.
4 From the Select Project Type for Template page, select Sourcing Project and click OK.
6 Select the Base Language. The Base Language is used when there is no version of the template in the
user’s language.
7 Enter the Name and Description for the template.
8 Select Quick Project. A Quick Project is a sourcing event such as an RFI, RFP, or an Auction (forward or
reverse).
Choosing to create a Full Project indicates that you want to create a project with process management
capabilities turned on. If you choose Quick Project, then you will create a project containing only an event
template.
For information on full projects refer to the Ariba Sourcing Process Management Guide. The full-project
tabs for Documents, Tasks, and Team are described in Chapter 1, “Introduction to Sourcing Process
Management.”
9 Specify the event type from the pull-down menu. The choices are RFI, RFP, Auction, or Forward Auction.
A sample is shown below.
When a project owner creates an event, they get to select the event type. When they do, the event
templates that appear for that event type are those that match the event type specified here when the
template was created.
10 Click OK. The template now exists.
To configure the template, right-click on the template name in the Documents box, to the right, and select
Action > Edit.
You are now ready to add rules and content to your template.
Event Rules
Event rules control how the event works. Each rule that you can include in an event template is covered in
Chapter 3, “Event Rules.”
When creating a template, you often have the option to withhold control of this rule from the person who is
using the template to create an event, also known as the project owner. The options are:
• Delegated: The ability to edit this rule is delegated to project owners. When they create a project, they can
see this rule and they are allowed to change the setting.
• Read only: When they create a project, project owners can see this rule and setting, but cannot edit it.
• Hidden: When they create a project, project owners cannot see this rule or how it is set.
If this option is absent, the project owner can control the rule setting. For project owners, this means they
may read about rules in this section that do not appear in the template they are using because the template
creator chose Hidden. Many of the rules that are Delegated or Read only are also exposed to event
participants.
The Content tab enables you to create certain content elements that appear in every project that uses this
template. Content you create in a template become item templates. That means that any content you add to
your project will look like the appropriate item template. When you create item templates, you can specify
whether the element can be modified after being added to a project.
Lots – You can create one lot of each type. The types are:
• Bid at Item level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing during bidding)
• Bid at lot level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing post bidding)
• Bid at lot level, compete at lot level (do not collect item pricing)
• Bid discounted value at item level, compete at lot level (collect item pricing during bidding)
You can add terms and formulas to lots, but you can only add formulas if the formula rule is set to Yes. If you
need to add a formula here, but do want to rule to allow project owners to add formulas, you can set the rule
to Yes until you have added all the formulas you need and then change it to one of the No options.
You cannot add a line item to a lot definition. When the event creator adds line items to a lot, they are added
using the Line item template, described below.
Line Items – If no line item is defined in the project template, the project owner is free to create line items
containing any terms required. The default line item contains these terms:
• Price
• Quantity
• Extended Price, with a formula of ‘Price’*’Quantity’
You can remove these and replace them with other terms. However, if you have a project in which all your
line items need to be different, it is easier to use a template with the proper line item predefined in the
template, than to have to change each line item as you add it.
If you define a line item in the template, all line items created in a project using this template will look like
that line item.
An example of a line item definition would be one in which you change Price to Hourly Rate and Quantity to
Hours. The easiest way to do that is to edit each term and change the name Price to Hourly Rate and
Quantity to Hours. When you change the name of a term, the name is automatically updated in all the
formulas and functions that use it.
In this example the Extended Price term, which uses the ‘Price’*’Quantity’ formula is automatically
updated to use the ‘Hourly Rate’*’Hours’ formula. If you make a copy of the Total Cost Auction template
and change the names of the Price and Quantity terms, the total cost would automatically apply all the
defined adders, subtracters, multipliers and discounts to ‘Hourly Rate’*’Hours’.
Note: The terms Price, Quantity, and Extended Price are all designed to appear in reports. If you change their
names to automatically update any the formulas they are in, they still appear in reports with the original
names: Price, Quantity, and Extended Price.
If you select Delegated, it allows the project owner to change or delete the term when they use this template
to create an event project. Unchecked means the project owner can still set the initial, historic, and reserve
price, they just cannot change any formulas or remove the term.
However, if you are creating a template for a Dutch auction and you want to allow the owner the option of
letting the participant set the quantity on which they bid, you have to select Delegated. Then the project
owner, when creating the event, can say that the participant is required to respond. It also allows project
owners to set a range of quantities, if they want to enforce a minimum or maximum quantity per bid.
The bidding rules for line items are unique to creating a line item in a template.
Extended Bidding Term controls the bidding term that is used when the buyer creates a line item that specifies
“Participants bid on all units (extended bidding).”
Award Term specifies which term you can split up, if you want to award part of your business to different
suppliers. Typically, this term is Quantity, so you can award part of the quantity term to another supplier.
Compete on Term specifies which term is monitored by the Bid Guardian, and the feature for automatically
beating a bid and so on.
Use initial value as can be none, Ceiling, Default, and Ceiling and Default. There may be instances where the
auction uses the initial value as the target value for the initial bid.
Cost Terms – When you add a cost term to the definition page, it becomes a prototype for any cost terms the
buyer adds to the sourcing event project.
Content Tab
In addition, you can create the following content:
• Section
• Question
• Requirement
• Attachment
• Cost Terms
• Formula
• Content From Library
Although most content is specific to each event, there are still some content questions and specifications that
might be common to many events of this type. Some common questions might be whether the company is an
equal opportunity employer, minority owned, or willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Content elements you create on the content tab are common to every project.
Notes:
• Creating an item is the same as in a project, except for these differences
• You can only create formulas if the Initiator Action rule for creating formulas is Yes. However, if you do
not want formulas enabled in the project you can set this rule to Yes until you have all the formulas you
need in the template, and then set the rule to one of the No options before you publish the template.
• If you want to create cost terms, you must create a cost term definition on the Definitions Tab and all the
cost terms you create on the content tab have to match it. The content tab allows you to change the cost
terms you create so that they do not match, but if you do, an error appears on the summary page and you
cannot publish the template until all the cost terms match the prototype on the Definitions Tab.
• The Team Access control has no effect in the template. It is there so that the control will be present in the
event you build from the template. Team Access settings in the template are not carried into the event.
The Edit Overview screen enables you to edit the title and description, which you initially set when you
created the project. You generally do not need to change any of the settings on this screen.
The Customize Messages screen enables you to select one of the standard notification messages and change
the subject line and content.
The Publish button is grayed out on this page because it is not available from here. To publish your template,
see “Publishing a Template” on page 274.
Publishing a Template
Before you can use an event template you have to change its status from “Draft” to “Active.” This is called
“publishing” it. Use the following procedure to change your template status to Active:
1 If you have not already done so, go to the Templates page by selecting Manage > Templates:
2 From the templates page, click on the name of the template whose status you want to change and select
Open.
3 In the Properties box, click the Actions menu and select Publish.
5 The status of this template is now changed to Active and you may now use it to create events.
If you get a message that you cannot publish your template until you correct all the errors, edit the template
and go to the Summary page. The errors should appear in a gray box at the top of the page.
C D
calculations, total cost 117 date answer type 74
Cancelled status 19 Daylight Savings Time 171
cancelling events 201 decimal
categories of commodities 62 answer type 74
ceiling/floor prices, setting 61 places, in questions 75
change history, viewing for events 175, 205 precision 62
characters, limits in fields 14 decrement, setting for bids 63
closing events 201 delete event 204
comments, allowing in supplier responses 78 deleted documents, searching for 246
commodity codes deleting searches 246
specifying for line items 62 downward bidding 71
specifying for projects 14 draft events, discarding 175
compete on term 71 Draft status 18
competitive event 94 Dutch auction, setting up 133
Completed status 19
connection indicator for suppliers 181
content E
access control 78 EARNINGS function 101
event types 57 Earnings term 65
filtering content tables 205 editing searches 246
content library 88 email
copying content from 90 address to receive participant mail 46
creating documents from past events 91 undelivered 46
granting access to 92 email invitations sent to suppliers 53
uploading files to 92 email notifications
Content tab 180 for supplier responses to postings 149
contracts envelope bidding, defined 27
adding event information 199 event content 57
creating new 198 archiving for future events 88
saving events as 197 best practices 93
copying events 13, 14 copying from content library 90
cost components 41 copying to a new event 88
and total cost, comparing 124 creating from past events 91
enabling 41 file attachments 71
cost terms 107 hiding from suppliers 77
adders 107 organizing by section 72
applying to line items 109 overview of types 57
creating 111 translating 157
multipliers 108 uploading files 92
percent discount 108 using the content library 88
subtracters 108 event owners, creating questions for 77
summary of concepts 109 event rules 25
types of 107 bidding 36
validating in supplier view 112 currency 40
costs initiator actions 41
hard 114 market feedback 42
of working with particular suppliers 107 timing 28
soft 114 event statuses 18
currencies Cancelled 19
bidding 162 Completed 19
currency rules 40