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Inside Scoop - May 13, 2026
Join Ria Diaz as she discusses Super Users, changes coming to Admin section, Roadmap & Ideas. Cost Savings: how to show the value of bidding Business Documents: collect documents from vendors. Requests: let your departments get the work started, save yourself time, and increase visibility into your projects.
Video Transcript
Welcome everybody to our monthly Inside Scoop session.
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It is May 13th.
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And this is our 112th session.
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So really love that everybody keeps coming back for this.
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Excuse me.
3:38
Sorry, I'm getting over a cold and I just have this cough that will go away.
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So I apologize if I start coughing really quick.
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We'll come back to you right away.
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So for those of you who are new, what is Inside Scoop?
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So Inside Scoop is a monthly webinar that we hold.
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It's always on the second Wednesday of the month at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern.
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And you can sign up for all of our future sessions today if you wanted to.
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All you need to do is go into our knowledge base area and then go to the webinar section and you'll be able to sign up ahead of time.
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That's great because it gets it on your calendar.
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And don't worry if you got to, you know, something comes up and you got to bounce on us, we don't take it personal, just know that the day after, we will also be posting the recording.
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Oops.
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We'll be posting the recording in our inside scoop area, or sorry, our knowledge base area as well.
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So you'll be able to watch past recordings.
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Our next one is going to be June 10th at 10 a.m.
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And then if you have topics, anything you want us to cover, please feel free to email me.
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You have my email address right there on the slide.
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You can email my team, but we really wanna take this session to bring you new features, upcoming items, but also address any issues you have.
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So if you're like, hey, Rhea, next session, can you cover this or that?
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We are more than happy to do that.
5:13
Okay, you guys drive these sessions for us.
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I do wanna point out this.
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You should have been seeing this pop up in your system as you log in.
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We also have our closures in our knowledge base.
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We post them about six months out.
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So you'll be seeing the ones coming up for January of next year, very shortly.
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But we do have two times a year when support is going to be closed.
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May 14th, which is this Thursday, we are closing at 2 p.m.
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Pacific Standard Time, which is 3 p.m. Eastern.
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And then we're gonna be closed all day on Friday.
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and that is to do company trainings.
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So please be aware.
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Now, does that mean we're totally ghosting you?
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No, we're gonna kind of keep an eye, but we're not going to be as responsive as we've been just because we are going to be focusing on training.
6:08
All right.
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This next session or slide I always like, this introduces our new clients.
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And if you've been paying attention the last couple of meetings, you start to see more and more states outside of California, so that's fantastic for us.
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We're super excited. We have Rim of the World and Park District in California.
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We have the City of East Orange in New Jersey, City of Lomita in California, and City of Mulberry in Massachusetts.
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So, want to welcome all of you to Planet Bids.
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We're super excited to have you as part of the family. Sorry. Oh my god. I'm sorry about that. Coffee crisis here.
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So what are we going to talk about today? This one is really important. Super users.
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If you are a super user, it is time for you to go into the admin section and really review who has access and what access.
7:20
If you're not a super user and you're attending today's session, please go talk to your super user. We understand there's turnover that happens.
7:30
You want to make sure that somebody who's left your agency is not still able to access your system. So please review your user list.
7:40
Okay. We're also going to talk about a brand new section. I am super excited about this.
7:46
it's our roadmaps and ideas.
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So you'll see, you have a little screenshot there if you go into your initials.
7:54
Now you'll see one more option, roadmaps and ideas.
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You're gonna be able to see what's coming, what's been released, what's coming up, things on our roadmap, and you can vote for them, comment on it, suggest ideas that we might want to add into our system.
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So you're gonna be able to speak through the system.
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We're also gonna focus a little bit on awarding solicitations, why it's so important, how you look at your award values, how it reflects in the better offers you get from your vendors, how to track cost savings and spend.
8:33
Because right now a lot of our agencies are facing budget crisis.
8:38
And we all know purchasing is typically the first one to you don't need this.
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You're kind of like, yeah, we do.
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We do a lot for our agency, right?
8:53
purchasing.
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So I'm going to show you the tools to kind of prove, hey look how much of an impact we make on an agency's budget, right? And when I say we, I mean purchasing.
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So I'm going to really go through some stuff on that as well.
9:09
We also have just, I will be happy to give you some more information. And then really excited about this one today and that is business documents.
9:45
We're Actually, yeah, we've rolled this out. Lauren, is that correct?
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Did we roll this out already, or is it coming? It's coming May 19th.
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So if you're interested in opting into this as an early, like early access May 19th, please let Rhea or I know and we can get you that early access that starts on May 19th. Thank you. So that voice you heard is Lauren Shin.
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She is one of our project managers, on our idea team.
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She's focusing a lot on compliance and how do we manage compliance, right?
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Getting documents, certifications, pre-qualifications, things like that, throughout the entire system.
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So you may have seen some emails, you may get some emails from her.
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She may reach out to you and ask you questions.
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So if you see a name, Lauren Chen, please respond.
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She's one of us.
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She's one of the good guys, but we're going to demonstrate business documents to you today and how you can use it to collect W9s and any other type of business document like proof of insurance, how you can trigger reminders to your vendors, ask them for those documents and even verify at the time you're reviewing the submissions.
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Again, all of that is free.
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So we're going to show you how that will happen.
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One of the things I want to point out, this is really a strong point for me.
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And I want to beg all of you.
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My team is really trying to reach out to all of you.
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Make sure that you're getting the full value out of PlanetBit.
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We're not trying to sell you a module that you don't have.
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We're trying to get you to really take advantage of all the bells and whistles of what you've already purchased.
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So we reach out quarterly now and we wanna sit down with you and just kind of review your usage and say, did you know you're using this?
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Did you know you're using that?
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Especially when there's been a lot of turnover, we find some agencies didn't realize they had a particular module because they weren't granted permission to that module.
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So we wanna go over everything and make sure that you're really seeing the true value and getting everything you want so that you can work smarter and not harder.
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Request is one of those.
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So we are gonna talk on requests real quick as well.
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I've kind of mentioned it in previous sessions.
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I'm not gonna go deep dive into it, but requests you get absolutely for free and unlimited users.
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Some of you in California, you have a new requirement And that is AB339, where if there's a certain type of service work, you have to go to HR first and get approval, right?
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Make sure that nobody in your agency can do the work before you go out for a solicitation audit.
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So how do you track that?
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Well, Request is going to allow you to track that very, very easily.
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For those of you who have business interest section turned on in vendor registration, Do you know that we've updated the vendor export to include that now as well?
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Okay, so I'm not going to show that one, but I just want to point it out that that information is there now and available to you in your vendor export in vendors.
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We've made some changes to insurance and we have some changes coming up as well.
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So for those of you who are doing or using our insurance module, We have now added to a couple of fields.
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One is your cert holder, description of operations and locations and vehicles.
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So it is an optional field, but there is a field now available to you and to your vendors to complete that information. You can see it in the screenshot there.
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And then coming really, really soon, we are going to have a AI OCR reader.
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It'll be available to you and to your vendors, so just upload that document.
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It's going to ask you to verify that it's reading it correctly, and then it'll auto-populate those fields.
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It'll make it much easier for you and your vendors to complete all of the areas.
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Also Lauren Chen has sent out a couple of emails to you who are insurance users.
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She has a quick, really brief survey for you.
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It doesn't take more than five minutes, probably even less.
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If you could respond to those surveys, it would really help us.
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This is your chance to let us know about what you like, don't like, that kind of thing about insurance.
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This one I don't have anything to show you other than this screenshot.
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It is a visual mock-up.
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We are going in and revamping evaluations.
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I've seen a couple of other mockups of different areas of the system.
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And for those of you using our evaluation module right now, hold on to your hats.
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Oh, my God.
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I cannot tell you how amazing the new version is going to be.
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And we're going to roll that out to you automatically, right?
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So if you already have it, you're not going to have to worry about paying for an upgrade or anything like that.
15:13
But it is going to have an automatic conflict of interest card that evaluators have to complete immediately before they get into it.
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It's going to have a much simpler scorecard experience for your evaluators.
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It's going to allow you to do side-by-side reviews.
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So what do you need to score on, right?
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What's your criteria?
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And actually look at the proposal.
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So make it really easy for them.
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We're gonna have some AI help as well.
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It's not gonna do any scoring, but it'll just say, hey, some areas of interest you might wanna review and look at.
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And so it'll help also identify those contradictory statements, right?
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Page five, they said yes.
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Page 12, they said no.
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Page 14, they said maybe, right?
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So really call those out so you can dive deeper into a proposal and take a good look at everything they've submitted to you.
16:10
And then today we're also going to take a look at business certification.
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So we've been sending out surveys, you guys have seen them pop up.
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And I just wanna clarify what business certification can do because many of you said you didn't know what it was and that we even offered it.
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So we're gonna go through quite a bit about it just to kind of make sure you understand what we can offer in that realm and then see if it's something of interest to you.
16:40
All right, let's go ahead and take a look.
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And the last slide on the handout is if you don't know how to get to the knowledge base, we've got a quick walk through there for you. All right, let me close this and move that over.
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Oh my God, excuse me. All right, super users. So this is really important.
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If you are a super user, one, you'll have access to admin, but specifically within admin, you are going to have access to user licenses, users and departments.
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What we need you to do is go into users.
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You can uncheck this to see all of your current users.
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If it's checked, it'll also show you past users who've been deactivated.
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But I need you to go in and look at your active people, should they still have access into the system.
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If they shouldn't, just simply open up and hit Deactivate.
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And once you do that, hit Save.
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And you can deactivate everybody and then hit save.
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But you really want to do that, because otherwise, they could potentially still log into your system.
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You really want to make sure that anybody who's parted from your agency no longer has that access.
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All right.
18:22
The next thing I want to talk about is our roadmap and ideas.
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Super excited about this as well.
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So go to your initials, go to roadmap and ideas.
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We have a couple of different fields up here.
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So one, this is our change log.
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It's kind of letting you know, we've got a little heat seeking kind of color coded tells you, you know, is it coming soon?
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Is it a procurement life cycle, risk and compliance, right?
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What category does it fall into?
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And if you click on it, it'll tell you a little bit more about it.
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I also have a feedback section and I love this feedback.
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I really want to encourage everybody to come in here and take a look at it.
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So with business documents, it's coming shortly.
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If we click on it, and you can see May 26, we click on it, it's going to give us a little write-up about it.
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Over here is an arrow.
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I can vote on it.
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How important is it to me?
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And I can write a comment in here and submit a comment to the idea team.
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They take a look at it and they may comment back to you on it.
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You can subscribe to follow about this information.
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They're really telling you what's coming on our roadmap, what's come out, and then even what's in our future.
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So in progress versus planned, and you can go, yeah, that's really important to me.
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Let's up it, right?
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Let's give it a vote, make it a number one.
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So you can come in here and really give us your feedback.
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We want to hear from you because that's what we want to focus on.
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How do we make this system work for you and solve your issues?
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All right, I am just gonna pop over and take a look If anybody has any questions Whatever, please feel free to type it into questions or into chat.
20:23
I'll be keeping an eye on both of those Now before I go into I Gotta figure out how to get that out of my way Actually, you know what I'll do.
20:35
Hold on one second Let's just close that window.
20:39
All right.
20:40
I need to go to my polls.
20:45
Hold on one second.
20:47
I have a poll for you.
20:49
Go to meetings changed all of my controls.
20:54
I'm not sure where my poll went.
20:56
Hold on one second.
21:33
No, that's materials.
21:45
Well, I think this is fun.
21:51
Love when they change systems on you and don't tell you.
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All right.
21:57
I have a question.
21:58
I'm just going to ask it and I'm going to ask you guys to put it in the chat or questions area please.
22:05
Really important that you kind of give us some information.
22:09
Okay, so my first question to you before I go into further of our system is, does your agency actively certify vendors in diversity?
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So that could be small business, local, DBBE, DBEs.
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Think about that.
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Do you guys actually have vendors complete an application in order to qualify to be counted as a diversity vendor?
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And diversity can be any kind of classification, right?
22:52
Again, local, small business, DBBE, DBE, Tacba, ESA, Lambda, all of those.
22:59
If you do, can you please go in and either in the chat or question area, just say yes or no.
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Thank you, Tracy.
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I appreciate that.
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I'm going to give you guys a second or two to go in, and we're asking this for a couple of reasons.
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Give you guys a few more minutes, getting you guys putting in your answers.
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I appreciate everybody who's answering right now.
23:31
A couple more of you, I know there's more of you on this call.
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Holly, could you tell me, just put it in chat, you don't have to respond here.
23:51
But what do you diversify?
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What do you certify?
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Is it small business?
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Is it local?
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I believe you guys are small local, if I remember correctly.
24:10
All right, I have another question for you guys.
24:15
Do you do, perfect, thank you.
24:18
Do you pre-qualify construction vendors?
24:26
So when you think about pre-qualified, I'm talking CUPCA, maybe as a prime, maybe as a subcontractor, MEPs, non-MEPs, right, do you have a process where before a vendor can actually participate and submit an offer in construction, do they have to get qualified?
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So if you can go ahead and put, thank you, Andre, I appreciate that.
25:04
And if you do qualify for construction, are you using our system?
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Are you using a third party?
25:11
Are you doing it paper or manual?
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We have a couple of questions, depending on how you answer, you might follow it up.
25:17
It's just surveys.
25:19
We're not going to try again to sell your system, but we want to understand your processes for going through these certifications.
25:27
So one of the things that Lauren is looking at is how do we improve, make things easier for you, for your vendors, and just overall, make sure that we're really providing the services and the functions that you would want.
25:45
Really wish I could find my poll thing in here.
25:48
I'm gonna have to ask GoToMeeting.
25:55
All right.
25:58
Let's go ahead and go through the next part here.
26:11
Great comment, Jessica.
26:12
So they certify that they're licensed except once they've submitted a bid, not sure what happens prior.
26:22
That's actually good to know that there might be somebody else that deals with all of this, right?
26:27
Where that happens.
26:29
All right.
26:30
Let's look in the system about awarding projects.
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And these are a little pop-up.
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I hope you guys have been reading our pop-ups, really important.
26:41
Get that information out to you.
26:43
We're looking at a live site.
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And so I'm gonna use them as an example.
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You'll notice these slides up here.
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Each and every one of you can configure what you want to see here.
26:56
So you can have a completely different dashboard than your coworkers.
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And all you need to do is click edit.
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You can click this plus to add a slide, pick what you want out of it, remove it.
27:12
But I have cost savings and award amount awarded.
27:16
We can even come in here and do awaiting awards.
27:21
And you'll see why I do this.
27:23
So in the last 30 days, SMUD is actually awarded $1.3 million worth of solicitations, right?
27:37
Cost savings, out of doing that, they saved $18.8 million by doing a solicitation through the system.
27:47
How are we calculating that?
27:49
Well, I'm going to show you that on my demo site, and let me go to a different version of my demo site real quick.
28:02
You do this in your solicitations.
28:06
And so when you are creating a solicitation, no matter what template you're using.
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So it could be for quick quotes, it could be for RFPs, construction, you name it.
28:20
So, once you pick your template, I'm going to scroll down, and you'll notice here under other solicitation details, there are two fields, engineer's estimate, the other templates, it'll say target, bid amount, two different words, same exact function.
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They will both say internal use only.
28:44
What that means is your eyes open, public, and your vendors cannot see this field.
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this will be a single value if you use it.
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If you use the field below it, that your vendors will see.
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So if you do want to share a budget or an estimate, anything like that, you can go ahead and do it in this field.
29:05
But this one right here is your eyes only, nobody else is going to see it.
29:11
So when you're looking at doing your procurement, whether it's a quote, RFI, formal bid, We kind of have an understanding of how much money we think we're going to spend or we have room to spend.
29:29
And sometimes if we don't know, it's really easy now to just jump into your internet browser and say, hey, how much would this cost me, and it can give you like a ballpark figure.
29:39
You can also go into the RFX library and look up past projects.
29:48
Did anybody else do this type of solicitation?
29:51
What kind of pricing did they get?
29:54
And then you can plug in what you expect to.
29:57
So your guesstimate or estimate or budget.
30:02
Once you award the project, and this is where it's key, you have to put it into award.
30:09
So I'm gonna go ahead and do that right now on this one.
30:12
Okay, and I'm gonna pick my vendor and I'm gonna go ahead and save that.
30:22
Now that I have it awarded, if you go to the reports tab, you're going to see a cost savings report on the project itself.
30:35
And in here, that blue line was the estimate, right?
30:40
That was our target bid amount engineer's estimate.
30:45
So once you award it, we will compare it against the awarded highest mean median and lowest offers.
30:53
And so we can see how much money we saved on this particular project.
30:59
You can then run it off multiple projects.
31:05
So by going to solicitations, whatever your search criteria is. And then go over here to reports, click cost savings. There we go.
31:29
And now it's going to look at that field on all the awarded projects.
31:34
So how much money did we think we were going to spend versus actual spent?
31:40
So as you can see on my demo site, went way over budget on a lot of stuff, but it can run some really strong, powerful metrics for you.
31:48
When you're doing those searches, right, in here, you can search by maybe a posted date range.
31:56
So if you want to look at fiscal year or quarter, maybe you want to look by category codes, pick all your construction codes.
32:05
There's a lot you can go in and sort and search by, even by department.
32:11
So that can really, really help you.
32:14
The next one I'm going to do is actually go into a live site, and I'm going to show you one more metric you can run.
32:23
It is the Metropolitan Water District.
32:32
In admin, under solicitations, line items, you can create a library of common items that to purchase over and over and over again.
32:51
So when you think about it, there's depending on what kind of agency you are, school district, transportation, utilities, things like that.
33:00
There are certain things that you're constantly constantly trying to purchase.
33:07
Well, if I now go here under, oops, just refresh my page.
33:12
I think I lost Internet connection there.
33:16
There we go.
33:18
There are reports under more, you'll see the reports here.
33:23
There is a very specific report for line items, reports, there we go.
33:33
You'll come in here and you'll see a line item report here, and you search for your line item.
33:39
You can search by code number, by keyword, but once I select the item I'm looking for, It's actually going to give me metrics on my spend for that item.
33:51
So we can see how many projects, there were two solicitations that we had this particular item in, okay?
34:00
Number of items, there were six altogether, number of bidders, six.
34:04
What was the average unit price we got in versus the average unit price we purchased at, right?
34:11
We awarded at.
34:12
What was the lowest price we got?
34:16
So $2.95.
34:17
So a little small difference, but when you have that value and you start looking at some of your other items, you may realize, wow, we've always been bundling this item in with other stuff.
34:29
It might actually be time to separate it out and really go out for a bid on just this item or maybe a few other key items so that we can get better pricing for it.
34:40
It can really help you understand your metrics on individual item spend as well.
34:48
We're going to tell you which line it was in that project, who your bidders were, and all of that good stuff.
34:55
It really does help you, and that way when somebody comes up to you and say, well, why are you using Planet Bids, an e-procurement system, you can say, well, this is why.
35:07
It's saving us money by doing these procurements.
35:10
And also look at your overhead, right?
35:14
Are you having to mail out paper anymore?
35:16
Are you having to store that paper out?
35:18
Are you having to shred that paper?
35:20
So when somebody comes to you and says, I wanna slash your budget and take your tools away, really think about what does that tool do for you?
35:30
How does it help you get your job done and do it quickly, efficiently, and get you all that metrics and data that you need, as well as audit compliance.
35:41
So I want to go through that.
35:45
So next thing we're going to do in here is talk about business documents, which I am super excited about.
35:58
Hold on.
35:59
I have a question.
35:59
What is the best way to use this information when we are still sitting for services that are bid at an hourly rate, but then they are issued a not to exceed contract?
36:09
Oh, yes, we understand that that is an issue within the system, and we actually have our idea team looking into a way to solve that.
36:20
What I would suggest right now, let me go into solicitations, and we'll do this on my demo site.
36:27
So if I go into, let's do one of my RFPs, for instance, or maybe I'll do supplies.
36:49
Who do I have?
36:54
That's a good one.
36:58
That's not a good one.
36:59
Let's do an RFP.
37:07
It doesn't matter.
37:08
What I'm going to show you is going to work for anything.
37:09
but we're going to go in and look at one that is award pending.
37:14
So I'm going to go over to awards.
37:16
Your submissions area, you do have a place to put the value in that they gave you.
37:22
You do not have to display that value, right?
37:26
So if I go into edit on the submissions tab, line item detail, I can change that and hide that value, okay?
37:36
So let me go over here.
37:37
I'm going to go back to close real quick.
37:40
submissions, make my submissions public. I'm going to change that to none.
37:45
So I'm actually hiding the value or I could still show it, right?
37:50
Show all the line item pricing, all that good stuff, depending on what I'm doing.
37:54
But when I go over to awards and I'm doing my award pending or awarded stage, you have public notes.
38:02
You can then come in here and say, Okay, award is not to exceed $50 ,000, right?
38:19
So we can put a note to the public.
38:23
And once I save this, let me copy this so it makes it easier for me to find, save, send that.
38:38
If I go over to the vendor side of the system and the vendor goes in and takes a look at it, if I go to the awards tab, I can now see that note.
39:00
Is it the most ideal solution?
39:04
No, we are working on an ideal solution for you.
39:06
that is something we're currently working on because we've had that feedback from a couple of agencies lately.
39:11
And that's why it's really important for you guys to respond to our surveys, to go to our roadmap and take a look, because we really want to hear from you.
39:21
When CST reaches out and says, hey, let's do these quarterly reviews, it's also a great time to give us feedback and say, hey, we have this new thing we have to now start complying with.
39:31
What can you do to solve it for us?
39:33
So we really, really, you know, we're not like some agencies or some companies out there where, hey, you get what you get kind of thing.
39:41
No, we want to be your best provider, your best partner.
39:46
And so part of that is reach out to us.
39:49
Let us know.
39:51
So good question there.
39:53
Thank you for that.
39:56
All right, let us go in.
40:00
Sorry about that.
40:02
All right, now that I am here, my demo site, I'm going to go to a different demo site.
40:08
Notice right now, the second I went into this site, I got this little pop-up and it's telling me, hey, let's take a look at your profile.
40:16
It's been a while.
40:18
We're now going to prompt your vendors every time they log into your site or go to your site, if they're logged in elsewhere, and prompt them.
40:26
Please go in and review your registration information.
40:30
And one of the things I want to point out that's going to be brand new and coming is during registration, you will now be able to turn on a section called business documents.
40:47
And in those you will have a section called W9, you will have a section called agency forms, and you will have a section called other.
40:56
you will be able to turn on or off each one of those three sections of independent.
41:05
With it, the W-9, we do provide them a W-9 already, so you don't have to worry about providing that to them, we'll provide it.
41:14
But in your other sections, if you want to provide them a document, you can definitely do that as well, up to two documents, and they will be able to return up to two attachments.
41:26
Now you ask for more, they can always do a zip folder and we always have instructions in our help center for them on how to create zip folders and attach it.
41:37
You can even put instructions about those documents and your vendors are going to be able to upload them.
41:43
They can remove something.
41:44
They can even click on the eye to make sure that they uploaded the right document.
41:50
You can see that's definitely not something you guys would be asking for. The reason I have that out there. These are not going to be mandatory sections.
41:59
You don't want mandatory sections because your vendors need to participate in their projects.
42:06
And some of your documentation, proof of insurance, even the W-9, may take them a little bit together because they may have to go to somebody else within that company to get these documents.
42:19
But you have bit out already.
42:20
They want to start participating and downloading your documents so they can start to get a proposal ready.
42:26
So I'm gonna go ahead and hit submit as a vendor.
42:31
Internally on your side of the system, so let me go ahead and jump into that agency real quick. This is one I have it enabled for.
42:45
Once you have it enabled, first of all if you are in vendors and you are looking at a particular vendor, bicycle to the bottom of their profile.
42:59
I'm going to see the documents that they've submitted.
43:04
I can come in here and click on the eye to see what they actually gave me, right?
43:09
That's not what I wanted.
43:11
And this one, the W9, oops, I didn't do it.
43:15
That was somebody else.
43:16
Again, that's not a W9.
43:18
Well, yeah, they gave us some documents, but none of them are correct.
43:24
or maybe they're just missing a document altogether.
43:28
You can click on request documents, well which one, so I want them to replace all three because they just gave me the same thing and it was garbage.
43:37
I can do a preview of the email that will be generated to the vendor And you see here this box, I can now add something, W9 is mandatory or we must cancel your contract.
44:02
As I'm typing it up, you can see it's automatically updating that email.
44:07
And once I hit save and request, an email has just been generated to that vendor telling them to go in there and update it.
44:16
And then I can give it a day or two and come back and double check it.
44:19
And if I need to prompt them again, I can prompt them as many times as I need to. And that email is going to be recorded in the comments and history.
44:29
So you're going to have a record that you reached out to them.
44:34
The next place that's really helpful for you is in solicitations. I love this personally.
44:43
This is where I think the power really comes through.
44:48
We had a solicitation, it's an RFP, doesn't matter what type it is, but this one in this case is an RFP, and I can see my vendors who submitted.
44:58
I haven't made any determination yet of who's responsive, I haven't done the evaluation yet, maybe I'm in the middle of the evaluation, but now that this project has closed, you're see request documents and I want to click on it.
45:17
Notice I don't see anybody here and I can select whomever I want to select.
45:23
So as I select them here they have pop up over here on the right and it's actually going to tell me if there's missing any documents.
45:33
So here Shin is missing other right didn't upload anything but look it also shows me what she has uploaded so if i come in here to her w9 and click on it now she gave me a blank w9 that's not valid that's not good i can't use that blank one right so even though she's given me something it's not what i need so i can select it and then i'm going to collapse chin and move on to tank and he's missing everything so I can come in here and select him and then I can go to we do it all and again verify and they're all wrong as well so I can select all of them.
46:16
I can preview it type in my message hit save and then hit request and an email is now generated to those vendors requesting those documents and again on the comments and history area we're going to record that we've reached out them for that. I'm going to go ahead and pause here for a second.
46:45
I want to ask you guys for some feedback and then I'll show you how to configure this while you're typing in your feedback.
46:52
What do you guys think of this? Is this something you would want to use?
46:57
Do you want to be an early adopter on it? There's no cost for it. Turn it on, right? Absolutely free.
47:07
But let us know, Give us some feedback on this.
47:11
And again, you can do that either in the chat area or the comments or questions area.
47:20
All right, while you guys are doing that, how do we configure it?
47:28
I'm gonna click on more and go to admin.
47:30
Again, you have to have permission into admin.
47:35
And then if you have permission to vendors, you will then see business documents once we enable it for you.
47:42
It will be turned off, so you will turn on the section and then say, well, yeah, we need the W9, but I really don't need everything else.
47:52
Or maybe I want other, I don't want this one.
47:55
You are going to be able to pick and choose what you want.
48:01
With that, the W9, again, we're automatically going to give them that W9 attachment so you don't have to worry about it, but you can put your instructions to them.
48:12
If you want other things like proof of insurance, I just want to know you have insurance.
48:16
You don't actually have to get us insurance yet, right? That's something completely different.
48:21
That costs money for the vendors, but just a letter from their insurance company saying, yes, this vendor does have insurance and if they win a contract with you, we'd be happy to provide that, right?
48:32
That kind of letter, you can come in here and ask them and you can drag and drop a document here to have complete that particular form if you have something very specific you want them to fill out and you'll be able to do that for other as well.
48:47
The second you save that in admin your changes will be there and then you can send out it go to your vendors and do a quick email blast to everybody just select it fill it out say hey please go into your profile we've turned on business documents please fill it out, right?
49:06
And do a mass communication to everybody.
49:08
It's that simple and that easy.
49:15
Oh, great feedback, thank you.
49:18
If anybody else wants to give me feedback, I would really, really appreciate it.
49:22
Your feedback is really important to our team.
49:25
We need to know that we're on the right track, that we're bringing you features that will actually help you and answer your needs, right?
49:34
Things that you need.
49:36
All right.
49:37
The next thing we're going to talk about is requests for those of you who have to deal with AV339 and just anything in general.
49:47
So I'm going to come over here and go back to my main demo site.
50:01
So under projects is requests.
50:04
You have unlimited users with requests, show you how to manage those in just a second.
50:09
But what Request is designed for is for your stakeholders, your end users, right?
50:17
Your departments.
50:19
They will typically fill out a requisition.
50:22
Well, this isn't going to take place of the financial piece of that requisitioning thing.
50:27
Well, this is going to help streamline the process.
50:30
What do we actually need?
50:33
And you will have unlimited users and unlimited approvers.
50:36
So, as an approver, if I've been granted rights by you, I can invite all of my administrative personnel.
50:47
Right?
50:47
So, I might be the VP of Finance, and under me I've got accounts payable, accounts receivable, budget, accounting.
50:56
So, I have a couple different departments.
50:58
And each one of them have an administrative personnel who does all that work for them.
51:02
If they already have access into the system, great, I can do a name search and pick them.
51:08
Most likely they don't.
51:10
So all I have to do is click add new user, type in their email, their first and last name and click this plus.
51:17
And I will do it four times for each one of my admin personnel and then click send invitation.
51:24
They're only going to have access to requests.
51:28
So they can then come in here and click Add Request and say, what is it we need?
51:34
Well, we need, you know, what do we need?
51:39
We need school catalog.
51:48
Oh, my God, I can't type today.
51:50
What kind of purchase type is it?
51:52
You get to build this list yourself in the administrative section.
51:57
So maybe it's an HR approval request for 339.
52:03
Have HR go through it and review it.
52:05
You can set them up as an approver.
52:09
I'm going to go ahead and just say it's a work order.
52:11
Maybe it's a sole source.
52:15
Maybe it's business services.
52:16
Doesn't matter what they select.
52:19
They can then give you a summary of what we need.
52:22
Actually, that doesn't make sense for cataloging.
52:25
Then they can give you additional notes.
52:28
They can even suggest categories.
52:30
It will show them your list of category codes and they can come in here and suggest.
52:37
So I'm going to come in here and type in print and I go, yeah, it's that one.
52:42
It's that one.
52:43
It's that one.
52:44
Whatever it is, right?
52:47
What's the scheduling priority on it?
52:50
What is your estimated budget on it or cost expenditure?
52:56
Start budget year range where it says it's mandatory.
52:59
you're going to be able to say, yeah, not for us.
53:02
It's not mandatory for us.
53:03
It's optional.
53:04
Or let's not even have that field there.
53:05
So there are certain fields that you're going to be able to configure and turn on and off.
53:09
I'm going to go ahead and say 26.
53:12
Click 6.
53:14
They can give you documents.
53:16
So the line item, right?
53:19
Import.
53:20
Your start of scopes and things like that.
53:23
They can upload unlimited documents here.
53:26
And then they can even select their approval persons.
53:29
So I'm going to pick Courtney and that goes for 10 court is in HR, right?
53:37
Stakeholders, everybody that's going to kind of have an impact on this project.
53:42
So I can now pick my department heads and a couple of other people.
53:46
And then I have activity.
53:48
We'll come back to activity in a minute.
53:50
And then we have scope of work.
53:53
So we can come in here and use AI to generate a scope of work.
53:58
I need print scope of work for school catalog of classes.
54:12
And if you can't type, it does have, right, I'm going to generate that and it gives me a scope.
54:26
And I can even come in here and say include mail house options.
54:44
And it's going to do that. Now I have two separate areas and I can say, yeah, use this one.
54:50
I want the second one, right? And it'll populate that.
54:54
And what's really nice is our document management that you can pull from this request and it will go ahead and put that in there.
55:00
Oops, I hit generate instead of insert.
55:03
So there we go.
55:04
I actually have three different scopes that I can pick from.
55:09
Now I'm not gonna save this one on purpose.
55:11
I have a lot right now in here.
55:13
It's getting kind of crazy for me on my demo site.
55:16
But once it goes through the approval process, you're gonna notice that there is comments, right?
55:23
I can come in here and comment with anybody, it's going to tell me who did what, so I can see that it went to HR and HR approved it and did all this work.
55:34
And then if HR goes, no, right, facilities can do it, then it's dead in the water, we can archive this.
55:41
Or if HR gives the approval on it, we can advance it directly into a contract or a solicitation then pick the one you want. All right.
56:02
Let's go in and talk about business certification.
56:07
So with business certification that happens in registration and there's a couple of different ways we can configure certifications. It can be used for diversity.
56:23
So small business, local business, you name it, whatever you want to certify.
56:29
For those doing small business, if you're following the federal certification process for that, we can even upload and have them pick specific NAICS codes, right?
56:38
Cause that is a requirement.
56:40
And then general information about it, like what's their business affiliation and who those affiliates are and their spend.
56:48
You can even do attachments on it.
56:49
This one isn't designed for it right now, but we can do attachments.
56:54
You can also do it for pre-qualification or even bench certification, like are you an architect?
57:01
Are you a construction management firm?
57:04
And so there's different ways we can lay out the application process. So you can see right now that my application was approved by this agency.
57:13
I can get an approval letter or if I was denied a denial letter, I can see my approved amount up to and even my date rate, right? What am I good for?
57:26
And it will send the vendor in about to expire and has expired.
57:31
Notice, so on both of them, diversity or prequal, let us know it's time to reapply, recertify.
57:39
I want to go ahead and reapply.
57:42
We can do multiple applications, whether it's diversity applications or construction.
57:48
I'm going to show it to you in construction because it looks a little bit different.
57:52
We can have CUPCA under a certain value, prime and subcontractor, right?
57:58
So if I pick the lower form, you notice it completely change.
58:03
So each form can be configured for different questions and features that you need turned on.
58:10
And then I'm going to go pick the bigger one.
58:12
So in construction, there is a lot of information we typically ask for, like fiscal information, sometimes project size that they want to work on, their in business sense, business affiliation information. Owners, really important about owners, right? Even key staff.
58:32
And you'll notice you can put your own customization as far as instructions. What do you mean by owner?
58:38
What do you mean by key staff? What do you mean by references?
58:42
And if you have a requirement, it's got to be three key staff or five references.
58:47
We can put that in as well.
58:50
So if they try to submit with less than what you're asking for, it's going to stop them.
58:54
So I say, no, you got to fill that all out.
58:57
OK, so again, you see this customization here.
59:00
Now, please ignore it.
59:02
This is my demo site.
59:03
So we're making some funny things up in here.
59:05
But you also have the ability per reference to send an email out to that reference.
59:12
Hey, this vendor listed you as a reference.
59:14
Here's the information they gave us.
59:16
Can you fill out this reference form, right?
59:19
And verify the information the vendor gave you.
59:22
So we have all of that built into the system, including banking, bonding, a series of questions, right?
59:31
Like what's your insurance and insurance can change, turn certain questions on or off.
59:36
And depending on how they answer it, it might be a disqualifier.
59:39
So we've worked with you.
59:41
Is it a disqualifying question or not?
59:43
and we allow the vendor to discard that application or continue on and get a formal rejection letter from you.
59:51
We're gonna tag it for both you and your vendor so you know, hey, you may wanna look at how they answered this particular question.
59:58
Some of those questions can even require, which one is it?
1:00:03
One of these.
1:00:04
There we go.
1:00:05
Can require an explanation.
1:00:06
So they have to complete that explanation box, give you more information why they were found viable, right?
1:00:12
And then we'll scroll down to the bottom, attachments.
1:00:16
So we can add a lot of attachments, have them submit that extra documentation that you need to qualify your vendors.
1:00:26
When you are looking within the system, you can actually see the number that you have to review.
1:00:32
So my demo site, I've got 45 that I need to work on.
1:00:36
It's gonna take me straight to them.
1:00:38
I can go through and start reviewing.
1:00:40
Here you can see this vendor submitted, tells you which application they submitted for.
1:00:47
And the second I open it, it's going to change it to pending.
1:00:51
So that way data doesn't cross in the night and we actually make sure that you're reviewing on all the information they submitted.
1:00:59
Again, you can come in here and say yes or no, they are approved for, I'm going to say approved.
1:01:08
Yes, approved small business.
1:01:09
This vendor only picked one code, but if they pick multiple, I can decide out of the five this vendor pick I'm only certifying him for two codes.
1:01:17
So that's diversity if we go in and we look at a Construction one. So let's do this one here, right?
1:01:28
I can see everything that they submitted to me How they answered those questions and I'm gonna scroll really fast down at the bottom is all their attachments We keep all the history, which is really important when you are reviewing an application, you got to keep all that history for audit purposes.
1:01:58
So if I go over to comments and history, look at this.
1:02:03
This is years worth of application history.
1:02:09
And I'm gonna scroll really fast to the bottom of it.
1:02:13
2012, right?
1:02:15
That's when I first filled out my application.
1:02:18
It's gonna have all of that and I can go back in.
1:02:20
And at that point, we weren't even asking for attachments.
1:02:24
And I can see every reason why we marked them deficient sometime in the past.
1:02:30
There's my deficiency reason, and I can even come in here and see, oh, still didn't do attachments.
1:02:37
Hold on.
1:02:38
It's been a while.
1:02:40
There we go.
1:02:45
Oh, that's small business, small business, small business, there we go, pretty well.
1:02:55
And there's my attachments that they submitted, right, back in 2020.
1:02:59
So we're going to have all of that history for you.
1:03:02
You also have an internal area, so if you have to have discussions as to for more documentation, and things like that, you have a place that's your eyes only to record it.
1:03:10
And all of this ties into solicitations.
1:03:15
So when I go to create a solicitation under public works, I can actually either restrict my outreach to just those that have been pre-qualified.
1:03:29
So 153 vendors right now, okay?
1:03:33
If I go in and pick my pre-qualified, it automatically reduced it to six, because it's looking at business certification and going, these are your approved vendors.
1:03:46
Or you can still do a bid that's open to the public.
1:03:49
Everybody gets to know about it.
1:03:50
They can go try to get pre-qualified in time to submit.
1:03:55
So again, I can say, hey, in order to submit, you have to be pre-qualified.
1:04:01
It's really powerful and it streamlines processes.
1:04:04
if you're doing your prequel within the system as well, then they talk to each other and it really reduces your workload on that. All right, I think that is everything I had to cover for you today.
1:04:21
If you have any questions, feedback for me, please feel free to write it into comments or questions right now. Also, when you exit, there will be a survey.
1:04:31
please take a second to fill out that survey.
1:04:35
Really, all of your comments and feedback really help us improve our offerings to you, whether it is just a customer service or in actual system features.
1:04:48
I want to thank all of you today for your time.
1:04:51
We truly, truly appreciate it.
1:04:53
Again, business documents, absolutely free.
1:04:57
Same with requests, absolutely free.
1:05:04
Have a great day, everybody.
1:05:05
Oh, new question.
1:05:08
So it sounds like I can use the prequel classification instead of having to create a group for each of our projects.
1:05:15
Yes, most definitely.
1:05:18
So we can set that up for you.
1:05:20
It would be a standard prequel, so you'd have to take like those really one-off type questions, like if you're going to repair a historical house, right?
1:05:31
That might have a supplemental prequel that you would still have to do, but for the mass Majority of your questions in prequel project over project over project those common questions Set it up in business certification take that off your workload And if you have more questions, Laura, please reach out to me after today's session I'll be happy to kind of delve deeper into it with you Love that comment and yes, we'll go over the submission tab questions as well for you All right, everybody have a wonderful wonderful day Talk to you later.