How do I send automatic job offers to Vendors in Classic Projects?
We want to start sending automatic emails to our vendors for specific projects only. What are the options for Classic Projects? Or would it be better to upgrade to Smart Projects and use the Job Offer option?
Answer
Classic Projects offer pretty much the same functionality. It is called Availability Requests.
You can send an Availability Request to any vendor (or >1 vendors) you like and let them accept or reject the offer. Go to Job > Requests.
One step forward would be to come up with Vendor Selection Rules, which are basically filtering templates for appropriate vendors. In addition to standard, job-based context (type, languages, specialization), you can add other filters, like custom fields, categories and other. You can quickly get results according to those and rely on them to send Availabilty Requests by hand.
Finally, you can use the Vendor Selection Rules in an automation. A special step, preceding the jobs is set up on the Workflow Definition level, which uses one of these Vendor Selection Rules to send out invitations. There is a tab "Availability Requests" in every Task, which will inform you about the outcome of the automation.
Whichever method you use, you can rely on either of two assignment rules: 'first one wins', or 'PM will decide'.
This is one big difference compared to Smart Projects and their Job Offer.
The other significant difference is lack of cascading offers.
More reading here
https://knowledgebase.xtrf.eu/display/XTRFHelp/Assigning+a+Vendor+within+Availability+Requests
will there be a functionality for "PM will choose vendor" for smart projects? As we use with classic projects and miss this functionality in smart ones
Is there any plan to add cascading offers to Classic Projects in the future?
Whereas there are no casdades in the Classic Projects, when there is no one to take the job, you can always resend a new batch by hand. You will be informed about no vendor found by a dedicated email. But Cascades have been developed for Job Offers only from scratch.
Thanks! Do you have any links to the knowledge base or instruction videos in which the steps are explained on how to customise all this? I could only find instructions for Smart Projects.
Start reading here.
https://knowledgebase.xtrf.eu/display/XTRFHelp/Assigning+a+Vendor+within+Availability+Requests
Customer support service by UserEcho
Classic Projects offer pretty much the same functionality. It is called Availability Requests.
You can send an Availability Request to any vendor (or >1 vendors) you like and let them accept or reject the offer. Go to Job > Requests.
One step forward would be to come up with Vendor Selection Rules, which are basically filtering templates for appropriate vendors. In addition to standard, job-based context (type, languages, specialization), you can add other filters, like custom fields, categories and other. You can quickly get results according to those and rely on them to send Availabilty Requests by hand.
Finally, you can use the Vendor Selection Rules in an automation. A special step, preceding the jobs is set up on the Workflow Definition level, which uses one of these Vendor Selection Rules to send out invitations. There is a tab "Availability Requests" in every Task, which will inform you about the outcome of the automation.
Whichever method you use, you can rely on either of two assignment rules: 'first one wins', or 'PM will decide'.
This is one big difference compared to Smart Projects and their Job Offer.
The other significant difference is lack of cascading offers.
More reading here
https://knowledgebase.xtrf.eu/display/XTRFHelp/Assigning+a+Vendor+within+Availability+Requests