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Answered

Expiration of job offers when using automated vendor rules in smart projects

Katie 6 years ago in Home Portal / Smart Projects updated by Federico 2 years ago 6

Hi! We are testing out vendor rules in smart projects. We have a problem, which is that we cannot set the overall expiration time for the offers. If there are two cascades, sent every 10 minutes, all offers expire after 20 minutes. If there are two cascades, and they are sent every hour, all offers expire after two hours. The "number of cascades" * "cascade interval" = "offer expiration time". We don't want this. We want to be able to set the expiration for 24 hours if needed, and not limit it depending on the number of cascades, but XTRF has told us this is not possible.


Does anyone else who uses vendor rules have a good solution for this? How are others using automated vendor rules with such short expiration times?

We are currently not relying on the Job Offer Rules because of the limitations described in various UE threads, one of them being the aspect you have pointed out. The other related issue you will find is that you cannot change the prioritization of the suggested cascades. We therefore rely on manual job offers for the time being.


It's great to have automations, but more often than not they still need the guiding hand of a competent PM, which is why we are voting for semi-automations throughout XTRF Smart Projects that (a) propose a fully automated solution but (b) allow for the PM to make changes/corrections.

Thank you, I just did. Is there any timeline for XTRF implementing differentiation of the expiry time and the cascade interval?

All I am sure of at the moment is it will not happen in version 8, because of GDPR works that we have to do.

XTRF 9 is an open book and the most upvoted topics are very likely to be part of it.

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Is there any news on the implementation of a longer cascade interval, or are there any existing workarounds? We find that the short intervals really limit the opportunities for us to use vendor selection rules. 

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There is a workaround. Do not use Vendor Selection Rules. Just use the Job Offers and select the vendors from the list manually.

The only issue is that you will be sending the notification to all vendors at the same time instead of using cascades.

It would be really helpful if vendor selection rules allow more time for intervals.


Also, on a side note, the Vendor Selection Rule should use the Planned Start Date to start sending the rule automatically. By doing this when you have vendors in a different time zone, you can plan when the Rule will start without having to do it manually.

For example: if we work in PST and we need to use a Vendor Selection Rule for vendors located in Japan, if we set the Planned Start Date at 5:00 PM PST, the first Job Offer will be send at 9:00 AM Japan.