Creating a Strategic Sourcing Project in Bonfire

Creating a base project in Bonfire can be done in just a few minutes. This tutorial will help get you started!

• Starting Your Project
• Defining your Project Draft
• Approvals
• Files
• Evaluation Groups
• Documents (Requested Information)
• Criteria
• People
• Publishing Your Project

Starting Your Project

After logging in, click the Add Project button.

This will launch the Create Project Draft page, where you can select your Project creation options. This is the very first step to creating a Project.

Here, you can choose to Start from a Template, create a Blank Strategic Sourcing Project, or a Blank Price-Only Project. In this example, we will be creating a Strategic Sourcing Project.

For more information about choosing your Project Type, please check out: Choosing Your Project Type

NOTE: Once you have selected a project type, you cannot change it.

Once done, this will launch the Define Your Project Draft page, where you can complete the rest of your project creation. This includes the following aspects:

• Reference Numbers and Titles
• Project Description
• Project Type
• Project Owner
• Visibility
• Additional Details such as Dates, Submission Types and Configurations

Defining Your Project Draft

NOTE: The options you see may appear slightly different than the one pictured below based on which features/modules you have enabled with Bonfire.

In this view, you can complete the primary aspects of your project setup.

Here, you can enter reference numbers, project titles and descriptions, select your Project Type and Project Owner, as well as choose the project's scheduled dates, the submission type, project configurations such as Best Value or Multi-Category Decisions, as well as include contact information for the project owner or bid coordinator.

Enter your information on all fields marked with a red asterisk* to finish creating your Project Draft. When ready, click Create Project Draft. 

NOTE: If any sections marked with a red asterisk do not contain content, you'll automatically see a notice specifying what needs to be completed or if there are any areas of concern.

Once you've clicked Create Project Draft, you'll be brought to the project's main Details page.

From this point, you can Publish your project, make additional changes or provide more documentation, as well as add other users (reviewers or observers) or invite vendors.

Approvals

In Approvals, you can configure approval requests to include key information, and send these requests to an Approver in order to collect an approval response. Approvers are notified of new requests via email, and can follow the link in the email to respond and leave comments on the approval. For more information on this feature, check out our Approvals article.

Files

Public Files are documents that, once uploaded, are visible to everyone. Internal Files are documents only visible to people within the organization.

For more information about these files and how to upload them, please see our Listing - Public Files article.

Evaluation Groups

Evaluation groups can be thought of as a way to run a multi-stage (multi-envelope) evaluation. Each group contains Reviewers, Criteria, and Documents.

The Reviewers that are a part of a given group can only access the Documents and score Criteria within that group. For further information on how to set up your Evaluation Groups, please see our Evaluation Groups page.

Documents (Requested Information)

Requested Information allows you to set up how you want your vendors to structure their submission. You can specify which documents are required, which file type you want those documents in, and other properties. (For further information on how to set this up, please see our Requested Information page.)

Adding Requested Data to a project allows the vendor to enter specific information directly into onto the Bonfire page as part of their submission, that is not within a separate document (for more information, please see our Requested Data page).

Adding a Requested Questionnaire allows for a structured way to receive vendor responses for a large number of criteria (for further information, please see our Questionnaires page).

Adding a Requested BidTable allows you to quickly solicit and evaluate projects with multiple bid items (for further information, please see our BidTables page).

Criteria

In this step, you create the Criteria that will be used to evaluate the submissions that have come in from your vendors. (To find out more about setting up Criteria, please see our How to: Set up Criteria and Map Criteria to Evaluation Groups for Scoring page.)

People

This is the last step in creating a project. There are 3 different types of People that can be configured via the Manage button for this section:

Reviewers can be added via the dropdown list OR you can type an email and then press Enter to invite a new User. From here you can also assign the Reviewer to the appropriate Evaluation group.

As soon as you click Add Reviewer, they will receive an invitation email outlining the name of the project and providing them with a link to our 3-minute training video for Reviewers.

Advisors are Organization members with read-only access to the project. (To add and know more about Advisors, please see What is an Advisor?)

Observers can view all aspects of a Project Draft or a published Project including all the scores. They have read-only access and cannot make any changes to the project. (To add and know more about Observers, please see What is a Project Observer?) 

Publishing Your Project

Once you've completed your project setup, you can go ahead and Publish your Project! You will see this option as a banner, as indicated below:

Alternatively, you can also go to Actions -> Publish Project.

NOTE: While Project Agents can create Project Drafts, they cannot publish those drafts in Active Projects. A user with the Department Manager Role or above must publish project drafts created by Project Agents.

At this point, you'll see an overview of your project noting all pertinent details, allowing you to double check before completing publication. When ready, click Publish Project.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a Project!

Now that your project has been created, it will appear on the Projects Dashboard under the Active Projects section. You can then click your project to view and edit any aspect of it (including everything you just set up).

NOTE: If you created a project in Drafts prior to the release of our new Project Creation Flow, you'll find those projects under Project Drafts, accessible from your main Project Dashboard.