Timeframes to deliver pricing for a project or tender are often tight. Ensuring you have the most responsive contact at the vendor on your RFQ can be critical to meeting these timeframes.

In scenarios where your desired contact isn't yet on the Felix vendor account, you can now add them as a guest for immediate access to the RFQ. We will still suggest they are added as a full user of the account, but we make it far easier for them to see your needs and respond quickly.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• How does it work?
• How do I enable the "Guest access" feature for my organisation?
• How do I enable the "Guest access" setting on my Project?
• How do I add a guest to a sent RFQ?
• How do I remove a Guest from an RFQ?
• How does turning on or off the feature impacts my users and vendor guests?

 

How does it work?

It will offer additional flexibility to your RFQ users in two ways:

1. When they are creating RFQs, they will be able to include any email address as a guest user at a vendor to receive the RFQ. Felix will warn users of potentially conflicting email addresses being added.
2. In a sent RFQ, they will be able to add guest vendor users to access the RFQ that is already sent.

NOTE: Felix is releasing this functionality in phases, starting with adding guest users from a sent RFQ.

 

The experience for the vendor guest will be as follows:

• They are given immediate access to the RFQ via a secure link sent via email. They will not require a password or permission from other vendor users to access the RFQ.
• They will have access to view RFQ details, view and download documents, send and receive communications, and respond to the RFQ (submit a quote)
• They can refresh their secure access link as needed, as Felix will have security controls around these links and they will expire per our policies.
• If another vendor user (full user) adds communications or response data, the guest will be restricted to only seeing RFQ Details and Documents. They can remind the account administrators they need full access.
• Until/unless they become a full user, they will maintain guest access to the RFQ for a set period following the close of the RFQ (or following a post close interaction like post tender request or direct message).

 

 

Image below: when a vendor user contributes to an RFQ, a guest is blocked and needs to become a full user to continue.

Image below: when a guest user tries to use an already used token, they need to generate a new link for security purposes.

 

The experience for the full vendor users will be as follows:

• They will receive notifications that a guest has been granted access to the RFQ, including link to add them (or remove them) as a full user.
• They will be informed in the live user interface of guests having access to an RFQ as they work.
• They will be informed if a guest submitted a quote on their behalf.

Finally, there will be controls and traceability available to the RFQ users and administrators at your organisation:

• Felix will log the addition of guests, who added them, and if there were any email domain behaviours of note.
• RFQ users can "Remove" a guest after adding them. This history will be visible in the user interface.
• RFQ users will be informed if their guest has been removed by the vendor administrators.

 

 

How do I enable the "Guest access" feature for my organisation?

During the Beta release phase, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to explain this feature and enable it for your organisation.

Once they have enabled for your organisation, you will see a new setting available on the Settings->RFQ Settings page in Felix. Project users will also be aware of the setting as we make it discoverable (to learn more) in the project settings pages.

 

 

 

If you enable the feature, you will be shown a confirmation modal with an option to turn on the setting for all projects. We added the flexibility to enable this per project, as some projects may have different requirements for managing communications with vendors. As a shortcut, here you can choose to turn on the feature for all Projects at once. Otherwise, each project will need to turn this on themselves.

 

 

Once you have clicked Confirm, and then the "update" action on the RFQ Settings page, the setting with either (a) be available for all projects; or (b) be available and turned on for all projects.

 

 

How do I enable the "Guest access" setting on my Project?

Once your organisation has turned on the setting in the RFQ Settings page, the setting becomes active in each project.

If your Organisation administrator chose to turn on the setting for all projects at once, it may already be enabled for your project.

 

 

Here you can toggle the setting on and off to your Project's requirements. Modals will provide supporting information as you toggle it on and off.

 

 

How do I add a guest to a sent RFQ?

You can manage vendor contacts for an RFQ from the Vendors tab. For each vendor, there is an action list when you hover over the three (3) dots (we call this "ellipsis"):

When you select "Vendor contacts" a modal appears as follows. 

• The vendor profile is shown, as well as a link to that profile.
• There is a "Send this request to" interaction
• There is detail on the existing recipients for this vendor.

NOTE: Existing recipients with either show a list of selected contacts if you created the RFQ from the new RFx experience; or an info alert (like below) where you created the RFQ from our legacy experience. In the legacy experience, all vendor users who opt into RFQ communications receive an email about the opportunity.

 

In the "Send this request to" interaction, you can either select existing vendor users (by beginning typing a name or email), or add a new email address. As you start typing, Felix will present matches for existing vendor users.

If you select an existing vendor user, you can send them the RFQ. This will likely be a reminder, but may be a new email for them if they were added to the vendor account after you sent the RFQ.

 

 

If you type in an email that isn't recognised, Felix will assume it is a guest and label it as such.

 

 

If you add an email address with a domain (e.g. @acme.com) that doesn't match any of the existing vendor users on that account, Felix will warn you. This is in case it was a mistake - maybe you are adding a guest to a vendor you didn't intend to.

 

 

Once you click "Send", the vendor contacts modal will update and show the guest under the recipients heading. Here it will also show any existing vendor users you added.

 

 

Your guest will receive an email similar to that below. It will inform them of the vendor they are invited to respond as, and the "View Request" link will not require a Felix account or password to access and respond to your RFQ.

 

 

Other existing vendor users will receive an email similar to below. They will be able to "add user" to make the guest a full user with full rights, or "remove" the guest if they don't recognise the guest or disagree that they should have access.

 

 

Unless the other vendor users remove you guest, your guest now has access immediately to view and respond to your RFQ.

 

 

How do I remove a Guest from an RFQ?

You can remove a guest from the same modal in the Vendors tab where you added them. Look for the "Remove" link next to the guest you want to remove. Once you take this action, the Guest will no longer be able to complete their task at hand. They will be stopped when trying to Save or Submit pricing or a response. They will also not be able to access the RFQ if they click their access link in their mailbox.

 

 

How does turning on or off the feature impacts my users and vendor guests?

Turning the feature on for a project allows RFQ users on that project to add Guest users to their RFQs. Turning it off does not impact ability for existing Guest users to access RFQs - only the ability to add new guests to RFQs.