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TM - MeForms general

Why

At 25-Oct 2023 eForms will become mandatory in Europe. In Mercell, we have 1 application that will support eForms which we internally call “MeForms” (for Mercell Forms). S2C used to send all publication forms to TenderNed, TED, Doffin, etc. But from then onwards, all publication forms will be sent by the MeForms application. The MeForms application will be enabled in S2C in 3 steps:

• 23-Oct: Run a script that updates all BPMs. All new tenders will generate eForms.

• 24-Oct: Run a script that updates all already created but NOT published tenders to generate eForms.

  • Already created (but not submitted) forms, will no longer be available for editing/submitting. They can only be opened or deleted.

• 31-Dec: Run a script that updates all existing tenders to generate eForms.

  • Exception is Germany: for all German organizations we will run this script sooner.

What

Below a list of what is important to know about MeForms integration. They will be explained in further detail in separate chapters.

• Template values for eForms

• BPM settings

• Creating a form

• Filling out a form and publishing it

• Creating a change notice from a published form

• Creating a follow-up notice for already published tenders

• One-time change notices

TM - MeForms template values

• In the Organization profile > menu Tender management > menu Templates, a new section is added 'Publication forms'. This section is only visible for public buyers.

• Organization admins can fill out values here, which are general throughout the organization. Filling out any values here, will prefill those values in all eForms created afterwards.

• There are currently 3 sections (to be extended later) with fields where those default values can be set.

• It’s highly recommended to prefill the first section about the Review Body, since this is mandatory in almost every eForm.
  
  

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• In MeForms, the organization will then look like this:
  
  

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• In the Organization profile, there’s a field present called “Legal basis“.

• It’s also recommended to fill-out this value, as it will be prefilled when creating a new eForm in a tender. It will filter the list of available forms based on this Legal basis.

  • In case an organization uses multiple Legal basis, it’s recommended to keep it empty in the organization profile. This way, buyers will always need to select the right Legal basis per tender to filter the correct list of forms.

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TM - MeForms BPM settings

• To make use of eForms, the “MeForms application” needs to be enabled in the BPM.

  • This is already done via the script that ran on 23-Oct 2023.

  • Other publication authorities should NOT be enabled. Only MeForms application, Mercell and Published tenders page need to be enabled.

  • The section “Publication forms” should be empty. Selecting any forms here, will block the creation of any other forms in those tenders.

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• Another additional BPM setting is the “One-time change notice in eForms format“

• By enabling this feature, a button will appear in the Publication menu of a tender. This button will allow users to create a one-time change notice in eForms format, which they can link to their publication process in the 'old format'. After doing this, they can continue creating eForms for further follow-up notices in this tender. Usually, tenders where this feature is enabled will only be used for publication purposes (the actual tender with suppliers, offers etc. is in a different application like Negometrix3 or NegometrixPortal).

  • When enabling this, MeForms application also has to be enabled.

  • More detailed information about how this works can be found in the separate chapter on this page.

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TM - MeForms Creating a form

• After clicking the ADD button in the publication menu, a pop-up appears. In this pop-up, multiple fields can be filled out. See the table below for additional information about these fields.

• Selecting Legal basis and (sub) categories, limits the amount of available forms. Please note it’s not mandatory to fill them out.

• For some forms it’s required to have some data filled-out in S2C first. If it’s not filled out and you try to add a form, a validation message will appear (see further down below). The user needs to go back, update the value and then the form can be created.

• Please note that forms 1, 2 and 3 are NOT available for NL (this is correct, as they are omitted by TenderNed).

• In case users are struggling to find the right eForm, they can use this conversion sheet that should help them select the right form: https://info.mercell.com/nl-nl/verbeter-jouw-aanbestedingsproces-met-eforms#conversie_sheet

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TM - MeForms Filling out a form and publishing it

• After creating a form, it will appear in the usual way. By clicking on it, a new tab opens in the browser.

• The user can either go through the sections on the left step by step, or use the Checklist to validate for all mandatory fields.

• After filling all mandatory fields, and passing validation successfully note that the Notice status will change to “Ready for publication“.

• By closing the MeForms editor tab, the user gets back to S2C and the page is automatically refreshed.

  • In case the user leaves the MeForms editor tab opened, he needs to refresh the S2C page manually.

• After the user has returned a PUBLISH button will appear on hoover. The publish-option is also available in the 3 dot menu. After clicking it, the form will be sent right away and statuses in both S2C and MeForms editor are updated.

• When opening the form now, all fields are locked and nothing can be edited anymore. If the user wants to create a Change notice, he needs to wait until the form is fully published. The option is already available in the 3 dot menu, but disabled with an explanation that this can only be created once the current form is fully published.

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TM - MeForms Creating a change notice from a published form

• Once a form is full published, the user will see a button “CREATE CHANGE NOTICE“ when they mouse over this form. Also, the 3 dot menu option “Create change notice“ will now be enabled. By clicking on it, a Change notice will be created and shown below.

  • Please note this is different behavior as with the old schema forms, where the user would open the original notice, make changes and publish them from there on. Only after publishing those changes, the F14 form would become visible.

• This Change notice will be an exact copy of the form it was created from, besides the fields that are ‘locked’ which will be updated. The user can open the form, and simply adjust what is required.

• The main difference with a regular notice, is the “Changes” section in the left hand menu. All changes done in the form will automatically be listed here.

• After completing all changes, the buyer can run the validation again and publish it like a regular notice.

• Please note that a next Change notice can only be created from this last published change notice.

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TM - MeForms Creating a follow-up notice for already published tenders

• When a user for example has published a “Planning” notice, and now wants to continue in the same tender with a “Competition” notice, he can create this follow-up notice through the Add button.

  • He will see that there’s some data “locked” and can not be changed. The fields Language, Country, TenderNed number, Procedure and Legal basis can not be changed, as they need to be similar as the previous notice.

  • Also, the list of available forms is limited. In this example, the buyer has a published form number 4. For follow-up notices, only a few other forms are ‘allowed’ by TED. If a buyer would create a different form and publish it, it would get rejected. For that reason, we help the buyers in selecting the right follow-up forms.

• For users that are creating a new tender, but still want to link this follow-up notice to a previous notice, they should always fill-out the Previous planning or Previous notice field in the Procedure section. After adding such a notice, the field “Identifier of the previous notice“ needs to be filled out.

  • This is in the format XXXXXX-YYYY, e.g. 123456-2023.
    
    

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TM - MeForms One-time change notices

• In case a user has a published tender in the old schema format and in a different application, from which they can no longer send publication forms, they can create so called “one-time change notices” in S2C. This basically means the user can create a change notice in eForm format, and link this to a form created with the old schema format.

  • Please note this now regards NegometrixPortal buyers, and from 01-jan-2024 onwards also Negometrix3 buyers.

• To achieve this, users need to create a tender where a specific BPM setting is enabled (along with the MeForms authority = Enabled).

• Important notes before using this feature:

  • Usually buyers would want to complete their tender in their current application (because suppliers already in there). This means, that this S2C-tender is only created for publication purposes.

  • This means that the Participate button (on the Published Tenders page) should be disabled.

  • Also, the buyer should consider having a proper description on the Published Tenders page, to indicate this is just a change notice and that the process is taking place in a different application already. The notice will get published on TenderNed/TED, so suppliers will try to access it. So that should be very clear to prevent any confusion.
    
    

• When users create a tender, they will now see a new button in the publication menu called “Create one-time eForms change notice“. When clicking it, the user will see an almost identical pop-up as to when creating a new form.

• The only change is there’s a different header and different help text. To guide users in selecting the right form, a URL is added which links to a website. Here, all ‘old schema forms’ are listed, along with the new eForms numbers, so buyers can see which old form corresponds to a new eForm. This is important, because buyers need to make sure they create a change notice that has the exact same type as their original notice.

  • For example: buyer published a F02, and now wants to create a change notice in eForms format. He needs to select form 16.
    
    

• Important notes while using this feature in a tender:

  • Before creating it: user needs to make sure to manually select and fill-out the right details such as Language, Country, TenderNed number, Procedure etc.

  • When creating the notice, data is prefilled from the tender as regular. It’s important to have the data as much in line with their original notice as possible.

  • The Previous planning or Previous notice field in the Procedure section should always be filled in this change notice. After adding such a notice, the field “Identifier of the previous notice“ needs to be filled out.

    • This is in the format XXXXXX-YYYY, e.g. 123456-2023.

  • There is no automatic comparison between original notice and this one-time change notice. For that reason, it’s recommended to specify the actual changes in the Changes section to make this clear for all suppliers.
    
    

• After publishing this change notice, additional change notices can be created in the regular way: on mouse-over the latest published form in this tender.

• Buyers can also continue in creating follow-up notices for this procedure, in this same tender.

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Small changes

In this release, the following small changes have been implemented:

• Servicedesk - When granting access to your account to the Servicedesk, this now lasts 7 days instead of just 1. This was done to reduce the amount of communication required between buyers and our support department.

Bug Fixes

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