Internal release notes 2024 - Sprint 142 (Source-to-Contract)
- Former user (Deleted)
- Randy Nijstad
- Former user (Deleted)
The history of the internal release notes can be found here.
Sprint 142
Release date: Monday 12th of February 2024
Tender Management
Custom tender field, reporting - Custom tender fields were added last summer, but due to other priorities the reporting part was not completed yet. This is now available. In Reports, the fields are shown in categories, which can be collapsed/expanded:
System fields: contains all default values, general available for all users
Custom fields: contains all active custom fields (will only appear if you have at least 1 created custom field)
Custom fields (inactive): contains all inactive custom fields (will only appear if you have at least 1 inactive custom field)
When viewing the report itself, it’s important to know the following:
If a custom field is present in a tender - but not yet filled out - it will show as a blank cell.
If a custom field is NOT present in a tender - because the tender was created before the custom tender field was created - it will show as N/A.
In the example below, the field PIA code is not available in tenders 9132+9123. However, it is available in tender 9147 but not yet filled out.
Publish straight to TED - Some organizations were used to publish straight to TED, without sending their notice to a national authority (like TenderNed, Doffin etc.). With the switch to eForms, this was no longer possible but is now possible again. This feature can only be enabled by Mercell Admins by following these steps:
Go to Support and search for the organization where you want to enable it for
Scroll down to the section “Publication settings“
Set the option “Allow organization to publish directly on TED“ to enabled
After enabling it, all buyers will see an additional option when creating a publication form as below:
After enabling the option, the Country field will be disabled and show the text “N/A will go straight to TED“. Also, in case Netherlands was selected, the fields TenderNed connection number and Procedure are hidden as well.
When a publication form is created, only TED is shown as the authority where the form will be sent to.
Publication - Prefilling awarded suppliers - For award notices, the awarded suppliers are now prefilled as an organization. This only happens for forms 25-37, and only the suppliers that are marked as “Awarded” in the award menu of a tender, will be added when a form is created. Please note that they still need to be selected in the right section within the form.
DPS disqualification comments - Suppliers struggle to find the comments after their application has been disqualified in a DPS. The comments are now shown more prominently within the Requirements section of their offer.
Intake Management
Searchable picklist options - Some picklist options became very long and this mainly occurred in the Intakemanagement module. We decided to change the behavior for fields that have more than 10 picklist options so we do not overcomplicate small lists, but simplify the process for long lists.
Please note that we had to withdraw this functionality from the initial launch, but we’re aiming to deploy this soon after.
Contract Management
Replace task owners - Within the Contract Management admin menu, a new menu has been added called “Task Management”. This allows admins to easily replace the owner of a task with another user. The admin can pick a user in the “Assigned to” picklist, which automatically updates the list of tasks assigned to that user. Note that the list will only show users who have a task assigned to them. After selecting a user in the second picklist, the admin can click on “Replace” which prompts a warning. Confirmation will result in a replacement of task owners. This action will be logged in the Domain logs.
Visible meta-fields - Within the Contract Management admin menu, a new sub-menu has been added to the “Fields” menu. This is called “Meta fields”, similar to how SRM works. The addition of this menu allows users to view all available meta fields, change the custom name of this meta field, make them read-only (to fill the field through an API for example), and add a help text.
Supplier Relationship Management
Replace task owners - Within the Supplier Relationship Management admin menu, a new menu has been added called “Task Management”. This allows admins to easily replace the owner of a task with another user. The admin can pick a user in the “Assigned to” picklist, which automatically updates the list of tasks assigned to that user. Note that the list will only show users who have a task assigned to them. After selecting a user in the second picklist, the admin can click on “Replace” which prompts a warning. Confirmation will result in a replacement of task owners. This action will be logged in the Domain logs.
Bulk actions - Until now, actions such as sending a message or inviting suppliers for a statement were only possible for one supplier at a time. If a user wants to invite multiple suppliers at once, it’s a very cumbersome process. With the addition of bulk actions, we want to make this process more efficient. Doing actions in bulk requires a recipient list. This is a list of suppliers that you need to create first, which can be done behind Settings > User groups (Portal). This menu becomes visible for users with the role SRM Admin, SRM Executive, or SRM Standard.
Users with the role SRM admin or SRM Executive can see and use the button “Bulk action”, which is added to the Suppliers menu in SRM. This menu contains three types of bulk actions that can be performed. Each of the three options requires at least one recipient list. Based on your selection, a user can do a few actions in the following pop-up: 1) select a recipient list 2) select a statement 3) select an inquiry 4) create a message.
Small changes
In this release, the following small changes have been implemented:
General - Before, it was only possible to mark text as yellow. Now, multiple colors have been added to either color the text itself, or to use to mark text. This can be used at all locations where text formatting is allowed (e.g. Requirements, Messages).
Tender - Round settings - The option to share requirements on the Published Tenders page was available for every round. From now on, this is only available to manage in round 1. For any follow-up round, this option is disabled to prevent buyers accidentally share requirements of follow-up rounds.
Tender - Templates > Publication - Improved display of mandatory fields in the Publication template section. Before, all fields showed a mandatory icon. Now, only the fields that are actually mandatory in MeForms show this icon. Please note that it’s not mandatory to fill-out all these values in the Publication template: it’s only to indicate which fields are mandatory in MeForms (so users can actually fill-out just 1 or 2 fields, and save without all mandatory being filled out).
Tender > Publication - Disabled action ‘delete’ in 3 dot menu when form is in Error state. When a form is in Error state, buyers often want to delete the form (to create a new one). This action would lead to an Error 500 screen. For that reason, the 3 dot menu to ‘delete’ a form is disabled. When mousing over the option a tooltip is shown “It’s not possible to delete a form in Error state. Please create a new form or tender if required“. In future iterations it will become possible for buyers
Supplier services - user profile - In the user profile > subscription section, the EDIT button is hidden so suppliers can no longer change their subscription from that location. Upgrading their subscription can be done from the main tender dashboard. If suppliers want to downgrade their subscription, they need to get in touch with their Customer Success Manager (its still possible to downgrade a subscription for Mercell Admins).
IM: Export the design of the form - Users can now export the design page of the form into a .pdf file.
CM: Pagination - The Contract File overview can contain now 100 contracts before we separate them into pages. This has been done to prevent performance issues in case of many contracts.
Servicedesk Portal - Within the domain settings, we added a new section called “Incomplete supplier registrations”. This lists all not-completed supplier registrations from the SRM open link functionality. Before, suppliers who did not verify their e-mail were stuck and Customer Support could not help them. With the functionalities “Resend”, “Copy” or “Delete” they can help them with either resending (the customer receives a new validation mail), copying (support can send them the link), or deleting (the supplier registry is deleted so they can register again).
Technical - Emails are now sent via MailJet instead of Sendgrid.
Bug fixes
General - Fixed a bug where untranslated keywords were not automatically shown in English if the keyword was not translated in the language selected in the user profile. For example, if a keyword is not translated in German - while it is translated in English - the user would see str_Common_tender_details instead of the English translation “Tender details“.
Tender - Fixed a bug that caused searching in CPV codes always to have ‘no results’. It’s now possible to search on names or numbers of CPV codes again.
Tender - Fixed a bug related to the Legal basis field in the organization profile. In case this was empty, this could lead to errors for some actions which shouldn’t be related.
Tender - Fixed a bug in the Product List where the currency symbol was not always shown. Also, not all digits (behind the comma) were displayed, this is now also fixed.
Register while SSO enabled - Users who tried to create an account while for that domain a SSO configuration is enabled, would see a message “Account already created“. Those users will now see a more appropriate message “Registration is not possible. Please contact your admin to get an account“.
SRM: Import KPIs- Importing an empty field results now in a N/A, instead of a 0 (zero) score.