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Release Notes 2024 (English)

Release Notes 2024 (English)

Owned by Randy Nijstad
May 02, 2024
13 min read

 

Sprint 144

Anonymous buyer

Buyers don’t always want suppliers to know their contact details, to prevent suppliers try to reach out to them outside the system (like calling them). Especially in big tenders - like DPSs - or tenders about sensitive topics, buyers want their contact details to be anonymous. This concerns the name, phone number and email address which is shared on multiple places inside the tender and on public pages.

 

When a buyer has created a tender it is now possible to enable the Anonymous buyer setting, so the buyer can anonymize or change the contact information which should be visible to the suppliers in the tender. 

Enabling and editing the Anonymous buyer setting is only possible for the Lead Buyer/Admin (any buyer with the ‘edit tender’ permission) in the tender.  

To enable the settings, the user must access the tender, go to the Team menu, and then click on the 3 dots for the Lead buyers and choose “Anonymous buyer settings”.  

In the Anonymous buyer settings the user is now able to enable the functionality, and fill-out the wanted contact information - Name, Phone number and Email. It is only Name that is mandatory field to fill-out, while Phone number and Email is optional. After adding the Anonymous buyer information, then click on the Save button to active the settings. 

Only the filled-out fields will be visible for the suppliers in the tender.

image-20240318-134021.png

 

After saving the Anonymous buyer settings, there will be shown a yellow information bar in the Team section informing that the Anonymous buyer settings has been enabled. This way, it’s clear for all buyer participants this setting has been enabled.

 

How does this look for suppliers?

After enabling the Anonymous buyer settings, the suppliers will not be able to see any contact details of the contact person regarding this tender. This goes for both the public pages and within the tender. Instead the provided information in the Anonymous buyer settings will be shown. Below you can see a couple of examples of how it looks like from a supplier view when the Anonymous buyer settings is enabled.

Example 1: When a supplier gets an invitation for a tender

image-20240318-134741.png

Example 2: When a supplier visits the Public Tender page

image-20240319-204358.png

 

Example 3: A pop-up with details within the tender

image-20240318-134945.png

 

These are just some examples, but everywhere where the buyer contact details were shown, this is now anonymized.

Also when the first eForm in the tender is created, the anonymized values that are entered in the anonymous buyer settings are used to prefill the contact person details in the eForm. Please note the following:

  • This only applies to the first eForm that is created in a tender. If an eForm is already created (or published), the anonymized values will not be automatically added. These values will be copied from the earlier form instead.

  • If the phone number or email address were left empty, those values will also appear empty in the eForm.

 

Also, to prevent the buyer will accidentally share contact details in messages or letters for example, the buyer is warned on several occasions in case anonymous buyer is enabled:

  • When clicking on Send in messages, when a placeholder with ‘Sender’ information is added.

  • When clicking on Send in invites, when a placeholder was used from an invitation template.

  • When creating a document (for example on the offer page, or when loading a template for an award letter).

In these cases the buyer will get a pop-up like below before continuing.

 

image-20240319-211217.png

 

 

Small changes

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

  • DPS rejection details - Last release we improved how the comments of the buyer are displayed inside the application, when a suppliers application for a DPS is rejected by the buyer. We now further improved the visibility by creating a button “View details“ on the offer page of an application. This pop-up contains all questions + comments that are marked as KO by the buyer.

    image-20240319-202853.png

     

  • Internal documents - In the properties of a tender it’s possible to add internal documents, which are only visible for buyer participants. These documents were not part of the full export of a tender. These are now added in a subfolder of the Properties folder in the full tender export (ZIP export).

  • Permissions - A change has been implemented in the organization permission to “Manage tender folders”. Before, you would not be able to move a tender to the bin without this permission because the 3 dot menu for tenders was not be visible. Especially for bigger organizations, it’s not desired that all buyers have the permission to manage tender folders. For that reason, the following changes have been implemented:

    • The 3 dot menu per tender is now always visible. The action “View” is always available. The actions “Move to bin“ and “Move to folder“ are also always shown, but only enabled if you either have “Edit tender” permissions within that tender, or the “Manage all tender permission as a LB/admin” on organization level.

    • The 3 dot menu per folder is now only visible if you have the organization permission to “Manage tender folders“.

  • Reporting - There are two report types which are specifically created for Dynamic Procurement Systems (DPS). When viewing such a report, a list of DPS tenders appears from you first need to select one tender before results are shown. In this list, only DPS tenders were shown. However, some buyers are using Qualification Systems (QS) instead and have the exact same need. For that reason, QS tenders will now also appear in this list of tenders.

  • Time zone eForms - The way the time zone is displayed in eForms is improved. This will become active as soon as the MeForms team has a Production release.

  • Rate limit on forgotten password requests - It’s possible to request a new password from a public page. To improve security and prevent abuse of this feature, a captcha (proving you’re not a robot) is now implemented before a password reset can be requested.

 

Sprint 144

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.

  • 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.

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.

ENG

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.

ENG - Task management

 

  • 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.

ENG - Recipient list menu

ENG - Bulk action button

 

 

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 - 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).

  • 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).

Sprint 140

MeForms

  • Publish tender - With the implementation of MeForms, the pop-up to actually start your tender was not implemented. This caused that the ‘publication date’ would remain empty quite often, which lead to tenders that are on the Published Tenders page, but supplier could not participate. 2nd line currently performs a workaround each day to ‘fix’ those tenders.
    But now, the below pop-up has returned when publishing a tender (the BPM setting for that round needs to be set on “start with publication“). Please note that the pop-up will only appear for the first publication you do in a tender.
    Short explanation:

    • Start as scheduled: tender will be accessible for suppliers from the date that was set in the schedule. If this is empty (as below), then the will NOT automatically be accessible by suppliers.

    • Start now: tender will automatically be accessible for suppliers as soon as it gets published on the Published Tenders page. The ‘publish tender’ date will be overwritten by that date.

       

  • Contact person - In every publication form, a contact person of the buyer organization is prefilled. This was prefilled from the organization profile. This has now changed so the contact person of the tender will be prefilled.

  • TED publication date - For European publications (via TenderNed), the TED publication date was never shown. This caused confusion by buyers. This date will now be shown to make it more clear the tender has been fully published.
    Please note that this date - if applicable - will also be added to previously published eForms.

  • Review body - The review body would always be created as an organization in MeForms, even it was completely empty in the templates section. This is now changed, so the review body will only appear if the official name of the review body is filled out in the templates section.

  • Form 22 - Fixed an issue where form 22 would disappear after completing validation.

 

Small changes

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

  • Granting access - After a user grants access to their user profile, it now displays the exact date and time of when it will automatically expire.

  • Supplier services - The selected subscription and marketing consent setting are now saved in the session storage. This means from now on it will be possible to reach out to certain users via WhatFix.

 

Bug fixes

  • Questionnaire exports - A bug has been resolved where the ZIP export of a tender and the all answers export would fail if in that tender a questionnaire exists that solely contains informative questions.

  • Offer > evaluators team - A bug has been resolved where the user couldn’t see all assigned evaluators if it were too many (scroll bar was missing).

  • Technical change - Mail service provider has been changed. This was SendGrid, but it now changed to Mailjet.

 

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