For the company qualification process via Smart Materials Portal, you must define a question list for each company type that is available to be assigned to a new company on P.20.02 Login Requests. For more information see Register for the Smart Materials Portal.
Additionally, commercial and technical questions are used in the inquiry phase for commercial and technical evaluation.
The question lists can be defined on the P.10.25 Question List screen.
To create a new question, select the company type from the LOV in the Company Type field. The company types must be pre-defined on the A.10.22 Company Types screen.
-
The company types that can be selected on P.20.02 or in the Portal have the P.20.01 check box selected on the A.10.22 Company Types screen.
-
The company type cannot be selected for Technical or Commercial questions.
If you select an existing question before creating a new question, the company type
and level 1-4 are copied from the previous question, and the Seq field is filled with the next available sequence number. If you do not want the mentioned
fields be pre-filled, select the Create Empty Row check box before you create the new question.
If you want to define general questions which have to be answered by all companies independent of the selected company type, select INTERNAL_GENERAL_QUEST from the LOV. These questions appear on the Company Profile or Qualifications screen in the General Questions section.
The company type INTERNAL_MAS indicates that the question is assigned to a material or service. If a material or service is displayed in the Matl/Work Group field, this question was automatically generated by the software and cannot be changed. Material or service questions are assigned to company profile or qualifications (shown in the Level 1 field), and they are displayed on the Company Profile or Qualifications screen in the Portal.
The company type INTERNAL_MAS_TYP indicates that the question is assigned to a material or service type. If a material or service type is displayed in the Matl/Work Group Type field, this question was automatically generated by the software and cannot be changed. Material or service type questions are assigned to company profile or qualifications (shown in the Level 1 field), and they are displayed on the Company Profile or Qualifications screen in the Portal.
The Level 1 of the question list can be defined as Commercial, Company Profile, Qualifications, or Technical, and the other levels are freely definable. All questions under the Company Profile top node are available and must be answered in step 2 (Company Profile) of the company registration. All questions under the Qualifications top node are available and must be answered in step 3 (Qualifications). The questions under the Commercial node can be used to create question sets for the commercial bid evaluation. The questions under the Technical node can be used to create question sets for the technical bid evaluation.
If you select Commercial or Technical, the Company Type, Level 2-4, Approval Template, Qualification Stage, and Mapped To fields are disabled.
For a Company Profile or Qualifications questionnaire, the question list can be structured with up to four levels. This defines the hierarchy of the questionnaire as it will appear on the P.20.03 Questionnaire screen and in the Portal. Level 1 is a required field; Level 2-4 are optional.
The number entered in the Seq field determines the sort order of the questions within the level.
The question text is entered in the Question field. If you want to define the question text in other languages than the login language, do the following:
-
Click the NLS Description button to open the Translated Questions window.
-
Enter a new record, and then select the language from the LOV in the Nls box
-
Type the question in the selected language.
-
If required, you can also define the info text and the LOV condition for the selected language.
-
Click Save and close this window.
The light blue background color of the Question box indicates that the question is not available in the login language.
If the question is an auto-created material or service question (INTERNAL_MAS company type) or a material or service type question (INTERNAL_MAS_TYP company type), the Lvl field indicates if it's a master question (M), a detail question (D), or a master question with auto-created detail questions. Click the Legend button to open a window with detailed description.
If the question is a detail question, right-click in the Question box and select Show master question from the context menu to open a dialog where the master question is shown. Here you can click Go to .. to navigate to the master question.
The Answer Type field for a question controls the behavior when inserting the answer on P.20.03 Questionnaire or in the Portal. The available options are:
-
Date - Requires a date value; a calendar LOV is available.
-
Document upload only - Requires the upload of a document, but the user is not forced to provide an answer. If you select this option, the Mandatory check box is cleared and the Document Rqd field is set to Yes.
This option only applies to the Portal.
-
Free Text - No restriction.
-
LOV - Requires an answer from a list of values (LOV). For this answer type, the LOV condition has to be defined, either by:
-
Entering a valid select statement in the LOV Condition field beside the Answer Type field. The select statement must retrieve two values. An example is displayed in the picture below.
The example select statement displayed in the picture above delivers the LOV shown below:
-
Entering a list of valid values in Window 2. Just leave the LOV Condition field empty when saving the record. A prompt will ask if answer values should be entered instead of an LOV condition.
Click Yes to open Window 2, where the values for the LOV can be defined.
The example values displayed in the picture above deliver the LOV shown below:
-
Use the Mapped to field to select a P.20.01 or A.10.23 field from the LOV. This field is mapped to the question and is where the answer should be filled in when the questionnaire is submitted. Depending on the mapped field, the Answer Type field is automatically set to LOV or Free Text.
The example displayed in the picture above delivers the LOV shown below:
-
-
Multiple Answers - Requires the selection of pre-defined answer(s). You define answers for this question in the same way as for LOV type, either by entering a valid select statement in the LOV Condition field, or you double-click in the Question field to open window 2 where you can manually specify answer values, or using the Mapped to field.
-
Number - Requires a numeric value.
-
Regular Expression - When choosing this answer type, you can use LOV Condition field to specify a regular expression, which will be used in Smart Materials Portal to validate answers provided to this question. For supported regular expressions, please refer to the Oracle documentation on this topic.
For example, if the question expects a 5-digit number (including leading zeros) as an answer, you could specify this regular expression: '\d{5}'.
-
Y/N - Restricted to Y (Yes) and N (No); an LOV is available.
In the Info field, you can specify additional information for the question. For example, you can add an explanation about what information is required to answer the question correctly.
The selected Lng >1 check box indicates that the question is defined in more than one language.
If the Mandatory indicator is selected, this question must be answered to be able to submit the questionnaire.
Select the Acceptance Rqd check box if the acceptance of this question is required. In the Acceptance Criteria field, you can specify the criteria for the acceptance of this question.
If the Document Rqd box is set to Yes, a document must be attached to this question to be able to submit the questionnaire. If the Document Rqd box is set to No, documents cannot be attached to this question. If the Document Rqd box is set to Optional, documents can be attached to the question, but it's not required.
In the Document Description field, you can describe what kind of document is expected to be uploaded.
Click the Upload/View button to open Window 11, where you can attach documents to the question.
In the Documents block, you can upload files to be attached to the question. You can enter a description of the file in the File Description field. Then click the Upload button to open a browser window where you can select the file to be uploaded from your local computer to the document server. Select the file and click the Open button to start the upload. You can click the View button to retrieve the selected document from the document server for display on your client computer. By clicking the Remove button, you can remove the selected document from the document server. The document will also be removed from the list of uploaded documents. Click the Return button to close the window and return to the previous screen.
In the Approval Template field, you can assign pre-defined approval templates to the question list or to single questions. The approval templates are defined on the A.20.45 Approval Templates screen. For more information, see Approval Templates.
-
You can assign multiple approval templates to the Company Profile and Qualifications question lists. The approval template can be assigned to any question on any level, and the same approval template can be assigned to more than one question. Each question that requires acceptance can have its own approval sequence.
-
When multiple approval templates are assigned, each of the questions must have its own approval.
-
When only one approval template is assigned to the question list, all answers are accepted when the approval is completed. It is not necessary to accept each of the answers separately.
To define the qualification stage of the question, select a value from the drop-down list in the Qualification Stage field.
-
Only questions with the Active indicator selected will be displayed on the P.20.03 Questionnaire screen and in the Portal.
-
If the company submits the questionnaire on P.20.03 or via the Portal, it will be displayed on the Qualification Questions tab of P.20.01 Suppliers/Subcontractors Window 2.
-
The marked Internal checkbox indicates that the question was created by the software and cannot be deleted.