Good practice
How a team of three to ten people uses procuris in one procedure, from the saved search through pipeline and workbook to tight deadlines.
This page shows how a team of three to ten people uses procuris in one procedure, from the saved search through pipeline and workbook to tight deadlines. The recommendations give their reason and, where there is one, the alternative. How a feature is operated is on the linked page.
From Pro
The recommendations assume Pro or the Pro trial, because Free covers one person and has no agent. Pro covers up to 3 people. If 4 to 10 people work with you, you need Business, which has no limit on people. Details on Plans.
Assign roles
Make only those people Owner who manage users and the plan. An owner invites, changes roles and can remove other owners. Invite everyone else as Member. Members work on tenders, pipeline, workbooks and company profile with the same rights as an owner (User management).
Someone who only reads along still takes a seat as a member. There is no read-only role.
Any person in your organization can request services such as API, webhooks or single sign-on under Settings › Organization in the On request section. You get them through an individual quote. Afterwards, only the Owner role manages them, in areas that appear only after the setup. So decide before the request which owner looks after the connection (Settings).
Cut saved searches narrowly
Give your saved searches an activity description under What your company does. Only with it does procuris measure new hits against your offer and show the Fit from 0 to 100. In the 2 to 5 sentences, also name which services you do not take on. That sets you apart from neighbouring trades that sound similar in tenders. Without a description, the Threshold works with suitability alone and hides hits instead of moving them down (Fit and threshold).
Leave the threshold at 50 at first and read the hits below the line. If suitable tenders turn up there, lower the value, because otherwise these hits do not go into the mail. You can try another value safely, because the threshold deletes no hit and recalculates nothing.
Maintain the description in the saved search, not in the company profile. The Activity description field in the profile comes from the setup, and a change there changes no saved search. If your organization used procuris before the new version, the re-entry copied the description entered there into the saved searches without their own description. Check it there once (Re-entry for existing customers).
If an unsuitable subject keeps coming, add it as an Exclusion term. A tender with this term in its title or description then drops out of the saved search. Choose the term narrowly, because it also matches as part of a word: "Planung" also excludes "Fachplanung".
Keep the number of saved searches small. Each person gets at most one mail with hits per day, even with several saved searches. The new hits of the others are only in their lists of hits. For a one-off question, such as construction works with a deadline this week, use the Feed instead of another saved search.
Before saving a change, read the section What happens when you save. It names per field how many hits are added and dropped. A changed activity description takes the fit away from the existing hits until the runs of the next mornings have assessed them again (Saved searches).
If you do not need a saved search for a while, pause it instead of deleting it. Its hits then stay. Pausing stops the mail for the whole organization. If only one person does not want the mail, they unsubscribe under Settings › Notifications in the Searches group (Settings).
Review hits and put them into the pipeline
Decide who reviews the hits in the morning. The mail goes to the members of your organization, and Accept or Decline applies to the whole organization. If several people review without agreeing, they decide on the same hits twice.
Put what you seriously examine into the pipeline with Add to pipeline instead of Accept. The pipeline shows your tenders in progress as a board with columns and cards. Only Add to pipeline creates a card, and in the window you set Assign to and a first note right away. Accept suits marking tenders while you go through the list.
The fit tells you which hits to read first. It does not replace your review of the tender documents. If Exclusion shows in red next to the number, at least one minimum requirement is not met according to your profile. Then first check whether the proof is only missing from the profile (Company profile).
Run the pipeline as a team
Give a card a responsible person as soon as you create it. Colleagues find their cards through the Assigned to filter. The assignment itself notifies nobody. If the person should know, write a note with Share with team (Pipeline). The message then goes to all other members, not only to her (Notes).
Move cards on yourself as soon as the status changes. procuris moves a card by itself only on a decision for No-Bid and when you undo it or switch to Bid. If a card is left lying, the columns and the active number show an old status.
Create a No-Bid column and make it a Final stage. procuris puts cards with No-Bid into a column named Abgelehnt, Kein Angebot, Keine Teilnahme or No-Bid. Cards in a final stage do not count as active and do not count toward the pipeline value. Without such a column, a declined card stays in its column and keeps counting. Besides the four columns that come with a new organization there is room, the pipeline holds up to six.
Record the decision with Bid or No-Bid instead of removing a card. Notes, assignees and reasoning then stay, and procuris stores a snapshot with time left and gaps. Remove from pipeline, by contrast, deletes the card with its notes, decision and assignees. Only the workbook stays.
Write what concerns the whole tender as a note on the card. What concerns a passage in the documents belongs in the workbook as a comment, because there you mention colleagues with @. An @ in a note notifies nobody. Notes cannot be edited, and every member who opens the card reads them (Notes).
For a weekly meeting, the Timeline suits better than the board. It orders the cards by deadline, from Overdue to No Deadline. The due this week number in the header names the cards with a deadline today or in the next seven days. Cards without a deadline and cards in a Final stage do not count.
Use the agent and check its work
The agent works in the workbook, which you open on the card with Edit in workbook. It reads the tender documents and writes the requirements into a list. You start it in the Requirements module with Extract requirements.
The agent pays off as soon as the tender documents are complete in the Tender documents module. It reads the files there, not the files from the chat. A second run on unchanged documents finds nothing new, and a run counts toward the AI usage of your plan. So first put the ZIP archive from the procurement portal in place and then start one run (Capture requirements).
Mark by hand if you only want to capture single passages or the AI allowance is used up. Both ways can be mixed in the same list.
Check the agent's rows against the document before your team works with them. They carry a spark that shows AI when you hover over it. The agent can quote a passage wrongly or record it twice. The Unreviewed filter shows the open rows, a click on the source opens the passage. If a row has no source, Find the passage asks the chat for it.
Start with the Exclusion criteria. Whoever does not meet an exclusion condition drops out, regardless of price. The head of the section names how many criteria still lack evidence.
Reject wrong rows instead of deleting them, and merge duplicates. Rejected rows stay readable under Rejected and can be brought back with Undo.
Then, in the Suitability module, let Map qualifications propose proofs from your profile and decide on each proposal with Accept or Reject (References). The chat backs answers about documents with a verbatim quote. Still check details you base a bid on at the quoted passage (Chat).
Work with tight deadlines
Open Plan as soon as a card is in the pipeline. Plan shows the deadlines of the contracting authority on an axis and the modules of the workbook below them (Plan).
Add your own deadline for the internal hand-in, for example two days before the submission deadline. Reminders by mail and in the app come only for the four deadlines of the contracting authority, 14, 7, 3 and 1 day before and on the day itself. Your own deadline gets no reminder, but it shows on the card when it is the next one due.
Drag the greyed-out Bidder questions module under a deadline whose status you do not track, such as the bid validity. You get bidder questions through an individual quote, the module cannot be ticked off. As long as it sits under a deadline, that deadline does not show done, even if your team has ticked off the other modules below it.
With little time left, start the agent right after putting the documents in place. A run takes a few minutes, and you do not have to wait: it continues when you switch modules or leave the workbook.
Check the submission deadline on the procurement portal before you submit. procuris takes over corrections of the notice, but does not catch every one. If the date differs, add it as your own deadline and drag the modules under it.
You find new tenders with a short deadline in the feed through Due soon or the Deadline sort order. The Deadline filter suits this less, because its periods end today.
If your team does not have the time, a bid manager from procuris takes over the work on the bid up to submission. You get this service through an individual quote per procedure. Whether and at what price you bid is still decided by your team (Full service by a bid manager).
Keep profile and proofs current
Name one person who maintains the company profile. All three roles may change it alike, and the suitability and fit of your hits depend on these details. After saving, procuris assesses the hits of your saved searches again with the new state.
Go through the Certificates and Insurances lists once a month. Both mark an entry with Valid until 60 days before the end. procuris reminds you of an expiring certificate neither by mail nor by notification, and an expired proof no longer counts (Record certificates).
Enter Valid until, and for reference projects the End Date, as soon as a project is finished. Without these dates procuris shows no expiry, and the age of a reference cannot be read (References).
On a renewal, change the existing entry instead of creating a new one. Otherwise the old entry stays in the list as expired.
Use the gaps in suitability as a to-do list. Where no proof from your profile fits, a link such as Add certificate leads to the place in the profile. The Getting started list in the sidebar names open details with their share of completeness.
From Pro on, the chat takes certificates and reference letters from a PDF into the profile. Check the entry in the profile afterwards, because the chat writes entries there directly after your yes, without a proposal to approve.
Ask the chat how things work
Ask the chat when you do not know where something is or how a step works. It answers questions about operating procuris, about terms and about the plans from this help instead of guessing. The conversation then shows Help page read with the title of the page as a link to the full explanation. When you hover over it, the hint Open in the help appears (Chat). You use the chat from Pro on, and it answers in the language of your screen. On Free it does not answer, then the FAQ and the Quick reference help.
New colleagues best start with Start the tour at the bottom of the sidebar. The tour shows the way from the feed into the workbook (Product tour).