A Public Request For Proposal (RFP) contains information that a vendor or service provider needs to prepare a qualified response to a RFP.

To generate a Public RFP, which can be distributed to vendors via e-mail or uploaded to a Web Server, you need to start the RFP Editor.

The user interface looks familiar. There is the 'Worklist' tab, which contains one or more Private RFPs. We have already loaded the Private RFP into the worklist, so this is not part of the demo.

To generate a Public RFP, you need to open the Private RFP first. You can make changes to the RFP header, but all other elements are read-only. If there are no changes to be made, you can proceed to generate the Public RFP. The only information required is a file name under which the Public RFP is stored.

The next task is to arrange for the exchange of information between your organization and potential vendors or service providers. 

There are basically two means of exchanging information with business partners:

• E-Mail: You may distribute a Public RFP via e-mail, and you may receive RFP Responses through this channel.
• File Upload/Download: You may identify a directory on a Web server, where you make available the Public RFP via file upload. Vendors or service providers can download the Public RFP from there. This also works in the reverse direction. Business partners would upload the RFP Response file to a partner-specific directory on a Web Server, from which you would download.