RFP Desk App Overview

RFP Desk

1. What it is

RFP Desk handles inbound solicitations — RFPs, RFIs, and security questionnaires your
company receives. It answers two questions in order: should we bid on this, and if so,
how do we write the response without re-deriving answers we already have. Drafting reuses
your approved answers first, cites your own reference documents second, and marks anything
it cannot support as needing a human — it never invents a claim.

• Enablement: licensed and opt-in. An admin enables it in the Apps Marketplace and
  publishes it to the people who work on bids. Subject-matter experts who only answer
  routed questions receive those as ordinary Tasks and do not need the app published to them.
• What it is not: the buy side. Issuing RFQs to your vendors and scoring their
  responses is Supplier Hub. RFP Desk is for solicitations where you are the one responding.
  It also never sends anything to a buyer — export and submission are always human actions.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Apps → RFP Desk. Admins see six tabs; everyone else sees Dashboard,
   Bid / No-Bid, Answer a Question, and Responses.
2. Go to Settings and open Set up bid profile. Fill in What we can do — the
   plain-prose description of what you deliver, certifications you hold, and constraints
   you can’t move. The scoring rubric and the How we write style guide come prefilled
   with working defaults; add walk-away rules for terms that force a no-bid.
   Without a bid profile, an assessed RFP is shredded into requirements but reports no
   score — the Settings page shows a “Not set up” badge until one exists.
3. Seed the two libraries. In Answer Library, bulk-import an existing answer
   spreadsheet, or use Mine a Document to extract question/answer pairs from a past
   submission (you pick which candidates are saved; the document itself is not kept). In
   Reference Library, upload the documents drafting may quote — the security
   whitepaper, product datasheets — or index pages of your public website by URL.
4. Confirm it works: Load Sample Data on the Settings page seeds a sample bid profile
   and starter answers so you can try the assessor and the drafter before entering your own.
   Remove it from the same place when done.

An empty setup still behaves honestly: with no libraries, every drafted section comes back
marked Needs input rather than filled with invented text. The setup steps above are
what turn those gaps into answers.

3. How it fits together

Two libraries, two levels of trust. The Answer Library holds approved
question-and-answer pairs — wording a human signed off, reused as-is. The Reference
Library holds source documents; drafting synthesizes from them and attaches a citation
to the document and section it used. They are not interchangeable: a library answer is
your standing claim, a reference document is material a claim can be built from. Both are
admin-curated because both end up in front of buyers.

The grounding ladder. Every drafted answer is produced the same way, on every surface:
first an approved library answer, then your capability profile and reference documents
(with citations), and if neither supports the question, the section is marked
Needs input with a note about what a human must supply. Each section shows its
grounding — for example Reused from library or From company knowledge — so a
reviewer knows how much to trust the text. Worked example: “Describe your SOC 2 posture”
finds the approved SOC 2 answer and reuses it. “Describe your approach to data residency”
finds no approved answer, so it drafts from the uploaded security whitepaper and cites it.
“Provide three healthcare references” matches nothing and comes back Needs input.

A response’s life. A response moves Draft → In review → Approved → Submitted, with
On hold and Declined as side exits. Approval is refused while any section still
needs input, any section is unreviewed, or any required deliverable is unticked. Content
locks at Approved; reopening for edits moves it back to Draft and revokes the approval.
Review is per section — any team member can mark a section reviewed, and editing its text
withdraws that review automatically.

Who does what. Anyone the app is published to can assess RFPs, import questionnaires,
answer questions, and review sections. Curation — the Answer Library, the Reference
Library, document mining, the bid profile, and Settings — is limited to RFP Desk app
admins. Approving or submitting a whole response is limited to the response’s responsible
person or an app admin.

Boundaries. A routed question becomes a Task in the Tasks app, deep-linked back to the
exact section; answering the section closes the task. Recording a bid decision can open a
pursuit in Mango GTM when that app is enabled — the deal then lives in GTM, the response
stays here. Widening drafting to all company knowledge (wikis, SOPs, policies, Drive) is a
Settings decision, not the default — see §5.

4. Running it

Assess an inbound RFP

1. Open Bid / No-Bid and paste the RFP text or upload the document.
2. The report lists every extracted requirement with a mandatory flag, judges each against
   your capability profile, and computes the fit score from your rubric. Two things
   override the score outright: an unmet mandatory requirement, or a term your walk-away
   rules refuse.
3. From the report you can draft a response or record the decision.

Answer a questionnaire

1. Open Responses and import the buyer’s Excel or Word questionnaire. Questions the
   Answer Library already covers are filled in automatically; the rest are marked.
2. Work the marked sections: edit directly, re-draft with guidance, or apply a suggested
   library answer.
3. Export writes your answers back into the buyer’s original file, cell for cell.

Route a question to the person who knows

1. On any section marked Needs input, use Assign and pick the expert.
2. They get a Task in their inbox with the question and a link to the exact section.
   Mobile users land on a phone-friendly page.
3. When the answer is saved, the section’s flag clears and the task completes itself.

Finish and send

1. Have the team mark each section Reviewed.
2. Tick off the deliverables checklist — the forms and certificates the buyer requires you
   to attach, read out of the solicitation at import.
3. Move the response to In review, then Approved, then download: the buyer’s
   filled workbook, or a Word document in your branding with AI-drafted opening sections
   (cover letter, executive summary) you can add and review like any other section.

Keep the library true

1. Answers show their owner and last-reviewed date; past twelve months they are flagged as
   stale wherever they are reused, and owners get a periodic reminder to re-confirm.
2. Mark reviewed confirms an answer is still true without editing it.
3. Winning a bid offers its approved answers back as library candidates for an admin to
   accept — nothing enters the library without a human choosing it.

5. Settings

All under RFP Desk → Settings (app admins only).

Setting	Default	What it changes
Bid / No-Bid Assessor	On	The Bid / No-Bid tab: requirement extraction, fit scoring, and the terms screen.
Bid Fit agent in Ask AI	On	Lets Ask AI assess an RFP, explain a score, and maintain the profile and walk-away rules conversationally.
Responses & Answer Library	On	The Responses tab, Answer a Question, both libraries, and the RFP Response agent. Independent of the assessor.
Also ground on all company knowledge	Off	Widens drafting beyond the Reference Library to wikis, SOPs, policies, Sites, Drive, Contracts, and AI Notes. Leave off unless you have reviewed what that content says — drafts go to buyers.
Warn this many days ahead	3	How far before the buyer’s deadline the daily reminder starts for the responsible person and collaborators. Set to 0 to turn deadline reminders off.

The bid profile’s rubric weights, walk-away rules, and How we write style guide are
edited on the Bid Profile page rather than Settings. The style guide starts with a
built-in house style; leaving it blank falls back to that same default.

6. More help

• RFP Desk FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting
• Ask AI — the Bid Fit and RFP Response agents answer questions about RFP Desk from these
  articles, assess RFPs, and draft responses directly in chat.