Awarding from an Evaluation (EV)
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Process
This job aid describes the steps for Awarding from an Evaluation (EV) transaction in CORE.
After a Solicitation has closed, the next step in the Award process is to compile Vendor responses to the Solicitation, and then use those Solicitation Responses to award via an Evaluation or EV transaction.
This document will walk you through the process of awarding your CORE Solicitation. In addition, it also provides instructions on how to identify commodity lines of your Solicitation as a No Award in ColoradoVSS.
Open the most recent version of your Solicitation.
Select Copy Forward.
Highlight the EV option.
Enter the appropriate Department code in the Transaction Dept field.
Enter a value in the Unit Code field (only if required by your department).
Select Auto Numbering.
Select Continue.
2. Select Load Responses from the Header tab.
This will load all of the information you created in each of your SR transactions and the information from any online vendor submission.
3. Validation of the load process can be made by selecting Load Statistics and ensuring that the Number of Responses Received to Date and Number of Responses Loaded to Date both reflect the correct (and same) amount of responses:
Once your Solicitation Responses have been loaded to the EV transaction, comments will need to be added to each response entry before the award process can begin.
Adding Evaluator Comments to your Vendor Submissions
1. Select Award by Total and highlight the first Vendor entry.
2. Select the Evaluator Comments tab.
3. Select the + sign to insert a new line.
4. In the Comments field, provide details regarding whether the Vendor will be awarded any lines in the Solicitation.
5. Return to the Award by Total section and highlight the next vendor on the list.
6. Select Evaluator Comments and repeat this process until comments have been added for all Vendor entries in the Award by Total section.
Once your Solicitation Responses have been loaded to your EV transaction and each of those entries has had a comment entered on them, the system will allow you to create your Award(s).
Award Methods: Awarding by Total
If your Solicitation needs to be awarded in its entirety to one or multiple Vendors, Awarding by Total is the best method. Navigate to the Award by Total tab.
Highlight the vendor you want to award all commodity lines to and click the caret to expand the section.
Select Yes from the Award All? dropdown.
On the Header tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and enter the parameters for your Award creation. The transaction used when creating an Award in an EV will be different for State Agencies, the State Purchasing Office, and Institutions of Higher Education. Please use the instructions provided for your group when working through this step.
If you are awarding your Solicitation on behalf of a State Agency (ex. CDLE), then you will need to enter a value of MAE2 in the Transaction Code field to utilize the non-encumbering Award transaction that will generate your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award identifiers in VSS, as well as your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award emails to all Vendors who either submitted their response online or whom you manually entered an SR for.
If you are awarding your Solicitation on behalf of an IHE (Institution of Higher Education), then you will need to use a Transaction Code of MAE1 along with your Transaction Department Code. IHEs do not use Unit Codes, so no value would be needed in the Transaction Unit Codes field.
If you are creating a State Price Agreement (SPA1) for your Solicitation on behalf of the State Purchasing Office then you will need to enter a value of SPA1 in the Transaction Code field to generate your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award identifiers in VSS, as well as your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award emails to all Vendors who either submitted their response online or whom you manually entered an SR” for.
For this example, we will create an MAE2 to award the Solicitation on behalf of a State Agency.
3. A value can be entered in the Transaction Unit field but this is an optional field not required to create the transaction and should only be entered if your Department requires it.
Note: Entering a prefix in the Transaction Prefix field is NOT allowed by the system when creating an MAE2 transaction.
Once all of these values have been entered, select Create Transaction from the 3-dot menu on the Header tab to generate your award transaction.
To award to multiple Vendors, repeat the steps for each vendor until all awards have been created.
Award Methods: Awarding By Line
If your Solicitation contains multiple lines that must be awarded separately to more than one Vendor (i.e. Vendor #1 needs to be awarded Commodity line #1 and Vendor #2 needs to be awarded Commodity line #2) the Award By Line option is the best method.
1. Select your Solicitation Commodity Line and highlight the first commodity you want to award.
2. Select Award By Line section and highlight the Vendor you want to award that commodity to.
3. Select Yes in from the Award dropdown for the Vendor you want to award to.
On the Header tab, scroll to the bottom of the page and enter the parameters for your Award creation. The transaction used when creating an Award in an EV will be different for State Agencies, the State Purchasing Office, and Institutions of Higher Education. Please use the instructions provided for your group when working through this step.
If you are award your Solicitation on behalf of a State Agency (ex. CDLE), then you will need to enter a value of MAE2 in the Transaction Code field to utilize the non-encumbering Award transaction that will generate your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award identifiers in VSS, as well as your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award emails to all Vendors who either submitted their response online, or whom you manually entered an SR for.
If you are awarding your Solicitation on behalf of an IHE (Institution of Higher Education), then you will need to use a Transaction Code of MAE1 along with your Document Department Code. IHE’s do not use Unit Codes, so no value would be needed in the Transaction Unit Codes field.
If you are creating a State Price Agreement (SPA1) for your Solicitation on behalf of the State Purchasing Office then you will need to enter a value of SPA1 in the Transaction Code field to generate your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award identifiers in VSS, as well as your Notice of Intent to Award/Notice of Award emails to all Vendors who either submitted their response online, or whom you manually entered an “SR” for.
For this example, we will create an MAE2 to award the Solicitation on behalf of a State Agency
3. A value can be entered in the Transaction Unit field but this is an optional field not required to create the transaction and should only be entered if your Department requires it.
Note: Entering a prefix in the Transaction Prefix field is NOT allowed by the system when creating an MAE2 transaction.
Once all of these values have been entered, select Create Transaction from the 3-dot menu on the Header tab to generate your award transaction.
To award to multiple Vendors, repeat Steps 1 and 2 for each remaining commodity line that you want to award to the next Vendor. Once all the lines have been selected for that vendor move on to Step 3, which will produce your multi-line Award.
Note: An Award transaction can contain awarded commodity lines for ONE VENDOR ONLY. Please be sure to identify the same Vendor in Step 2 for all commodity lines, which you identified in Step 1, or you will run into transaction errors when creating your Award in Step 3.
The draft Award(s) created earlier will generate a Notice of Intent to Award email to all Vendors that had an SR created or them (electronically via VSS or manually via CORE), and will also identify those lines with a Notice of Intent to Award in VSS.
Updating the Notice of Intent to Award to a Notice of Award is facilitated by validating and submitting your draft Award transaction(s) to a Final status. These Awards can be located in the Awarded Items section of the EV.
To submit the Award to Final, click on the Award Link.
Select Edit.
Enter a Transaction Name on the Header tab.
Select Validate located in the same area.
Doing this will display any errors within the transaction.
Select Submit.
MAE2 transaction submissions: When submitting your MAE2 transaction to Final, please note that you will need to enter a Department value in the Authorized Department section of the MAE2. To fill in this information, navigate to this section, select the Insert New Line, and then enter the same department value present in the header into the Department field.:
Finalizing the Awards will create a Notice of Award in VSS.
Closing out Your Evaluation Transaction (EV)
Once your Awards have been finalized, return to your EV and validate and submit the transaction.
No Award Scenario
If you have lines in a Solicitation that will not be awarded or re-solicited, refer to the following instructions to create a “No Award” for that line in VSS. Due to system limitations, the “No Award” function can only be utilized if at least one Solicitation Response was created via the “Copy Forward” option.
Before you identify a commodity line as a No Award, you will need to add Evaluator Comments to your Vendor responses. If you plan to do a re-solicitation, you will want to refer to the instructions in the Re-solicit a Solicitation job aid.
After comments have been added, navigate to the Solicitation Commodity Line tab. Select Yes from the No Award dropdown for each commodity line you do not intend to award.
Note: Selecting the No Award option for a commodity line will make it ineligible for re-solicitation, so you will only want to use this function if you don’t intend to re-solicit that commodity line(s). Once this has been done, validate and submit your EV transaction. The No Award notice will then be populated to the Intent to Award tab in VSS:
