Framework agreement: Open Source

The new VITO ICT framework agreement "Open Source" is now available in the application.
To get access as a buyer you will need to upload the necessary accession documents.
Sellers will need to be invited by a VITO administrator to participate in the framework agreement.
For more information, please contact the helpdesk.

Note: buyers that took part in the system early after the release date of the application
(October 2023) will also have to move their accession documents, confidentiality statements and organization statutes
files to the correct fields.

The application now has a new title "VITO ICT Framework Agreements".

Below you will find a brief summary of the features included with this new framework agreement. A more detailed explanation
will be available in the documents section soon.

Mini competition

The mini competition feature for a request differs from a ICT Infra 2023 request. A buyer will be able to choose one
of the framework agreements when creating a request. When choosing "Open Source" the buyer should select 3 sellers
that may participate in the request. A lot should not be chosen in this case as Open Source does not apply lots.

When creating an offer for a Open Source request, the seller will have to provide a license and service cost.
The total cost will be calculated using both these fields + the service costs multiplied by the management margin.

A total cost score will be calculated based on the lowest cost offer (identical with ICT Infra 2023). The technical
score will fully be determined by the buyer. Both aspects will have a scale of /50 with a total score of /100. Winning
and losing offers will be determined.

E-mail notifications

Both sellers and buyers will receive a notification when they are granted access to the Open Source framework agreement.
Including new organizations and existing ones.

E-mail notifications now frequently show which framework agreement a notification is related to.

Grids

All grids now show which framework agreement a data row is related to. You can activate this column by using the
table options.

Lots page

The lots page is now transformed to the "Framework Agreements" page. Aside from showing your active ICT Infra 2023 lots,
the page now also shows the Open Source framework agreement when active for your organization. As with the lots, you can
quickly filter your Open Source requests using this page.

Seller invitation

VITO administrators can now determine which framework agreements a certain seller will have access to after invitation.

Buyer registration

Buyers can specify which framework agreements they would like to participate in when registering. Uploading accession
at this time is required.

Documents overview

The documents overview page now shows which framework agreement a document is related to.

Configurable technical requirements

As a buyer you can now configure the technical requirements an offer will be scored on. 1-5 Technical requirements
should be specified: description and max score should be determined.
For ICT Infra 2023 requests the technical requirements will be prefilled with the default requirements.

A total max score of 50 or 60 is required for Open Source and ICT Infra 2023 requirements respectively.

Request form validation

Validation of request forms has been improved. Validation errors will be shown iteratively which will greatly improve
readability.

Seller brand classifications

The seller brand classifications page is now more performant and will be validated correctly when adjustments are made
by a VITO administrator.

Automated tests

We continue to improve the automatic testing framework. E.g. we can now perform end-to-end tests more quickly by using
parallel testing on multiple browsers. Tests are more inclusive.

Bug fixes

Several bug fixes have been applied with regards to

• Request submit by date handling, in some rare cases the request end date was not handled correctly.
• "E-mail deliveries stalled" notification on top of each page
• Changing locale on a submitted form page threw an error
• ...

Two factor authentication

You can now enable two factor authentication for your user. Which will greatly improve the security of your account.
On the profile page you can activate this feature, download an authenticator app, scan the QR code and enter the code
verifier to confirm the activation.

At the moment this feature is optional, but we plan to make it mandatory in future releases.

Performance

We have made some structural changes on how the request and offer data is stored. This implies a great improvement on
the performance of the requests grid/table and its sorting and filtering capabilities.

Small improvements

Offer scoring

The scoring table now includes an identifier at the start of the grid. ID "T1" - "T5" is shown at each technical property.

User locking

When performing 3 failed login attempts, your user will be locked. Prior to this change would have to manually contact our helpdesk to
release your user. Now, you can unlock your user by using the "Forgot password" functionality. After setting a new password
your user will implicitly be unlocked.

Improved testing framework

We have improved our automatic testing capabilities. Doing so, we can better ensure application quality.

Bug fixes

Exporting to Excel

When exporting your filtered requests to Excel using the requests table/grid. Sometimes an error occured when the column
"won offer value" was shown. This has been fixed.

Filtering and sorting on seller statuses

When applying a filter on the request status in case you are a seller, the filter was not applied correctly.
This has been fixed.

Documents section

Detailed information about the framework can now be found in the "documents" section.
A list is shown including uploaded documents regarding the ICT framework agreement,
plots, designated sellers and more.

Bug fixes

1. When full screen mode is enabled, exiting the mode was buggy in case there were
   no requests yet. Also horizontal and vertical alignment of the informational popup
   when entering full screen mode has been fixed.
2. Sessions will (again) expire in 30 minutes.
3. In case of password expiration, fix redirect after setting your new password. In some
   cases you would be redirected to /release_log which is not a webpage document.

Changes relevant for system administrators / system managers

Improvements

1. Searching users / organizations on the user simulation page is more performant.

Bug fixes

1. When inviting a new seller the defined brand classifications are no longer ignored.
2. When setting a new password using the "forgot your password" function, admin
   simulations are no longer logged out.
3. While simulating a user which has an expired password a faulty banner including text
   "content missing" was shown on top of the page.

Deliveries

All sellers are now able to create (partial or whole) deliveries for their offers.
Please complete these deliveries A.S.A.P. as it is important data for reporting on spent budget
and finalizing this financial quarter.

• A delivery can be made via the won request / offer or the deliveries overview page.
• Buyers can look at all deliveries made for their requests.
• The grid used for the overview inherits the same capabilities as the requests overview grid.

Profile and organization pages

These pages have been improved.

• Your profile information is now shown on a dedicated page.
• Organizations users are now shown on a dedicated page.
• Available brands for a seller organization are now shown on a dedicated page.
• Technical specifications for seller organizations are now shown on a dedicated page.

You can navigate through these pages using the convenient dropdown by clicking on your name
in the top right of the page.

Multiple organizations

A user can now be invited to multiple organizations. Such users can easily switch the active
organization by using the link shown in the profile dropdown mentioned above.

User simulations

An administrator can now simulate a user and organization. Doing so will show exactly what
the user would see. This is specifically useful for testing purposes, but can also be used
to provide basic support.
When simulating a user and organization an administrator cannot perform any actions
on behalf of this user.

E-mail notifications

E-mail notification will no longer impact application performance, they will be sent by
another process. Generally your actions will be handled faster, e-mail delivery times will
hardly be impacted.

Improvements

Requests overview

Aside from dates, now also times are shown (e.g. "10:00 AM")

Due to the bugs listed below and the fixes we made, we had to reset your local requests grid configuration.
This means that you will have to reconfigure your grid (e.g. which columns to show, which filters to apply).

Requests overview bugs

• Winter / summer times (CEST / CET) are now handled correctly. Europe/Brussels time is used.
• Filtering on dates is now accurate and uses date ranges. E.g. 2024-01-01 will
  show all requests from 2024-01-01 00:00 AM until 2024-01-01 12:00 PM
• Combining multiple filters is now fixed. Sometimes these filters were not applied correctly.

Request submit by dates

When no one participated for a request, the buyer can now change the submit by date.
An e-mail will be sent to all sellers to notify them of this change.

Rounding of cost scores

Cost scores are now rounded up to 2 decimals. Previously, these were rounded to the nearest integer.
Won offers will be chosen accordingly (when finishing a future request, requests that are already awarded
will not be touched).

Company details

Company details shown on the request / offer pages now include the VAT / business number,
the address of the organization. This information will initially be collapsed, and can be expanded.

Own brand / private label

All sellers can now choose to submit an offer using their "own brand".

Release log

The release log now includes a navigation bar, to navigate to previous releases and show their logs.
Note: you can click the current release version on the bottom right of each page to open the release logs.

Statuses: winning / losing / draw

When a buyer is scoring the made offers for his request, but does not immediately finish scoring all offers,
it occurred that an offer was marked as "winning" or "losing" for a short time. While this status is accurate
for the moment, it was confusing for the sellers.
Thus, we removed this status for sellers, but kept this status for buyers.

Copyright

As the year 2023 is coming to its end, the copyright notation on the bottom of the page will now
adjust dynamically.

Changes relevant for system administrators / system managers

During development

During development e-mail delivery may be disabled. A notification will be shown on top of all pages
whenever this is the case. This should however never happen on the production environment.

System administrators

Admin pages have been improved. Administrators can now thoroughly search through organizations as they
would search requests. Approval / denial process now uses the same generic templates for showing
organization data.

Improvements

Requests overview

1. Your table settings will be stored in your browser. This means
   you won’t have to reconfigure the table every time you visit or
   refresh the page. Feel free to adjust the column sizes and arrange
   them in a way that best suits your needs.

2. We’ve introduced a new feature that allows you to switch to a
   larger view mode on the requests page. Activating this mode will
   enable you to display more columns and information on your screen.

3. You now have the ability to select cells within the table by
   clicking or by dragging your mouse. Once selected, you can easily
   copy these cells to your clipboard. This feature provides a quick
   and efficient way to copy information directly from the table.

4. We’ve added more columns for your convenience: create time,
   searchable key for each request, end submissions date passed. You
   have the flexibility to show or hide these columns as per your needs
   by configuring the requests grid. This allows you to customize the
   information displayed to suit your preferences.

5. You can now define filters on the top of the grid (previously, you
   needed to navigate through the menu to find them).

6. A row now only takes one line of text, when the text overflows the
   width/height a tooltip will be shown with the full text.

7. You can now configure the used page size: 5, 10, 20 or 50.

Best-and-final-offer

When all sellers have acted on a request, or the submissions date has passed,
a buyer can now request a BAFO. A popup will appear wherein the buyer can specify
for which sellers he wants to request a last offer.

End submissions

End submissions date will not interfere with the general status of a request.
Thus, you will always see an accurate status for your request.

Draw

A new status is introduced: Draw. When a request is draw, meaning that all scored
offers have the same score, the buyer can no longer finish the request. He will need
to determine a winner by changing the scores or requesting a best-and-final-offer.

Did not react

A new status is introduced: Did not react. When a seller did not react on a request,
and the request has ended, this new status will be shown.

Visibility offers

Buyers will now be able to see deprecated offers for historical purposes.

Registration

When registering, the VAT / business number no longer needs to be unique.
You can now register multiple organizations with the same VAT / business number.

Also, 3 new mandatory attachment fields are introduced: confidentiality statements,
accession documents, organization statutes.

Calendar

Calendar weeks now start on Monday instead of Sunday.

Bug fixes

• Requests table: you can now filter on request statuses, also as a seller organization.
• Requests table: sorting by organization name now works as expected.
• Requests table: grouping on status now shows the colored badges.