Publish to Supplier

Check the box to publish the auction to the Workbench of all approved suppliers. Clear the box to hold a private auction for invited suppliers only.

Date to Publish/Invite

Select the date to send invitations to bidders and to publish the auction to the Workbench of all approved suppliers, if the auction is public. If you select today's date, the auction will be published and suppliers will be invited immediately after you save the auction.

Supplier Invitation Attachment

Optionally, add an attachment to the auction invitation, if the publication date is specified.

Preview Start

Enter the time and date that suppliers can view the auction before it opens for bidding. Suppliers cannot place bids until the time specified in either the Pre-bid Start or the Bidding Open field.

Preview Duration

Enter the duration of the preview phase. If enabled, this field determines the Pre-bid Start time and, along with the Pre-bid Duration field, determines the Bidding Open time. This field is used only in auctions with system-calculated dates and times.

If the auction is suspended during the preview phase, the suspension time will be added to the Preview Duration when the auction is unsuspended. When unsuspending an auction, you can also specify additional time for the preview phase. Any such additional time is also added to the Preview Duration.

Pre-bid Start

Enter the time and date that suppliers can enter pre-bids before the auction opens for bidding. A pre-bid is used as the supplier's first bid. In the case of a tie between two pre-bids, the earlier pre-bid is designated as the leading bid when the auction opens.

Pre-bid Duration

Enter the duration of the pre-bid phase. If enabled, this field, along with the Preview Duration field, determines the Bidding Open time. This field is used only in auctions with system-calculated dates and times.

If the auction is suspended during the pre-bid phase, the suspension time will be added to the Pre-Bid Duration when the auction is unsuspended. When unsuspending an auction, you can also specify additional time for the pre-bid phase. Any such additional time is also added to the Pre-Bid Duration.

Bidding Open

Enter the time and date that the auction will open for bidding. This may be automatically determined by the values in the Pre-bid and Preview Duration fields.

Auction Pause Duration

This field is displayed only if Dutch Bidding is selected as the auction type. The value in this field indicates the length of time the auction pauses when a line item closes. During the pause, no bidding is allowed. When the pause time elapses, the following line item opens for bidding.

This value can be entered in seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The minimum pause duration is five seconds.

Line Item Minimum Bid Duration

Enter the minimum amount of time that each line item will be open for bidding. This specifies the earliest time the auction can close and will set the time in the Earliest Line Item Close field.

If an auction is suspended and then unsuspended, the amount of time that the auction was suspended will be added to the Line Item Minimum Bid Duration. When unsuspending, you can specify that additional time be added. This additional time is factored into the Line Item Minimum Bid Duration.

If early close is enabled, any time automatically added to the bidding time is not added to the Line Item Minimum Bid Duration. (This automatically added time is reflected in the Earliest Close Date).

Earliest Line Item Close

Indicates the next time that a line item will enter the Close Pending phase (if enabled) or the Closed state.

Auction Bid Duration

Enter the length of time that the auction will be open for bidding. This determines the time in the Bidding Close field. Once this is reached, the auction will close.

This field is used only in auctions with early close enabled. When this type of auction is being defined, the Auction Bid Duration represents the total amount of time that the auction can be open for bidding. (However, inactivity in the auction may cause bidding to end before this time. See the field definitions for Early Close, Inactivity Period, and Extension for more information.)

The final end date is calculated by adding the Auction Bid Duration to the Bidding Open date.

When an auction is suspended and then unsuspended, the amount of time that it was suspended is automatically added to the Auction Bid Duration. When unsuspending an auction, you can specify that additional time is added. This additional time is factored into the Auction Bid Duration.

When an auction with a Close Pending phase is reopened, you can specify the amount of additional bidding time to add to the auction. This amount of time, plus the amount of time that the auction was in Close Pending, is then automatically added to the Auction Bid Duration.

Bidding Close

Indicates the date and time that the auction will close for bidding (or enter the Close Pending phase, if that phase is enabled).

When an auction is suspended and then unsuspended, or an auction with Close Pending is reopened, the Bidding Close date will be updated based on the recalculation of either the Line Item Minimum Duration or the Auction Bid Duration.

Pending Duration

This field is displayed only if a Close Pending phase is selected in the Auction Type.

Enter the duration of the Close Pending phase, if this is enabled for the auction. The Close Pending phase allows you to reopen a staggered line item after it closes, or reopen an entire auction after it closes.

The Close Pending phase is an optional auction phase. If an auction is configured with this phase, when the open bidding phase has ended, the auction will enter the Close Pending phase rather than the Closed state. The auction will remain in the Close Pending phase until you reopen the auction or the Pending Duration elapses. If the Pending Duration elapses, the auction will close.

When you reopen an auction, the system will prompt you for the amount of time to add to the Open Bidding phase. The Bidding Close date and the permanent end date will then be adjusted by the specified time plus the amount of time that the auction has been in the Close Pending phase. The auction will then return to the Open Bidding phase.

At the new Open Bidding phase end time, the auction will enter the Close Pending state again and the process outlined above will be repeated. There is no limit to the number of times the auction can be reopened.

In a Dutch auction, when the final line item closes for bidding, the auction will move into the Close Pending phase for the length of time indicated in this field.

Final Close

Indicates the time the auction will close after the Close Pending phase. The Final Close time is calculated by adding the Pending Duration value to the scheduled Bidding Close time. The auction cannot be reopened after the Final Close time is reached.

For auctions without a Close Pending phase, the Final Close time is the same as the Bidding Close time.

Offset Type

Select whether to stagger line item start times, end times, or both start and end times. If you stagger start times, each line item opens for bidding later than the previous one. If you stagger end times, each line item closes for bidding later than the previous one.

Offset Time (minutes)

Select the interval by which to stagger the line items. For example, if the offset time is 15 minutes, each line item opens and/or closes for bidding 15 minutes later than the previous one. The offset time must be applicable to all line items without exceeding the Auction Bid Duration value. If the offset time does exceed the Auction Bid Duration value, an error message is displayed.

Inactivity Period (minutes)

Enter the interval preceding the Earliest Line Item Close time during which, if a bid is entered, the close time will be overridden. The length of the added time is determined by the Extension field.

If no bid is received during the inactivity period, the line item will close at the specified Earliest Line Item Close time.

Extension (minutes)

Enter the length of time to add to a line item's bidding time if bids are received during the inactivity period. For example, the inactivity period might be 15 minutes and the extension 30 minutes. In this case, if a bid is received in the final 15 minutes before the Earliest Line Item Close time, 30 minutes will be added to that time.

If the auction has staggered line items, when a line item's close time is changed, the end time for all unopened, opened and close pending line items is also changed.

Bidding within the inactivity period will continue the bidding until the end time for the last line item to close reaches the Bidding Close date.