Video Tutorial With Text Instructions Below
There are multiple ways to filter your search results. The left hand side of your Opportunities dashboard houses the filters list that can help you efficiently narrow down your search results.
NOTE: All filters, except the date range filter, are optional.
Read below to better understand the functionality of each filter.
Pro Tip: Select ctrl+f to quickly find the filter that you're looking for within this article!
At the very bottom of the Search Dashboard you'll see a button labeled "More Options". Click that button to view the comprehensive list of filters.
Date Range:
Posted At (default): Starts with a range of the past 3 months. By clicking in the date box, you can select a number of range options on the left, or use the calendars to set a specific range. Note this first date filter (4/12/2022) applies to when an opportunity was received in the system, not when it is due, so the results list will show those that may have already been awarded, expired, or canceled.
Modified At: Often times contracts will be modified during the bid period. The "Modified At" filter allows you to search for opportunities that were modified during a specific time period.
Respond By: The other option for filtering by date range is to use the "Respond By" selection. As with the "Posted At selector", you can pick from default ranges to the left or select inclusive dates to the right. Though this will give you the most accurate results for currently active opportunities, the filter is based only on the full close date of an opportunity. You may find some that have already expired based on a time of closing on the start date as well as any that have been cancelled or awarded within the date range.
Customer: Filter for opportunities generated by one or more specific customers.
Begin by typing the name of a customer in the search box; a pull down menu of possible matches will appear. Select the customer you are looking for; if there are no matches an alert will be shown. If the customer you are looking for is not listed, you can use the free text search box (the large dialogue box in the middle of your opportunities dashboard).
You can select more than one customer to filter on. More than one is considered an "or" filter operator. EXAMPLE: Department of Justice OR Department of Commerce
Note that you can delete customers individually by clicking on the "x" next to the customer name, or clear the entire search box of customers by clicking the "x" in the upper right corner. The search terms used are shown below the box. In the default setting, customers are searched on exact matches, that is the requesting customer is identified in a machine-readable portion of the address line or text of the RFQ, not any attachments.
If you would like to search attachments and essentially all of an RFQ for a customer, you can select "Full text search . . . " NOTE: the search terms that you designate will be applied to the text of an opportunity as well as any attachments. This may lead to false hits as shown in this example:
Here, we filtered on Department of Justice, but the return is from the Department of Veterans Affairs. You can see in the search summary for this opportunity that the match was in an attachment, typical of boiler-plate attachments used by most contracting shops, especially those coming through the NASA SEWP contract.
Another approach to try when filtering by customers is to exclude attachments from search by selecting the box as shown above. This is just as it is named, so if the customer is located in the free (but unstructured) text of an opportunity it will be shown; but if the customer name is only in an attachment it will not be considered. This approach works well with most customers, but when focusing on the Veterans Administration (for example) the search uses "Veterans Administration" as a key phrase and the abbreviation "VA" as well. This, when searching free text and excluding attachments from search, results in many false positives as "VA" is also used for the state of Virginia, where several government agencies are located with their associated acquisition shops.
Contract Vehicle: is the next filter, it defaults to ALL of the contract feeds you are authorized to receive. You can click in the box as shown below and select one or more contracts if you would like to eliminate those that have no bearing on your search. For example, if you were only looking for US Army opportunities, you would select the SEWP and ITES contracts.
Status: You can select only Open opportunities using the pull down menu. If you are doing research on past opportunities you may want to select one or more of the other options shown. Expired shows the opportunities that are past their submission date, Canceled are those that have had modifications that canceled the opportunity or have been placed on the SEWP canceled report, and Award Notified are those SEWP opportunities that have been identified as awarded on the SEWP awarded report. In many cases awarded opportunities do not make it to the various reports, so if you see an opportunity that is well past close date yet not shown as canceled or awarded you should consider the status as unknown.
Request Type: You can select one or more types to best fit your search. This is probably most useful in the first two quarters of a fiscal year, when the federal agencies are looking for top-of-the-sales-funnel RFIs, MRRs, and Sources Sought.
Following: When an RFQ is followed (thumbs up) and a workspace is created (automatically) you will be able to filter by follower/s within this dropdown. If you want to see all RFQs that a specific person, or group of people have followed, you can do so by leveraging this drop down.
Customer email domain: This filter allows you to filter opportunities by the customers domain.
Set Aside: If you're interested in opportunities only available via certain set aside designations, you can filter on these via this list.
Tags (featuring SEWP Groups): These filters allow you to get more granular within the SEWP contract feed. For details on these groups, visit the SEWP portal.
Recipient Count: Filter by the number of suppliers/contractors receiving the opportunity.
Regions: You can select US states or other international regions as identified by the requesting customer.
NAICS Codes: Filter your opportunities by specific NAICS codes. You will need to include all of the NAICS codes that you might be interested in. Example: If you filter on NAICS code "26", you will NOT see results for NAICS code 26300 etc.
Viewed: Filter for opportunities that have already been viewed by your colleagues or others.
Matched: Filter for opportunities that have been matched with a colleague/other user.
Exclude Viewed: Excludes opportunities viewed by those users you specify.
Not Interested: See only the opportunities that a specific person/multiple people have marked as not interested.
Shared: Filter opportunities by who has shared them.