Promotion queue
Answers written for one RFP are proposed for the repository and reviewed by the owning department before they can be reused. Nothing self-publishes.
Features
Every phase, and what it actually does.
ProposalOne is one system of record for the whole response, from the moment the RFP lands to the archived submission. Below is the workflow in order, plus the platform pieces underneath it.
Phase 1 — Intake
The RFP arrives and files itself.
Forward the issuer's email to your monitored intake mailbox, or upload the documents directly. Either way the RFP exists in the system before anyone has opened a spreadsheet.
- Email intake. A monitored mailbox creates the RFP with its attachments already loaded and the requestor recorded.
- Reads the real formats. .docx, .pdf, .xlsx and .txt are parsed server-side — no copy-paste step.
- Automatic section extraction. The requirement list becomes a section per question, in the issuer's own order and numbering.
- Customers, companies and service types. Each RFP is tagged with who is bidding, who is issuing, and what kind of work it is — so reporting works later.
- Cover sheet, generated. Release date, question close date, submission deadline, mandatory walkthrough, issuing organization, scope summary, key requirements, evaluation criteria and required certifications — pulled from the document, then edited by a human.
- Deadlines that surface. Key dates drive the dashboard and the notification schedule, so nothing depends on somebody's calendar entry.
- A real Go/No-Go record. The bid/decline decision is recorded against a person and a time, with notes — and the workflow won't proceed until it is made.
- Declines are data too. No-Go RFPs stay in the system with their reasons, which is what makes win-rate reporting honest.
Phases 2 & 3 — Cover Sheet and Go/No-Go
Decide before you spend the week.
The expensive part of a bad bid is the three days before someone admits it was a bad bid. ProposalOne front-loads the summary and forces the decision while it is still cheap.
Phase 4 — Auto-Fill
Drafted from your repository, not from thin air.
Auto-Fill runs the whole section list as one job. For each question it searches your approved answers first, then uses Claude to adapt the best candidates to the wording the issuer actually used.
- Repository first. Matching runs against your own approved answer text, so drafts start from language you have already stood behind.
- Confidence and provenance. Every drafted section shows how confident the match was and which repository answers it came from.
- Runs in the background. Progress is tracked per section; you can leave the page and come back to it, and a stalled run can be re-run.
- Unanswerable is a valid answer. Questions with nothing to match are flagged as gaps and routed rather than filled with plausible nonsense.
- AI included. Model usage is part of your plan at every tier — never metered back to you, never itemized on an invoice.
- Ownership per section. Assign a response lead for the bid and owners for the sections they know, by department.
- SMEs see their queue only. A subject-matter expert opens one list: the sections waiting on them, in their department.
- Review and approval. Sections move through review to approved, with the approver and time recorded.
- Notifications that escalate. Scheduled digests and in-app alerts chase the work — instead of the response lead chasing people.
- Delegated capabilities. Beyond the standard roles, individual capabilities can be granted to one person without promoting them to admin.
Phases 5 & 6 — Team Setup and Review
The right person, the right section, one queue.
Most RFP pain is coordination pain. ProposalOne assigns sections to owners, shows each person only what is theirs, and keeps the response lead's view of "what is still open" true.
Phases 7 & 8 — Submit and Archive
One clean document, one package, filed.
When the sections are approved, ProposalOne builds the response document from the structured answers — question and answer, in the issuer's order — and assembles the submission package around it.
- Generated response document. A clean .docx built from approved sections, carrying the issuer's own section references.
- Submission package. The response plus reference documents and attachments, zipped, with PDF conversion where available.
- Filing structure. Completed bids land in the filing folders you define, per company and customer.
- Outcome tracking. Record what happened after submission so win rates come out of the system rather than a side spreadsheet.
- Searchable afterwards. Global search spans RFPs, sections and repository answers — including everything you archived.
The answer repository
The asset that makes the next bid cheaper.
The repository is the point of the product. Everything else exists to fill it, review it and reuse it.
Tagged and owned
Every answer carries tags and a department owner, which is what makes matching accurate and reviews land on the right desk.
Reference documents
Insurance certificates, licences, safety records and standard attachments live beside the answers and travel with the package.
Reports & Ask
Ask questions about your own bidding.
Rollups across companies, customers, service types and people — plus a natural-language "Ask ProposalOne" that answers from your data and respects what the person asking is allowed to see.
- Volume and outcome. What you bid, what you declined, what you won, by entity and service type.
- Repository health. Coverage and gaps, so you know which departments owe answers before the next RFP arrives.
- Scoped by role. Org-wide rollups are for admins and response leads; everyone else asks against their own RFPs.
Platform
The parts you only notice when they're missing.
Your own database
A dedicated Postgres database per customer, provisioned at signup and reachable only by your workspace.
Entra ID single sign-on
Sign in with your Microsoft work account. Your directory stays the source of truth for who exists.
Emailed sign-in links
For people outside your directory, single-use links to approved domains — no extra password to manage.
Roles and capabilities
Admin, response lead, SME, requestor, reviewer and approver, plus per-person grants for the exceptions.
Activity log
Phase changes, approvals, promotions, submissions — recorded per RFP with who and when.
Your name on it
Your organization name, your logo, your accent color and your own email templates, at every tier.
Approval gate for new users
An unknown person who signs in waits for an admin, rather than landing inside your bid data.
Directory-aware people picker
Assignment pickers read your own directory, so names and photos match the org chart.
Maintenance windows
Planned work shows a held page instead of a broken one, and admins can still get in.
Bring one of your RFPs.
The fastest way to judge this is to point it at a bid you have already written. Start a trial on a private workspace, or have us walk it with you.