Clicking on the DUE BY tab in your proposal shows the default proposal response plan or steps required to complete a proposal response. This is also called a "workflow" or in the case of the initial default response plan, a "workflow template".

A workflow template is a series of tasks or steps, each with a corresponding owner, status label, estimated lead-time and connection or flow (predecessor/successor steps). Workflow templates can be applied in theory to anything but in practice are used mostly for proposals, bases of estimates (WBS) and risks.

Click on the DUE BY tab highlighted below to view the steps in your proposal response together with planned (due) and actual (achieved) completion dates, who is responsible for that task, and who completed that task (achieved by).

1. Key dates for when the request for proposal was received and when the response is due are entered at the top. These dates do not programmatically impact the due dates in the list of steps below however the start of your response is the receipt date and the last activity should be planned to be completed by the response due date
2. If your company set-up more than one response "workflow template" then select the most appropriate one to use here, according to the kind of proposal this is. The list of steps in the table below will be replaced by steps from the new workflow template, with the exception of steps which have already been completed
3. You have three different view options, as follows:
   • Planned steps (the default) shows all steps which are not yet completed
   • Milestones (which is view only) shows the key milestones or groups of steps together which form a single milestone.  Think of this as a simplified or summary view of your response plan. Note: steps are grouped into milestones when the workflow template is initially set up by your implementation consultant
   • All steps shows steps which are completed as well as planned steps. Steps are in sequence (or expected) order by default however you can click on any of the column headings to sort the steps based on that column
4. The status column shows the description of each step. It is not the same as the response text, which is the action text to reach that step. The status text and response or action text is initially set up by your implementation consultant and cannot be edited at this time
5. The due date is the estimated date when this step should be completed. Click on any of the due dates to set or update them. The date when that step was actually completed is displayed in the "Achieved on" column
6. The owner is the person responsible for that step. It can be setup to default automatically based on a named individual, job role or document owner in the workflow template by your implementation consultant. Click on the owner to set it manually. Changing or setting the owner triggers a  workflow message or email to be sent to the selected name. The person who completed the step is also displayed
   • The "achieved by" may not always match the owner for example if the task was delegated, someone intercepted and completed the task for the owner, or there were several owners and only one of them needed to complete the step
7. The current status of the proposal, the step the proposal is in or which is currently in process, is displayed in the top right corner of every screen. If there is more than one parallel current status then the most relevant one (to the user) is displayed with other parallel current status texts available from a drop down menu
8. There is a link text to complete the current step and move the document forward to the next step, displayed as lighter blue font with underline as shown above.  Clicking this link completes the current step, makes the new step active, and notifies the new owner that they need to take action via workflow notification and email. If there is more than one "next step" - for example because the current step branches out to several parallel next steps - then there is an arrow with a menu for the user to select which next step should be started.