Clicking on the MILESTONES or DUE BY tab in your proposal, project, estimate or risk shows the default estimate development plan, i.e. the steps required to complete a projector proposal cost/price estimate. This is also called a "workflow".

A workflow template is a series of tasks or steps, each with a corresponding owner, step 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 projects, estimates and risks.

Click on the MILESTONES or DUE BY tab highlighted below to view the steps in your 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 project or proposal request was received and when the response or estimate 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 proposal response due date
2. If your company has set-up more than one response "workflow template" then select the most appropriate one to use here, according to the kind of project 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 estimate development plan. Steps are grouped into milestones in the template set-up
   • 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 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 for incomplete steps to set or update them. The date when that step was actually completed is displayed in the "Achieved on" column
   • Due dates are only calculated automatically for the next step when the previous step is completed, as they are often based on the date of the previous step's completion + a lead-time. You can manually input due dates ahead of time, if desired
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. 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 when that step is started. 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
   • If a workflow is stuck waiting for someone (the owner) who is on vacation or has left the company then you can select your own name as the owner of the current step, save, and reload. Now you will be authorized to complete and move to the next 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. If you happen to be the owner of the current step then you will see a link text to complete the current step and move forward to the next step, displayed as lighter blue font with underline as shown below.  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.