Gathering Estimates and RFPs in Microsoft Office

Generator Code 128A in Microsoft Office Gathering Estimates and RFPs

The Estimates list, under the Sales application, gives you a place to record quotations you gave out to customers Often, estimates for complex projects have multiple components that need to come from separate staff One person might do the design component, another person the writing, and another the technical aspects of the project The Estimates list can be used to give those employees a place to submit their separate figures, so your organization can present an accurate proposal You, the administrator, can add the quotation to the Estimates list by filling out the New Item form You can then ask the staff involved in creating the estimate to add their figures in the Notes field You also have the capability to attach files with

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Time Manager, so you can attach the final presentation, giving everyone a record of it Just click the Attach File link at the top of the New Item form to locate the file you want to attach When all the components are submitted, you can add them You could do the same thing by e-mail, but having a formal record stored in your Estimates area can help you in the future when you need to submit similar proposals to this or other customers

When I worked full-time in an office, we had a weekly meeting to go over ongoing jobs or at least we tried to hold such a meeting More often than not, one or more people were absent because of business trips or conflicting meetings, not to mention illnesses and vacations While you can t do anything about the latter two options, you can certainly facilitate bringing people together by creating workspaces and setting up appointments with Office Live appointments you can set up with Time Manager as described earlier in this chapter, by the way Setting up virtual workspaces on Office Live can be more convenient than reserving a physical meeting space in your real-world office Office Live workspaces enable you to exchange information with a discrete group of employees, vendors, or customers You can upload or download files or images from a document library, for instance You can schedule meetings using the Dashboard (see Figure 14-9) Three workspaces are described in this chapter A fourth workspace the customer workspace is intended for you and your customers to get together virtually See 7 for more information

One of the primary advantages of workspaces is, they give a group of colleagues (a workgroup, in other words) a place to share files, as well as to view schedules and other information Granting permission to enter a workspace is basically the same as adding user accounts to other parts of Office Live

don t see Administration, click Home, and then click Administration)

FIGURE 14-9

site If any new users need to be added so they can access the workspace you are about to create, you can add them now To find out which of the current users has permission to access your workspace, choose the workspace from the View drop-down list

the person access to the workspace(s) you want to create The user can be given Administrator, Editor, or Reader permissions

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FIGURE 14-10

The Basic Meeting Workspace contains all the elements needed to plan and organize a meeting When you first connect to the Basic Meeting Workspace, you see these elements grouped in the Dashboard Before the meeting takes place, you can use them to add essential information for your participants: n Objectives Click Add New item to set specific goals and objectives you want to accomplish in your meeting n Agenda This isn t the same as goals and objectives This is a list of topics you need to cover