Opportunities Powered by GovSpend

Opportunities finds public sector bids, federal RFPs and agency meetings that fit your company, so you don't search for them yourself. Iris matches GovSpend's data against a short description of your business and ranks what it finds. Business development and proposal teams use it to spot bids early and start work in one click. Opportunities is shown when enabled for your organization. To turn it on, or to move from a preview to full access, contact your Iris customer success manager. There is no setting in the app for it.

How Iris finds matches

Everything starts from your Company summary, a plain-English description of what you do and who you serve. Iris builds it from the first of these it can use:

1. Company Context from Settings > Instructions, if it has at least 200 characters.

2. A summary Iris writes from your Knowledge Map files. Iris rebuilds it after 30 days or when new files are added.

3. A summary you type yourself. Iris never overwrites one you typed unless you ask it to regenerate.

From the summary Iris pulls keywords, searches GovSpend for open bids, federal opportunities and meetings, and scores each result from 0 to 100 on how well it fits. Anything under 20 is dropped. Change your summary and Iris clears the list and searches again, which can take a minute or two.

There is no refresh button. Opening the page when the results are more than two days old starts a refresh in the background.

Your company summary sits on top, with Update and Regenerate. Below it come the tabs, the sort menu and your matches, and the detail opens on the right.

Limited preview and full access

Opportunities comes in two levels: a limited preview and full access.

Both get the same scoring and the same Why you're a fit explanations. The 15 are the top matches across bids, federal opportunities and meetings combined. A GovSpend license is bought from GovSpend. Tell your customer success manager once you have one, and Iris switches your organization to full access.

Reading the page

Four tabs, All, Bids, Federal and Meetings, narrow the list. The sort menu orders it by Relevance score, Due date or Newest first. The button beside it flips the direction, and it starts on "Highest fit first." Each row shows the type, a status such as Open or Expired, the score, the agency and the due or meeting date.

Click a row to see the detail. Overview is the description. Why you're a fit is Iris's two or three sentences on the match, with labels for the capabilities it matched. Weak matches get a low score and a plain explanation, so read the score before the explanation.

What you can do with an opportunity

The main button depends on the type.

• Bids: Analyze RFP on the row, or Analyze RFP in Iris in the detail, creates an RFP draft from the bid's file, using the bid's title, deadline and agency, and opens it in RFP Analyzer. See RFP Analyzer. The button is disabled when GovSpend has no file for the bid yet.

• Federal: View on GovSpend opens the listing on GovSpend's site, available with full access. You'll see it on bids too. Federal opportunities never include a file, so there is nothing to analyze in Iris.

• Meetings: Start Proposal starts a proposal from the meeting, shown when Proposals is enabled for your organization. The meeting content is GovSpend's summary, not a transcript. See Proposal Generation. Pick Knowledge Map tags in the proposal's content type step, since none are chosen for you.

One opportunity's detail: the score, Why you're a fit, and Analyze RFP in Iris with View on GovSpend beneath it.

Managing the company summary

The summary box shows a Ready status, where the text came from (for example "Source: Manual") and a character counter. Update saves your edits, Regenerate has Iris write a new one, and Hide tucks the box away. Administrators with the Manage Company Summary permission can edit the summary, regenerate it, or hide an opportunity that doesn't belong. Hiding removes it from the list, and it stays hidden through later refreshes. Everyone else sees the summary read-only. A tighter summary gives better matches, so name your products, the buyers you serve and the kinds of work you win.

If the summary says Iris doesn't have enough context, add files to your Knowledge Map or write one yourself.

Opportunities and Add to Iris

Opportunities pulls matches into Iris for you. Add to Iris works the other way. You click a button on a bid inside GovSpend and it sends the bid's documents to Iris. They are separate, and you can have either one or both. See Importing GovSpend Bids into Iris.

Related articles

• Importing GovSpend Bids into Iris

• RFP Analyzer

• Proposal Generation

• Instructions

• Building Your Knowledge Map

• Roles in Iris