Create a New Consensus

Source selection involves creating, reviewing, and finalizing vendor evaluations for the goods and services required for business operations. The source selection process includes assessing each vendor based on various factors and using these evaluations to determine a final consensus rating. Once the consensus process begins in Government Source Selection (GSS), Appian Records provides straightforward and informative interfaces that enable end users to easily view and update vendor information.

This page provides instructions for creating a new consensus.

Group requirements

You must be a member of the AS GSS Start or Continue Consensus PM Access security group to create a new consensus in Government Source Selection (GSS). By default, the Factor Chairs assigned to the selected factor and Factor Advisor groups belong to this security group.

Start consensus

Creating a new consensus in Government Source Selection (GSS) is a guided experience that walks you through the process of entering the information you need to provide a final rating for a factor and vendor.

To start a new consensus:

1. Navigate to an evaluation summary.
2. Click Consensus Reports to navigate to the Consensus Reports tab and view the evaluation tasks associated with each factor and subfactor for a specific vendor. The Consensus tab defaults to showing an expanded view of all factors and subfactors for each vendor assigned to the evaluation. Click Chevron Down icon to hide the subfactors and Chevron Right icon to show them.

3. Click the vendor name to open the consensus report.

   

4. Click START CONSENSUS FORM to open the Submit Consensus Form guided experience.

   

The Submit Consensus Form contains three tabs to complete:

• Evaluator Responses
• Included Responses
• Final Rating & Comments

Select evaluator responses

The evaluator responses data collection step in Government Source Selection (GSS) is divided into five rating categories: Significant Strengths, Strengths, Significant Weaknesses, Weaknesses, and Deficiencies.

When creating a new consensus, select which evaluator responses to include in the final consensus report.

To select evaluator responses:

1. On the Evaluator Responses tab, click Chevron Right icon or Chevron Down icon to show or hide consensus rating categories each evaluator assigned to the vendor.
2. Review evaluator responses for each consensus category.
3. Select the Decision to Include or Exclude an evaluator response in the final consensus report using the radio buttons.
4. Enter a Reason for including or excluding an evaluator response.

   Note:  If you choose to exclude a response, you must add a comment explaining your decision.

5. Click NEXT to save changes and continue to the Included responses tab, or click SAVE AND CLOSE to save changes and close the guided experience to continue the consensus form later.

Update and combine included responses

The COMBINE RESPONSES data collection step in Government Source Selection (GSS) enables you to combine similar or redundant responses.

To update and combine included responses:

1. On the Included Responses tab, click Blue Edit icon corresponding to an evaluator response to update it.
2. Edit evaluator response sections (such as justification and references) and click SAVE to save changes.
3. Click COMBINE RESPONSES to combine the responses within a consensus category.
   1. Select the responses to combine using the checkboxes.
   2. Select the Suggest combined response using AI radio button to combine and generate an AI response, or select the Combine manually radio button to combine the responses manually.
   3. Click COMBINE to save changes.

      Note:  There must be at least two individual responses within the same consensus category to create a combined response.

4. Click NEXT to save changes and continue to the Final Rating & Comments tab, or click SAVE AND CLOSE to save changes and close the guided experience to continue the consensus form later.

Once you click NEXT, AI takes a few seconds to generate a recommendation for final comments.

Submit final rating and comments

In Government Source Selection (GSS), the Final Rating & Comments tab enables you to select the vendor's final rating and make edits to the comments according to the evaluation factor. The evaluation response fields are pre-populated with the responses from the previous steps.

To submit the final rating and comments:

1. On the Final Rating & Comments tab, select a Final Rating using the radio buttons. See rating methods.

2. Review the AI Suggestion and click Use Suggestion to use the AI-generated suggestion, or enter Final Comments manually.

   Tip:  If vendor response analysis is available for this factor, you can also review the summary and recommendations provided by AI in the Vendor Analysis tab as a benchmark when finalizing the consensus rating.

3. Click SUBMIT to save changes and submit the consensus Form, or click SAVE AND CLOSE to save changes and close the guided experience to continue the consensus Form later.
4. Click YES to confirm the submission and generate the final consensus report.

View and download consensus report

To download an evaluation's vendor consensus report in Government Source Selection (GSS):

1. Navigate to an evaluation summary.
2. Click Consensus Reports to navigate to the Consensus Reports tab.
3. Click the vendor name to open and view the consensus report.
4. Click Download Report Version to download the consensus report.

   Note:  The Download Report Version link is only available for completed consensus reports.

Sign consensus report

To complete a consensus report in Government Source Selection (GSS), all contributors must sign it:

1. On the submitted consensus report, click SIGN to open the Sign Consensus Report guided experience.

   

2. Acknowledge the accuracy of the report using the checkbox.

3. Click SIGN.

   

To view and download a consensus report, see View and download consensus report.

To add a new version for a consensus report, see Add consensus version

Add consensus version

To create a new consensus version and archive the existing version in Government Source Selection (GSS):

1. Navigate to an evaluation summary.
2. Click Consensus Reports to navigate to the Consensus Reports tab.
3. Click the vendor name to open the consensus report.
4. Click ADD VERSION to open the Add Consensus Report Version guided experience.
5. Select the Reason for creating a new consensus version and archiving the existing one.
   1. Enter comments if you have selected Other as the reason.
6. Click ADD to add the new consensus version.

On-the-spot consensus

To submit consensus after starting an evaluation in Government Source Selection (GSS):

1. From the evaluation summary page, click Consensus Reports to navigate to the Consensus Reports tab.

2. Select the vendor to submit the consensus.

   

3. Click OPEN CONSENSUS FORM to open the Submit Consensus guided experience.

   

4. Click a document in the Vendor Documents section to download and review the vendor submission document.

   Tip:  If vendor response analysis is available, click the Highlights tab to review the AI-generated findings for this vendor and factor before adding your responses. See View vendor response analysis for more information.

5. Click ADD in the Responses section to open the response form.
6. Select Section using the dropdown. Out-of-the-box values are Significant Strengths, Strengths, Significant Weaknesses, Weaknesses, and Deficiencies.
7. Enter Response and its Justification.
8. Enter References to sections in the vendor response document.

9. Click ADD to add the vendor response, or click SAVE AND ADD ANOTHER to add more vendor responses.

   

10. Scroll down to the Closing Remarks section.
11. Select a rating. Rating methods are pre-configured during the evaluation creation process.
12. Enter Rating Justification. Alternatively:
    1. Click Generate AI Suggestion to generate the rating justification's AI Suggestion.
    2. Click Paste Suggestion Below to paste the AI Suggestion in the Rating Justification field, or click Generate Again to regenerate the justification.

13. Click SUBMIT to submit the consensus and generate the final consensus report.

    

After submitting the on-the-spot consensus report, you can:

• View and download the consensus report.
• Sign the consensus report.
• Add consensus version.

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