Capture

Capture is where a record becomes work. You take an approach to market, a panel refresh or a contract that expires next winter, and turn it into a pursuit that sits on a pipeline with stages you define. The pursuit keeps a link back to the record it came from, so the closing date, the buying entity and the supplier stay correct without anyone retyping them.

Everything in Capture belongs to your organisation: pipelines and pursuits are shared by the team, and the API refuses to read or write another organisation's.

The words

• A pipeline is one market you work — Defence ICT, health services, state civil works. Teams usually run two or three, not twenty. One of them is your default, which is where a pursuit lands when nothing says otherwise.
• A stage is a column on that pipeline, in an order you choose. Rename them, add one, move one left or right, delete one — deleting a stage that still holds pursuits asks you where to move them first, so nothing is lost by accident.
• A pursuit is one opportunity your team has decided to chase. It carries a name, a description in Markdown, an estimated value, a win probability, a due date, an estimated award date and a duration. Probable value is estimated value × win probability, computed for you and never stored — leave either blank and there is no probable value, which is different from zero.
• A link attaches a pursuit to a record: the ATM it came from, the agency buying, the contract it would replace. The record has to exist — its title and agency are copied across when the link is made, so a typo is refused rather than stored as an empty chip. The link the pursuit was created from is flagged as its source.
• A task is one piece of work behind a pursuit. It has a name, a priority, a due date and notes, and it is either open or done — two words, not four, because "in progress" is a state nobody updates truthfully.
• A tag is a label. The same tags ride on pursuits and on tasks, and a tag exists by being used: type a word that is not a tag yet and it becomes one.
• A custom field is something only your team tracks — an internal bid number, a go/no-go decision, the partner on the account. You define it once and it is on every pursuit.

The dashboard

Capture opens on its dashboard rather than a list. Six figures across the top — open pursuits, probable value, estimated value, won, capture rate and tasks overdue — then five blocks: Pursuits funnel, Won, lost and abandoned by month, Projected revenue, Top pursuits by probable value and Tasks due soon. The filter row picks one pipeline or all of them, a period of 3, 6 or 12 months, and whether the bars count value or pursuits. Each block exports its own CSV with the same filters, and those exports do not count towards the daily export limit.

Add to pipeline

Every opportunity and award record page — tenders, planned procurement, grant rounds, contracts, panel places, grant awards and state records — has an Add to pipeline button in its header. One click makes a pursuit named after the record, due on its closing or end date, valued where the record publishes a value, and linked to both the record and its agency. It lands in the first stage of your default pipeline — and if you have no pipeline at all, one is made for you from the ATM lifecycle template.

The button is idempotent. A record you are already chasing answers with the pursuit that exists rather than making a second one, and the button reads Pursuing with a link straight to it.

The four templates

Creating a pipeline starts from a template, or from your own stage names, one per line. A template only chooses what the stages start as — rename, reorder and remove them afterwards.

| Template | Stages | | --- | --- | | ATM lifecycle | Watching · Qualifying · Bid or no-bid · Writing · Submitted · Decided | | Quick response | Triage · Responding · Submitted | | Panel and standing offer | Watching · Eligibility · Application · Submitted · Decided | | Expiring contracts | Watching · Relationship · Positioning · Approach · Decided |

Open, won, lost, abandoned

A pursuit's stage is where the work has got to. Its status is whether the work is still going: open to start with, then won, lost or abandoned when it ends. The two are separate on purpose.

Setting a terminal status does not move the pursuit. It keeps the stage it reached, so a bid that was lost after submission still reads as having been submitted, and the capture rate — the share of ended pursuits that were won, lost and abandoned — is a fact about the work rather than about how someone named the columns. A pursuit can be reopened; the boards and lists show open pursuits by default, and the pursuits list has a status filter for the rest.

Moving things

There is no drag-and-drop, deliberately. A move is a select and a button: on the board, the card's menu; on the pursuit page, the progress bar, where every stage is a step you can click and the final Complete step opens the won / lost / abandoned choice. It all works from a keyboard, it all works with JavaScript off, and a move can cross pipelines — a pursuit sent to another pipeline lands in that pipeline's first stage.

Tasks

The Tasks page is every task across every pursuit, with the same action row the other lists have: a search box, and filters for status, priority, due date (overdue, today, this week, no date), pipeline and tag. Each row already knows its pursuit, that pursuit's pipeline and its stage, so nothing has to be opened to see where a job belongs.

A task is overdue when it is still open and its due date has passed. That is computed when the page is drawn and never stored, so a deadline that passes at midnight is overdue at 12.01 and not the next time somebody happens to edit the row. A task with no due date is never overdue — an empty date is a real answer, not a missing one.

Every pursuit page carries its own tasks in the order your team put them in, with a one-line form to add another and arrows to move one up or down. Ticking a task off stamps when it was finished; reopening it clears that, so "finished on" stays a fact rather than the row's last edit.

Tags

Tags are names, not a list you maintain first. Typing Defence on a pursuit creates that tag if nobody has used it yet, and reuses it if they have — case does not matter, so "Defence" and "defence" are one tag and not two. Each tag is given one of ten colours as it is created, so a board is readable without anyone choosing swatches.

Tags filter the pursuits list, the tasks list and the board, and a pursuit or a task may carry up to twenty.

Custom fields

Custom fields are defined once for the whole workspace, under Account → Custom fields, and appear on every pursuit. A field is text, a number, a date, a choice from a list you write, or a checkbox.

Three things worth knowing:

• A field's kind cannot be changed after it is made. Every value already stored is in that kind's shape, so the way to change a type is to make a second field.
• Required is a form rule, never a write error. A field you mark required is flagged on the pursuits that have not answered it — it never stops anyone saving, because a field added today must not lock two hundred pursuits created before it existed.
• Removing a choice that pursuits still hold is refused with a count of them. The page then offers to clear those values on purpose, which is different from doing it by accident.

Limits

Twenty pipelines each, twenty stages on a pipeline, five hundred pursuits and fifty links on a pursuit. A hundred tasks on a pursuit and two thousand in all; a hundred tags, twenty on any one pursuit or task; thirty custom fields. The limits exist so one runaway import cannot fill the workspace; if you are near one, say so and we will look at it.

Saved searches

Saved searches live here too. They re-run daily or weekly against AusTender, GrantConnect and the state and territory records that are loaded, and email you the difference only — see Opportunities for what can be searched and Account for where the digest is switched on.