Introduction to the NYS Contract Reporter

Hello everybody, good morning. It was nice. Uh, thank you for being here. This is a Navigating the New York State Contract Reporter webinar. The New York State Contract Reporter is the official publication of New York State agency procurement, fifty thousand dollars or more. That's all New York State agencies, all New York State public authorities, and all New York State public benefit corporations. If they want to per, if they want to post something fifty thousand dollars or less, they can, but they don't have to by law. The law only states fifty thousand dollars or more. Cities, towns, villages, not-for-profits, fire districts, water districts, libraries, um, certain not-for-profits also can post on here.

Next slide. So today, there are 38 opportunities that were posted in the last seven days. There were 200 ads that are posted, and the total available opportunities right now are 880. New ads are posted every business day. We used to post on the weekends, but we do not anymore. And registration is free to all users. That includes government entities and businesses. And just for the fun of it, I put a couple of ads over there on the right-hand side. These were open. Uh, the issue date was August 28th on those two, just to give you an idea of what they look like.

Next slide, please. Oh, that's me. We'll do that at the end. So now, what I want to do is share my screen, and I will walk you through. There we go. Let me just close down some of this stuff. Cancel. There we go.

So this is what the New York State Contract Reporter looks like when you log on. So the first thing you want to do is to create an account. For a government entity, there will be a button over here in this section. It's a little green button in the upper right-hand corner that will say, "Click here to get started." Click on it, and you're going to choose "Government Entity" because you are a government, whether it be state, local, county, or municipal city.

Then, what you want to do, the first thing you want to do under this "Welcome Back," and it will have your name, hover over the "Manage Account" button and click on the "My Opportunity Profile." Now, what I'm going to show you is if you are interested in receiving emails every business day on what is posted on here for maybe items that you might want to purchase. I usually say this for businesses because, of course, they want to see what the bids are. But a few in the beginning, when you first create an account, you may want to see what's out there, and then eventually, you might want to turn this off. I turn this off. I don't want to receive any more emails from the Contract Reporter. I receive enough. So I don't want to receive these every day, too.

So scroll down. You can choose "All Ads." I would not suggest that. You can choose "All Ads" from a particular agency, and you will see your ads posted on here. I'll show you how to find that, or you can pick "All Filtered Ads" by categories, location, and type.

So this is what the categories and classifications look like. So if you're going to purchase something like desks, let me turn off some of these here. If you're going to purchase desks, that would be under furniture. So we would go down to, oh, where is it here? I'm drawing a blank here. Here it is: "Office and Residential Furniture, Supplies, and Equipment." So if you're a little confused as to where to find furniture, now this particular one has the word "furniture" in it. But let's say it does, it doesn't. And I'll show you some other, um, examples. But what you can do is you can hover over the question mark, and that's on all pages. So there'll be question marks on all pages for details. So the details for "Office and Residential Furniture, Supplies, and Equipment" are paper, toner, standard office supplies, photocopiers, printers, fax machines, maintenance, mattresses, beds, and dressers. Now, you might be thinking, why would the state office need mattresses, beds, and dressers? Well, if you are the Office of Mental Health, or if you are Corrections facilities, you may need mattresses, beds, and dressers.

So let's go up to environmental. I'm just going to show you a few of the details. Environmental, if you're Environmental Conservation, you might need to test air quality or recycle the products, etc. Recycling technology. If you're going to build something, let's say maybe you're the Dormitory Authority and you want to build another dormitory, you would choose "Construction Vertical." And as you can see, it's rehabilitation, major system rebuilds, construction, demolition, etc. HVACs, electrical, roofing, elevators. Now, elevators will also be under "Facilities Maintenance, Repair, and Building Operations," and that also includes painting, janitorial, flooring, carpeting, etc. lighting, rubbish, rubbish, or garbage. If you want to get rid of your garbage or recyclables, then what you would choose to create an ad, you would choose either "Commodity." And again, more information is here under the detail, the, the question mark. This is "Consulting and Other Services." This is "Construction Professional Services." Let's say if you need an architect or blueprints or, uh, drawn, that's where you would pick that. And the last column here is just "Construction."

So let's do building operations. Let's pick, uh, let's see. You were looking for maybe, uh, janitorial services. So you would do "Consulting and Other Services." You can pick by county. Let's say, uh, you're in Broome County, right there. You're a facility in Broome County, and you were looking for janitorial services. That's what you would pick. Add type. Let's, let's say the janitorial services is just a general. It'll be maybe fifty thousand dollars or more, just depends on how long it'll be. Now, this "Turn on E-Alert Notifications" that's right here is where you want to receive the emails every day that match these. Uh, I'm not going to say yes. I'm going to leave it as no. And this would be to just update your profile. This is not where you want to post ads. I will walk you through that really quickly. It's very easy, it's intuitive. And I do want to mention, if I'm going too fast or if you miss something, you can contact me. I will give you my email, my direct email, my direct phone number, and I can also be reached up here on the, where it says "Where you log in and out," "Log out," it says "Contact Us" and "Help." But for now, I will show you that at the end.

So right now, I am going to click "Yes" just so you can see after you do that. Let's say, "Update My Profile." So this is what you could receive every business day from what you choose. That's 26 opportunities. Again, you may not want to receive these emails yourself, but if you're interested, this is what it will be. I'm going to go back here quickly and I'm going to turn this off because, again, I do not want to receive any more emails from the Contract Reporter. I actually receive a lot.

So, so next up, oh, I do want to mention some statistics here. There are 1,688 government entities with accounts on here. That's just the government entities. That's not how many accounts are with those government entities because there could be two, five, ten, or fifteen, etc., accounts under, you know, user accounts under a government entity like SUNY, for instance. SUNY is all over the state, so of course, there's going to be more than one user under the account. So the government entity accounts are just the main account under the, like a SUNY.

OS and 799. And I was waiting to see if it would become 28,800, but our 29,800, but it didn't. So it's 28,799 business users. That's how many people might be on the Contract Reporter in a day, probably not, but that's how many can be. Um, and then lastly, is the number of business registry companies listed. And I will discuss the business registry in a few minutes. But the business registry, I tell businesses, it's basically a, do you remember old-fashioned phone books? All those people who are about my age remember old-fashioned phone books. They were like, you know, two or three inches thick, and we used to sit on them, uh, for Easter dinner or Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving dinner. I tell people that the business registry is basically free advertising in a phone book because it's not just your name and address and phone number. It's also who you are and what you do. And I tell them that government entities can search for you if they're looking for discretionary purchases under fifty thousand dollars. They need the government entities need, uh, three estimates, just like what we would do if we need a new roof or a new driveway. We would look for three estimates, and then they would take the best estimate. The government entity would, uh, take the best estimate. So I tell people, put your names in there, put your contact information clearly, and also a description of your company. And I tell them to include industry terms so that when the government entities are looking for you, they're typing in the industry terms. And I will show you how to do that in a few minutes. It's really simple.

So I told you how to create an agency user account. I told you, I showed you the opportunity profile. Next, I'm going to walk you through placing an ad. Again, it's very simple. Oh, and I do want to point out, see these green buttons here where the ads are? The number one and number two are green, and overall on the right-hand side, those buttons are green. That means this is the public place. So there's going to be certain buttons that you are going to have, but you don't want the public to have. So I will go through this really quickly here. So this button is "View This Ad," of course, "Share This Ad." So if you wanted to share this ad with a co-worker, you can do that. You would just click on here, and you can either copy this link and put it in your own email address or in your own email to come from your own email address, or you could enter the information here. I usually, I typically just highlight these. I don't know why, but I could do it from here, but for some reason, I just like to copy it with the link and put it in my own email. You can also "Bookmark This Ad." So I'm going to bookmark this, and I'll show you how to find it. All right, so this is the New York State Council on the Arts, Capital Funding for the Arts. Okay, just wanted to make sure what the title was. So I'm going to bookmark this. "Are you sure you want to add this ad to your bookmarks?" Yes. And then the last button here is "Send Me Notification Updates on This." Let's say you saw an ad either from somebody in your own agency, your own entity, or there's another entity that you want to follow a specific ad. Maybe they're, maybe they posted something that you're going to buy in the future, but you want to kind of like watch what happens with that one. Excuse me. So you can set, you, you can click on this button, "Send Me Notification Updates on This." You will receive an email that says something like, "You requested to receive information when, uh, something was changed in this ad." What could be changed in an ad? Well, let me show you here. You could change a date, you could change a typo, maybe you want to upload a document. They would go right in this section here. Right now, there are no documents here, but let's say if you want to upload a document, you would also have to put in a reason why you're, you're making a change to something. So in the documents, when you upload something, it'll ask you, "Why are you updating? What, what's the change to the ad?" And you would just type in "Uploading documents." Well, in this update button, it would say here, it would give you the date, the person who updated it, also the time, and then the reason for the update, which would be "Uploading document." And then whoever clicked on the "Send Me Notification Updates on This," they would receive that email.

All right, so let me get out of here, and I'm going to show you how to find your own ads. So if you click on this "My Home" button here, this blue menu bar is the navigation bar. I use this all the time, and that's how you navigate through the Contract Reporter. So I'm going to click "My Home," and I'm going to go to "Open Ads" right here. And since I work for Empire State Development, I'm going to show you what Empire State Development has on here. Now, you will not have to choose what agency or what entity you work for. It will all automatically happen. But because I'm the system administrator, I have to choose, as you can see here, what ads I want to look at. So I'm just going to look at Empire State Development. Currently, Empire State Development has seven open ads. This one right here is for New Market Tax Credit Accounting Services. So I, as a government entity, my buttons are blue, as you can see, and even the numbers on the left-hand side here are blue. So let's just go through this very quickly. "View This Ad," and this is a very short, uh, I would suggest you put a little bit more information in here so that people can understand what you're looking for. So this RFP is for ESNMC accounting services. I guess that's, that's clear. Yes, you're looking for accounting services. Um, but to me, I would just add a little bit more information like, how long are you looking for? Are you looking for a one-year contract, maybe a five-year contract? Let's see if there's any documents under here. There are documents. Okay, so maybe more information is in here. And as you can see, you can add a lot of documents. This one has, what, six? One, two, three, four, five, six documents. People can either click here or they can click here to view the documents. I do want to point out your contact information. When it asks you "Primary Contact," "Secondary Contacts," "Submit To," and sometimes there's also a "Technical Contact." If you want to put in here Ralph's name is right here. If you want to contact Ralph, or if you, this is like I'm saying, when you enter your information, it will be here automatically. You can change it. I will show you how to change it. And also an email is here. So he wants, he created a mailbox for just this accounting purposes, just this RFP, and that's how you would contact Ralph. Again, there's documents. This just says "Updated." He didn't explain what he was updating. And eventually, when this is closed, the due date comes, and it's closed, you're going to want to put in the bid results. Now, this is closed out. I can't click on it, but it asks you for the bid results. You are supposed to enter the bid results. Most government entities do not, but it would be helpful to the small businesses, it would be helpful to all the businesses out there if you would enter, especially the subcontractors, bid results. You have to enter the name of the company and what they bid. Then under "Awards," there's also under the same button, you would enter who won the bid and their contact information. And the reason we ask for that, that is in the legislature. It is in the law, or it came from the legislature. It was approved. It's a law. This information has to be entered so that subcontractors can reach out to the prime contractors and say, "Hey, this is what I do. I've been in business for this long. Can I be a subcontractor? Let me send you my capability statement. Let me send you my information." That's why we do that there. And these buttons are a little different, like I explained. You don't want the public to have this "Edit This Ad" button, so they don't. They do have to "Share This Ad," just like you. We also have that "Bookmark This Ad" button. You can also "Print to PDF," just like they do. They obviously do not, cannot upload documents. We have that here. And also, this is very interesting. This button right here, "View Interested Bidders List." So if you click on that, this will show you who viewed the ad, bookmarked it, opened bid documents, or opted to receive the bid update notifications. Now, it doesn't tell you in here. There is no column that explains if they viewed it, bookmarked it, opened the documents, etc. So for this one, there are 48 entries. So 48 people opened it. And as you can see, it's by first name, last name, their company information, address, contact information, and also email. So if you have documents, you can upload the documents here, but you can also download this list to Excel, and then you can copy all of these emails in Excel if you want to send them any update or any documents, which is kind of helpful because you want everybody to know that that updates, uh, to the ad where, uh, updates to the ad happen, such as maybe, um, documents or, like I said earlier, the, you could also possibly change a due date, uh, further in the future. You can't change it less, but you could change it in the future, or if you want to just, if there was a typo or something, a Q&A you want to upload, etc.

So I'm going to close that now. I'm going to show you how to find that bookmarked ad. It was the New York State Council of the Arts. So let's go to "My Home," and you can find it. Let's go to "Open Ads." This, I, this is your dashboard here, but I want to go to the "Open Ads" again to show you where to find. Oh, and it's not there. Okay, then you have to go to "My Home." Um, I'm just trying to remember, you know, I see it all the time, or maybe I have to put in the agency. All right, let me type in "Empire" again, and they are not there. Okay, well, there are usually green buttons. Well, probably because the green buttons are for, uh, the municipalities, the government entities. There would be green buttons here that say, you know, "View This Ad," "My Bookmarked Ads," "My Opportunities," "Recently Closed Ads." However, there is a second place for people to find them, which is right here, "My Bookmarked Ads." It's under the, the green buttons on the left-hand side. So I will click on that, and I will show you, uh, right there, "Capital Funding for the Arts." There it is. Right now, I have 24 bookmarked opportunities. I generally don't look at ads. So these are ads that I walk through. These are usually ads that I click on for webinars. Either usually typically I give webinars to businesses. It's not as often to government entities. I can, if people are interested, if you want me to show you for your office, you know, your just your specific office in your government entity, I would be happy to do this also. Just let me know. And my opportunities from the opportunities and classifications and categories that I picked over here, they match 26 opportunities. Open opportunities are 880, just like up here.

So now I'm going to show you how to post an ad. I'm going to click on the "My Home" button, and again, I have to go to the "Open Ads," and I have to put in, I'm going to put in "Economic Development." Now, I'm not New York City Economic Development, I am New York State Economic Development, so I have to make sure I click that correctly. So once you go to your dashboard, this is what your dashboard will look like. And again, you do not have to pick your own agency. Your agency comes up automatically. So once you're on your dashboard, right here, and you want to enter a new ad, I'm going to, you click on this, and the first one is to choose your division, campus, or your facility. This is typically for SUNY, Corrections facilities, or OMH facilities. Most people will not pick on this. We'll, we'll choose this. You can now, um, Economic Development might pick on NYSTAR, or Economic Development might also pick Minority Women's Business if it's in here. You can pick it, but typically SUNY will choose it, OMH, and also DOCs. Is this a general solicitation? You choose yes or no. For purposes of today, I'm just going to leave it as yes. And then you have to choose what applies to your general solicitation. Is this a discretionary procurement under fifty thousand dollars? Is this a discretionary procurement between fifty thousand and five hundred thousand? What that is, is you want either an MWBE, a New York State Certified MWBE, you're giving this opportunity to a New York State Certified MWBE or a small business in New York State. In that case, you would choose that. You can also choose "Notice of Single Sol" or "Single Source Procurement," which is exempt. Now, if, if it's something is exempt, Office of State Comptroller still wants you to put it in here as a notice of single source. It's not an RFP, it would be considered sole or single source. If you have a continuous procurement solicitation for anything, maybe you're always purchasing, oh, I can't think of anything on, uh, fleet cars, fleet vehicles, uh, you want to add it in there. I do the, so these occasionally, and you can do a continuous procurement solicitation six months at a time, so you can put out the due date six months ahead, and then six months later, if you want to keep it open, you would have to do it six months ahead. Uh, you can also post RFIs, Requests for Information, or RFCs, Requests for Comments. If you also have grants or "Notice of Funds Availability," that's where you would choose, or you could choose "None," and it would go back to a general solicitation.

I do want to point out that not-for-profits, certain not-for-profits as government entities, if they receive state funds. So let's say Parks and Recreation and Historical Preservation, if they give money to a not-for-profit for their building, they must post on here by law because they're receiving funds from a state agency to, for a project on their, on their building. So yes, not-for-profits can post on here. Most of them are considered government entities, but when they apply for a government entity, I look them up. I make sure that they are the correct not-for-profit, which is mainly a 501c3. We do allow other 501cs, but I, again, typically have to look them up or I ask them, "What are, what is your purpose of posting as a government entity on here?"

Publication dates. So if this is a general solicitation, by law, your due date has to be, has, has to be 15 business days. Now, there are times when you think it's a 15 business day, but it's like the day later. So I'll get an email from a state agency and I'll say, "How come I can't post on, you know, this date?" Whatever date it is, and I'll look. Typically, that means that there is a major holiday in that time frame, in those particular 15 business days. We do not post on, we do not post anything on the Contract Reporter on major holidays. So typically, or, or so they do not consider that a business day. So it is put out an extra day, so that's why that happens. And again, if you have any questions, you can reach out to me on the Contract Reporter up here, "Contact Us" or "Help," or you can call me. I'll show you in the end what my phone number and my direct email list.

So the earliest due date here would be October 6th. You can change it in the next page once we get there to something in the more further out than that, but not less than that. So let's go to that page and I'll show you. So right here, you would click, let's say you want to post it for three weeks. So instead of October 6th, let's add on another week or two. And again, as you can see, you can, anything that is green, you can pull, you can choose. As you can see, January 15th is blocked out because that is Martin Luther King Day, or December 25th, that's Christmas. We don't count those two days as they are major holidays. We don't count them as a business day. So let me just go back here, and I'm going to say I want to post till October 30th. That's all you would have to do. Click on the box, and the calendar comes up. The due date time, you can pick anything in half-hour increments. And the time, you might want everything postmarked. You might want everything on your desk by two o'clock or five o'clock. It just depends. This is not asterisks, so it's not required. You do not have to choose that, but just for the fun of it, I'm going to choose two o'clock. The due date note. This is not asterisks, so you do not to fill it out. You do not have to fill it out, but if you want to, you can. You might want to say, "Postmarked by," or "Delivered to my building by," that kind of, "Delivered to the address by." That's what you can choose. And I do want to point out here, like I said earlier, if you need more detailed information, you can hover over these question marks. Some of them are logic, like "Enter an optional due date time for business responses." Some of them will give you more detailed information where you would choose your categories and classifications, which I mentioned in the beginning. And again, if you have any problems looking for how to classify or how to categorize something, give me a call, send me an email. Before that, you may want to look at the question marks. Like "Agricultural Forestry," as you can see, you know, animal feed, farming, plants, trees, etc. "Maintenance," "Solder," "Lawn Maintenance." You can click here for landscaping, but landscaping can also be found under "Facilities Maintenance" because landscaping. Now, it's not listed here, but if you think about it, you may want to choose "Agricultural Forestry," and you may want to choose "Facilities Maintenance" because landscaping is also maintenance on a building. Let's see here. There is a "Miscellaneous" category here, in case if it doesn't fit under anything else. We have tried over the years, small businesses have reached out to me and said, "Well, what about signs? Where do I put signs under? Would that be under facilities? Would that be under office?" Not "Office and Residential Furniture," but, you know what I mean? They're, they're not sure where to put it. So what I will do, I will discuss with my people here and say, "Should we put this under a category, or should, should we create a new category, or should we create a more detailed information?" Where did we put signage? Signage was under "Advertising." So as you can see, there. Now, we didn't put it in the title, but we did put it in the, uh, the details, the description, "All types of signage, including digital signs." So we try to be, we tried to help businesses and also the government entities have a much more smoother experience on the Contract Reporter. So if you see anything that you would like to be more efficient, reach out to me, let me know. I will talk with my supervisor, we'll talk to the vendor, and we'll figure out where to put it, where to make it easier for you to use the Contract Reporter. We are working right now on the newest version of the Contract Reporter to make it more ADA, more disability compliant, visually also visually disability compliant. So that won't come out until next year. So right now, we are, um, I don't want to say stuck, because this is, uh, people like this website, so we are not stuck with this right now, but this is what we have for now.

So let's go down. So choose whatever. I'm just going to choose, um, anything. So again, we have "Commodities," "Consulting and Other Services," "Construction Professional Services," and "Construction." I'm just going to flippantly pick those two right there, just so we can move on. You can see what we do next for, uh, how to finish creating this. So these are the primary cat, these are the two categories that I picked, and it asks you to pick a primary. I'm going to say "Construction Vertical," "Commodities." You know what? I'm not, because I can't think of anything what I would want for commodities. Sell this, "Consulting and Other Services." I do want maybe like an HVAC. This is what I'm looking for. So I'm going to click next. Oh, you know, I probably should have picked. I should use my own, you know, advice. I probably should have also picked "Facilities Maintenance" because, uh, some people, you know, you may think it's construction, but somebody else might think it's a maintenance, uh, facilities maintenance. So I would suggest pick as many categories as possible so you can reach as many, uh, businesses as possible when they receive those daily e-alerts.

So "Contract Title." I'm going to say "Test HVAC" so I can, when I go back after I'm done, I can delete that ad because once I submit this ad, this will post tomorrow morning around 3:30 AM. I don't want this test to post tomorrow, so I must remember to delete this. That's why I put the word "test" in there. "Contract Number." I'm going to have some fun here and just put in ABC123. You put in your contract number there, what your agency is going to assign a contract number to. Obviously, this is just ABC123. You know, it's just, again, a test. "Contract Term." You can put in. I have seen here days like 158 days. I have seen months like 13 months. I have also seen two years, three years, etc. You can enter anything there, but you do have to enter it. That's a, an asterisk. I put in one hour at, one point, silly me. Oh, look at that. I put in one minute, one at one point. Um, so "Description" here. I have to say, procurement can be very boring, so I try to make it interesting. Oh, you know what? I do have to put something in there that's asterisks, so I'll put in "One minute description." So this is where you would say, you know, um, we are looking for, we are looking for, like I, I can't spell and I type very fast. I am not dyslexic, but if I was dyslexic, I would have three strikes against me. So I am not going to type anything. I'm just going to pretend to type something because this is pretty much what my typing would look like between not being able to spell very well and also typos. So you would put in your descriptions here, you know, "Contact Us." How did I do that? But anyway, you know what I'm saying? Put in all your information there. Have these goods or services been purchased from an out-of-state foreign vendor in the past three years? Obviously, you click yes or no. If you click yes, then you have to enter, um, Joe's, um, I don't know, again, I'm just having fun. Pizza is hot. I don't know. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. And again, I must delete this because when people receive this the next day, they're going to be like, "What is this?" "Service Disabled Set Aside?" Yes or no. You would click that right there. "Minority and Women Goals." You would put in whatever, whatever your diversity person suggested, you click that's what you would put in here. I'm going to do 20 there, or 10 there, 20 there, or you could do the total. You would pick that. If you, you know, obviously that would be 30 percent. You could do "SDVOB Goals." I'm going to put in, whoops, it is six percent. And "Disadvantage." You would enter right there with the percentages. I'm not going to enter anything there. I'm going to go hit next.

"Enter Specific Location." I'm going to put in 625 Broadway. That's where Broad, see what I'm saying? Broadway. I'm either typing too, I know how to spell Broadway. I'm just typing too fast. So that's the specific location where I want the goods to be delivered, our goods or service delivered. "Statewide?" And I always forget what this is. If goods or services are not available in all counties, choose no and select a county where goods will be delivered or services performed. Well, that would be Albany because that's where I'm located. So I'm going to say, "Our goods or services delivered statewide?" No. And then I'm going to pick Albany because that's where this particular building is located. And you can choose these either on the state map. You can click, you can also delete down here, or I could just click on the map again if I wanted to delete, um, Albany. Next.

So here's where you can add a technical contact. And so I clicked on it, and here are some outside con contacts. Address. Let's say somebody from the outside in an architectural business, you might want to click on them. Matt Watson used to work for us, but let's pretend that he was, or he is an architect. So I would just select him there. There he is. Now he's our technical contact. If you want to change the primary contact, the primary contact is the person who enters the ad. So if you want to change that, you can either edit it. Maybe I don't want people to call me directly. Maybe I want them to go to a separate phone number. I can change that, or I can put in a totally different person under primary contact. I would just, I would go to the address book, and then I could pick somebody here. I'm not going to do that, though. You can add a secondary contact, the same thing as what we did up here for the technical contact. And again, the "Submit To" is typically the person who enters it. If you want to change it, you can. I'm going to leave everything else, and I'm going to click next.

"Upload Documents." This is very easy. I'm not going to show you how to do it, but I will, I will take you to how to choose it, but I'm not going to choose a document. So "Title," again, I'm just going to say "Test Document." You can put in a "Document Description." I'm going to just call it "Q&A." And this is where you would find it. "Choose Your File," and it takes you to wherever you want to go. So maybe I will pick this one, "New York City Travel." Okay, I'm going to hit "Open," and there you go. I'll upload the document. There it is. It's listed right there. That's how you know it's at it. And then I'm just going to go "Upload the Document," and there it is on the bottom. Let's say I picked the wrong document right there. I can also open it right here to make sure I have the right one. I can also delete it here. And if I want to do another document, if you just go right back up to here and, you know, do another one. If you're interested, again, choose the file right there. I'm going to say "Next" because one document is good enough. I'm going to click "Next" for this demonstration. It's good enough.

And this is where you review it. Okay, it's a type of ad, "General?" Yes, that's correct. So it's going to be published on 9/15, which is tomorrow. All ads are published the next business day. So if you enter something on a Friday, it will be published most likely on a Monday, unless a Monday is a major holiday, at 3:30 in the morning. So let's say if you want to find out when your ad is posted, let's say you want to receive when your ad is posted, it will be posted 3:30 in the morning. So if you get it to your email, which might be on your cell phone, it could wake you up. So, and I know this because a lot of businesses have told me, I don't want to receive anything. If I don't receive, they can choose if nothing matches their, uh, categories and classifications, they will not receive an email. So they can choose that. So let's just go over this. It's "General." "Publication Date," 9/15, which is tomorrow. The "Due Date," there's the date that I chose, which was two weeks later, and there's that due date time that I showed you. And this is the main, I did not go back and put in "Facilities Maintenance," but I was thinking about it. I could do it right here if I wanted to. Actually, let's do that so I can show you "Facilities Maintenance." There we go. So I'm going to choose this and this. And again, this is just test. I'm not thinking of any logic here. I'm just trying to show you how to do that. And then select your primary category. It gives you a chance again to select a primary category. I'm going to choose this one. I'm going to change it. Return. And now let's make sure. Yep, there it is. There's the two other categories, and there's the main one. "Test HVAC" is the title. Okay, looks good to me. I know it's not, you know, a real ad, but it looks good to me. Everything that I entered in is, uh, in there. Here's the MWBE Eagles. Make sure that they are posted correctly. That six percent SDVOB goal. If you want to edit it, you can. "Specific Site." There's the contact information, and there's my document. Perfect. So I'm going to click next.

Now it shows me what everybody is going to see. This is how everybody's going to see it. Now, again, that's what I entered in there. There's all of the, the goals, the due dates, the time, the contract term, the county, etc. And it's also listed on the left-hand side here, too. Perfect. So I'm going to submit the ad. To save, print this, I can print it from here. To edit this, I can go back to "Edited Ads That Have Not Been Completed." Okay, to add another ad. So what I'm going to do is go to this right here, click this ad. So as you can see, my test ad is pending. Then I can delete it right there. That's what I'm going to do. Um, also, I want to point out, okay, so let's say this is the ad. Oh, you want to change something, or somebody gave you another document to upload. You can edit this ad from here. Pending ads stay in here until about 11:59 PM, just before midnight. So you can change these ads anytime before that time. However, I do want to point out, let's say I'm going to edit this ad. "Are you sure you want to edit this?" Yes. So I go through, let's say I change something in here, add something, whatever it is, and I click "Return." All right, so we're going to go through checking everything. Good. It looks good. Looks good. Next. Now you must. So this is what it's going to look like, and I added that pseudo sentence there, so it looks good. You must submit the ad again. If you do not submit the ad again, it will go into your, let's see here. I'm going to go to what your, what it's going to look like. I'm sorry, "Economic Development," "New York City." That's not what I want. There we go. So it will go into your "Incomplete Ads." If you do not submit it again, it will go into "Incomplete Ads." So "Economic Development." We have three of them. Lisa here, Rick entered it, and then, um, I entered this back in June, so it's under the "Incomplete Ads." "Incomplete Ads" will not be posted ever. They should be deleted. Actually, you know what? I'm going to delete my ad right there. "Are you sure you want to delete this?" Yes. That's how easy it is. I just showed you how to delete any incomplete ads in the incomplete box. So the ad that I just worked on right now is right there. So I edited it, I sub, I resubmitted it, and now it's back in the pending ads. However, I do not want this to post tomorrow, so I'm going to delete this. Yes, please delete it. Please delete it. There we go. And right now, currently, "Economic Development" has one open ad, um, right there, "Matching Grants Leverage Program." So we have pending ads, incomplete ads, continuous ads. Let's see what that is. "Matching Grants Leverage Program." So that open ad, that only open ad is the continuous ad. Grants. We have zero bid results and awards. Uh, that means 104 ads need their bid results to be entered. I clicked on it. It's going to take a few minutes. There it is. So, uh, continuous procurement is always open. So they're not gonna, you're not going to put what, uh, who won the bid because it's continually open. You're accepting most people's. And then right now, there's zero closed ads. "Reject a Procurement." That's when you post an ad that is for only New York State Certified MWBEs or small businesses located in New York State. An "Event" or a "Bulletin." You can post events and bulletins. As you can see under "Notices and Reports," let's click "Events." These are some events that are posted right now. But if you want to post something, and I have to go back to here, and I'm going to say "Economic Development," "New York State." There we go. Let's say I want to post an event. I have to go to right here, "Manage Events." "All Agencies." Oh, this is where I have to enter "Economic Development." There we go. You will see an ad, "New Event," right there. So whatever your agency is, it will already be entered here, and you want to add a new event right there. So it's coming from you. You want to put a title in. "Test Time." Okay, so what time of day is it going to be? Let's say 9:00 AM. "Location." Let's put it at the SUM Arena, A-R-E-N-A, right there, SUM Arena in your area. And then this would be your description right here. "Name." You need to enter a contact name, so I'll say "Chris McCann." My email, I would put my email in here. I can't even spell mine. Look at that. See, I can't even take my, type my name correctly. ESD.ny.gov. "Contact Phone Number." I would put my phone number in here. Whoops, this is a fake phone number. Don't write it down, anybody. And that didn't work. Um, let's just add that. And that is not my real phone number, so don't contact me. Oh, you have to give me. I have to put in the dashes. And then the "Website." So the website would be like a link to the registration. That's what the website would be. And some people also put the web, the link to the website in here, which is fine for registration, but also put it down there. That is not asterisks, though. So if, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to. I'm going to say "Add the Event." Oh, it's telling me something. "Event successfully updated." All right, perfect. So now this is pending. So I need to, I look over those events to make sure that they look real, and I also overlook bulletins to make sure that they look legitimate. Now, some people, like myself, might enter a test event, so I would see it. I would get it to approve it or disapprove it. I almost rarely disapprove events. Now, this could be something. I have seen events for DOTs across the state when they're looking for contractors. I've seen events, uh, posted by PTACs, the Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, Small Business Associations, Small Business Development Centers. So I have seen a lot of, all the Power Authority posts events a lot. And now with, uh, since the, since COVID, there's been a lot more events posted. Now, these events can be face-to-face events, or they can be anything online. And now let's go to "Bulletins." If you want to post a bulletin, same thing. Your agency would come up here, "Economic Development." I'm going to pick, and then "Add New Event." And right here, the information. Again, what do you want the headline to read? When do you want it removed? There's the description, and then you would just say "Add Bulletin." Now, bulletins also need to be, um, reviewed by me and approved or disapproved. Again, I rarely disapprove bulletins or events. If I see a typo, I may contact you and say, "Would you like me to fix this typo?" Okay, what is next here? Oh, the "Business Registry." I talked about the business registry earlier, and again, that is a, you can search the registry for if you have a discretionary purchase under fifty thousand dollars, you may want to search for businesses this way, or maybe you already have a list and you want to reach out to them. But let's say you don't have a list. Let's say we are looking for, and I was going to pick carpeting, uh, and I do want to point out, I put in the word "carpet" as opposed to "carpeting" or "carpets" because our search in search boxes here are no Google. I swear Google can read our minds. You start typing the word, you know, "carpet," and up comes what you're looking for. We don't want to read your minds. So I tell people to keep the keywords simple. You, like for accounting, if you're looking for somebody for accounting or an accountant.

Type in just the word account, not the accounting or the accountants or account. Yeah, you got it. So, just keep it very simple. Because, uh, if we type in carpeting, we will get less for carpeting. And I'll show you, we get zero for carpeting. But if we type in carpet, and not even keep it singular, not plural, then you get 10 for the word carpet.

So, this is, uh, what you would do. You, this is how you would search if you're looking for three estimates. You can click on all of them again. There's 10 here. Maybe you want to go through them, maybe you don't. Maybe you want somebody locally. Maybe it doesn't matter to you. This company is located in Syracuse. They've got their contact information, their website, um, the Duns number, etc. All that information there.

Let's click on goods and services. Now, they have a company bio, so you can read a little bit about them and what they have. Facilities, they, their category that they chose is facilities maintenance. Here's their next codes. This particular company does not have a CSI code. CSI codes or construction codes, so they do not consider themselves a construction business. They're more, they come in after the construction. Their designations are right here. Clicked on it. It's a little slow. There we go. They are a small business. They are a woman, a minority women-owned business, but they are not a New York State Certified minority women-owned business. That would be right there. Our DBE, though. Recycled products manufactured in New York State, etc. And then this would be the contact information right there again. This person is located in Syracuse.

And I do want to go back to the description here. This is where you would find the industry terms that I tell the businesses to enter. Enter your industry terms. I can't think of, uh, one off the top of my head right now. Maybe they, maybe they're an IT company and they have a software that they sell. They can put that in there. Or maybe there's a specific, um, for IT vendors. Oh, I can't think of anything specific that they would, um, you know, maybe they write COBOL. Anybody remember what COBOL was? But they might write, uh, you know, um, I'm lost for words. Say, this is embarrassing, but anyway, they would put in their industry terms there.

So, let's go back. Next, I want to show under site resources. Resources, we might have some. We will have tutorials here. Now, six are going to show up because I'm the system administrator, but three are for government entities and three are for the public. So, this one right here, how to place an ad in the Contract Reporter. You, as a government entity, are only going to see the ones for government entities. This is how to place an ad in the Contract Reporter. It's seven and a half minutes long. You will see this agency user account overview. This is also for you. It's only almost two minutes long. This is what is an agency administrator. This is the responsibilities of an agency administrator. That's a minute and a half. And then the public, you are not going to see these, but the public sees how to place a contractor ad, how to place my company in the business registry, and also what's a business user overview account overview.

We also have procurement resources. Let me just go back here. We do not have any webinars in here. We have not. Oh, we have one. I apologize. It's about an hour and three minutes long. Agency training, procurement, ad posting. Oh, this is how to post an ad. This is only how to post an ad on here. All this was done back in 2015. Wow, that seems like so long ago now. Holy cow, so much has happened since then. Um, so we do have apparently a webinar in here and then a presentation. Uh, there's nothing in here.

Procurement resources. If you are interested in the New York State Office of General Services Procurement Services, they are listed right here. Uh, if anybody asks you for a vendor ID, this is where, this is a link to the Office of State Comptroller's website. So that's the link here. Is ESD's Empire State Development's certified and certification program for MWBEs. Here's OGS's certification program for SDVOBs, the Services Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses. We also have a procurement guide, and I tell businesses, it's, uh, 28 pages long, and it's how New York State agencies must procure. This is the process that they follow. So this might be something that you're interested in. This was, I don't remember when it was updated. It was updated a couple years ago though, but it was something that OGS and ESD put together to help government entities.

Now, for small businesses, I continue on to if you want to do business with, like if you're in Buffalo, uh, again, this is for the businesses. If they want to reach out to the Niagara, Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, there's a link. We have a link to New York City agencies, SBAs, SBDCs, and also PTACs. I know the PTACs are now APACs, but they also still consider themselves PTACs. I, if I click on this, it would take me to the PTAC website. I also tell businesses, if you are in the North Country or in Buffalo and you want to do business with Canada, you can click here. And this is how to learn to do business with other states. You may not want to do business with them, but you may want to see how other businesses, um, locally, you know, like the Massachusetts, the New York, New Jersey, excuse me, Pennsylvania, Vermont, etc. You may want to see what their, uh, procurement websites look like.

At the bottom here, we have VendRep. That's the, uh, for vendors. How to pay. You can click on this if you're looking to pay for anybody. Excuse me, give payment to someone. We also have the SFS right here at the end. This is Empire State Development's main website. We also have the contract system, which is the MWBE certification website right there. We have the Grants Gateway link, and then, as I stated, the SFS website link.

So, does anybody have any questions? You're welcome. I, I, it looks like we're a couple minutes over time. So, unfortunately, we won't have, um, time to address the chat questions during the session, but I will pass them along to Chris, um, including email addresses and phone numbers, so that she can circle back with you on anything specific that you had questions about.