Completing an RFP

​

Creating a project

A project acts as a container for a specific RFP or opportunity.

​

Project view and tools

In the project view, you’ll see the files, progress, project settings, and project-level analysis tools that help you qualify the opportunity and understand its requirements.

• Files: A central place to upload and manage all project-related documents, including RFPs and supporting files. From here, you can select a questionnaire to begin filling it out, or open a Document response in the editor. A file you upload directly to the project is a questionnaire to fill, a deliverable, or a supporting file. Until Realm parses a file into an RFP, you can move it between “questionnaires”, “deliverables”, and “supporting files” from the file’s menu. After Realm parses it into an RFP, remove the file from the project and upload it again to change how it is used.
• Checklist: Everything the bid owes the buyer in one list, with the status of each item: the questionnaires to answer and the documents the buyer’s files ask for. From here you can generate a requested document, open one that exists, name its reviewers and request a review, approve it, or download the project’s documents.
• Progress: A visual dashboard that tracks the overall completion status of the RFP. It shows the total number of questions (scope), how many are started versus completed, tracks Document responses, and lists any tasks assigned to you.
• Summary: Generate an AI-powered summary of all files within the project to get a quick overview of the scope and key requirements.
• Go/No-Go analysis: Uses an AI agent to evaluate the RFP documents against your company’s capabilities to help you make an informed decision on whether to bid. Qualification requirements (certifications, registrations, minimum criteria) form an eligibility screen (“Can we bid?”) where failed requirements are flagged as resolvable or hard blockers, and hard blockers are named up front. A dedicated panel collects every blocker and open question in one list, and opening a finding starts a triage flow: previous/next controls step through the list in one dialog, and resolving a finding advances to the next one automatically. Capability requirements produce a solution-fit score based only on requirements where the knowledge base held evidence either way; requirements with no evidence are shown as “No evidence” and don’t count against the score. Procedural and commercial-term items found in the tender don’t count toward the score either. When you know better than the analysis, open any requirement and override its verdict with a written reason, an uploaded evidence document (which also joins the project’s files), or both. The score updates immediately and Realm’s original verdict stays visible next to yours. Once you’ve finished reviewing, press “Regenerate analysis” to rewrite the analysis text from the updated verdicts. Realm also states a recommended action (Go, No-bid, or Improve position), and a Bid decision panel records the actual decision with a rationale, optional conditions, and follow-up actions; the decision keeps a frozen snapshot of the assessment it was based on, and every past decision stays visible. The decision also sets the project’s status: Go moves the project to Drafting, Improve position keeps it in Evaluating while the follow-up actions are worked, and No-bid marks it No-go (the project stays visible in the list under its own status instead of being archived). These statuses can be selected as filters in the RFP list. When project documents change after an analysis, or the linked tender notice is superseded, a banner flags the results as possibly outdated and offers a one-click re-run (warning first when reviewer overrides would be discarded). If your company bid on an earlier round of the same tender through Realm, link that project as the previous round from the project header; Realm suggests likely candidates based on matching requirements. Realm then sorts this round’s requirements into changed, unchanged, new, and no longer present, summarizes what changed in each reworded requirement, and surfaces the comments your team left on the previous round’s questionnaire rows. The comparison is informational context: it colors the analysis text but produces no score. Linking or changing the previous round after an analysis re-runs only the comparison (press “Regenerate analysis” to fold it into the analysis text), and if the previous round’s questionnaires change later, the card flags the comparison as outdated and offers a re-run.
• Embedded Chat: Open Embedded Chat from the project page header to ask specific questions about the project. Realm sees the page you are on, can read the project’s files, summary, Go/No-Go analysis, extracted requirements, and progress on demand, and keeps a per-project list of conversations, including read-only access to other members’ chats. See Embedded Chat.
• Project settings: Manage project members, their roles, and general project details. Owners can update the project’s status, language, deadline, or delete the project. Archiving a project hides it and its RFPs from the RFP list until you turn on Show archived RFPs and projects in the list settings. Changing the language automatically reevaluates every requirement and regenerates all existing Go/No-Go results in the selected language. This project language only affects Go/No-Go analysis and is separate from each questionnaire’s working language.

​

Preparing questionnaires and fill plan

When you upload a questionnaire to your project, you can optionally configure the following:

• Working language: The language Realm stores, displays, and answers the questionnaire in. By default it follows the language of the uploaded document. If you pick a different language, Realm translates the questionnaire once before you start working (dropdown answer choices included), and you must run that translation (or reset the language) before the RFP can be activated. After translation the working language is locked. A toggle above the grid shows every cell in the original document language at any time. While a text cell shows its original-language text, editing it edits that text directly; the working-language answer stays unchanged. An original-language edit lasts until the answer itself is edited or regenerated, which resets the cell to a fresh machine translation.
• Custom instructions: Provide custom instructions that will apply to all AI-generated answers. Only what you write here is stored in this field.
• Instructions found in the questionnaire: When a questionnaire states rules about how answers must be given, Realm lists them below the custom instructions, each labeled with the sheet and section it was found in. They apply to all AI-generated answers alongside your own instructions, and you can switch off any rule you don’t want followed. Switching a rule off survives a re-upload of the same questionnaire. In a project whose plan states its own answering rules, those rules govern instead and this list is not shown.
• Deadline: Set a due date to keep your team on track and prioritize the project.
• Tags: Add tags to answer from a specific product area. Filling draws from sources tagged the same way. Manage tags in RFP settings. Tags applied to the project are inherited automatically.
• Reviewer column: Show or hide the Reviewer column for this RFP. By default it follows the organization’s Enable reviewers setting. When the column is shown, each row can have a dedicated reviewer who can approve it. You can also add the column later from the RFP’s options menu, and remove it from the Reviewer column’s own header menu.

Custom instructions, deadline, and tags can be changed later from the RFP settings button in the RFP header. The same dialog also lets you choose whether answers must be approved before export and shows the RFP’s working and original languages. For Excel/CSV files, organization import instructions can exclude rules that prevent drafting descriptions in supplementary columns. Once processing is complete, click Preview to proceed. You then need to confirm Realm’s fill plan. Realm suggests which columns should be filled automatically, and within them leaves out the rows that are part of the questionnaire’s structure rather than questions, such as section headings, spacer rows, and document title or “last updated” lines. Every sheet and row stays in the table either way. Nothing is removed. If something was missed or included incorrectly, you can adjust the selection by clicking the columns or the individual cells. To change many cells at once, drag across them, or click one cell and then Shift-click another to cover everything in between. Both add cells or remove them depending on where you start, so you can widen a selection and then narrow it back down.

​

Basing an RFP on a previous round

When a tender goes into a new round, the buyer often sends an updated questionnaire in which only some questions changed. After Realm processes the new upload, it compares the questions with your other RFPs. If a previous RFP answers many of the same questions, the processing view suggests it as the previous round and shows how many questions match. The list offers the RFPs among your 100 most recently updated ones that answer at least one of the questions, best match first, with each RFP’s match percentage and date. Click Import answers to base the new RFP on the previous one. For every row whose question text is the same in both RFPs, Realm copies the answer and the review status. Assignees and reviewers are not copied. Rows with changed or new questions stay open for filling. An RFP can be based on one previous RFP only. Each imported row records in its activity which RFP it was imported from, and the answer keeps its original sources. Imported rows are left out of the fill plan, including answer cells the previous round left empty on purpose, so filling the section writes only the rows that are still open. Cells that already have content are never overwritten. Imported answers are labeled Imported in the grid, and the RFP header shows which RFP they came from.

​

Answering questions

The RFP grid is a spreadsheet-like view where you manage the entire question-and-answer process.

​

Navigating the RFP grid

Navigate between cells by clicking or using the arrow keys.

​

Filtering rows by column value

Open a column’s actions and select Filter by value to show rows with one or more chosen values. The filter is available on every content column. Realm initially shows the ten most common values in the current rows; use the search field to find any other value. For columns with an Excel dropdown, Realm uses the declared labels for choices that occur in the current rows. Realm groups differences in capitalization, spacing, compatible Unicode characters, and accents into the same choice. For example, Yes, YES, and yes are treated as one value, as are Café and cafe. Ordinary punctuation remains significant, but recognized citations and directives are ignored during matching. Select Empty… to find incomplete rows. You can combine it with other values in the same column. Active value filters remain available from the column menu and, in the redesigned grid, from the filter chip above the table.

​

Undo and redo

Use the undo and redo buttons in the RFP header, or press Cmd+Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows) to undo and Cmd+Shift+Z (Ctrl+Y on Windows) to redo. Undo reverses recent actions such as answer edits, hiding questions or columns, marking columns for deletion, assignments, reviewers, review status changes, and bulk section actions. Each section keeps its own history, so switching sections shows that section’s actions and switching back restores it. History is per session and clears when you reload the page.

​

Filling sections with AI

Select which agent to use for filling. Realm is the default agent. Use the Fill section button to generate answers for an entire section at once. If the section should be completed without AI generation, select Fill manually to answer the questions yourself. To leave a section out of the RFP entirely, select Disable section. To generate cells again in a section you have already filled, select Select cells to regenerate in the toolbar above the grid. While the cell selection is open, the same button reads Done and leaves it again. The first time you open the cell selection it shows Realm’s fill plan, and the cells you add or remove there are saved with the RFP. Once the section has answers, the cell selection opens with the cells from that plan already picked. Adjust the pick by clicking or dragging across cells, and act on it from the bar below the grid:

• Regenerate N writes a new answer in every picked cell, including cells the fill plan left out. In a conditional column, only the rows that match the column’s conditions are answered; the rest stay blank.
• With prompt… does the same after you add instructions for this run. It works on up to 50 cells at a time.
• Revert N puts back what the uploaded sheet said in the picked cells.

Once the section has answers, a pick lasts only while you stay in the cell selection. It is not saved, and it does not change the RFP’s progress, the export, or the Question and Answer split in the Answer details panel. If a picked cell still holds the questionnaire’s own text, Realm asks you to confirm before replacing it. To answer a whole section again, open the cell selection and select Regenerate section in the toolbar. Every answer cell in the section gets a new answer, so Realm asks you to confirm first; earlier answers stay in each cell’s history. Starting the regeneration closes the cell selection. The button is unavailable while the section is being filled, while cells in it are still generating, or when a trial’s fill limit is reached, and the tooltip says which of these applies.

​

Column prompting

Open a column’s actions and select Add column prompt to include instructions on how that column should be filled. For example: “This customer expects SOC-2 certification. Wherever this is addressed, say that we are SOC-2 compliant and are preparing formal certification this year.” You can also edit the prompt from the column header: hover the header and click the pencil icon. Save keeps the prompt for later answers, and Save and regenerate column applies it to the column right away. Column prompts and conditions can be changed whenever the RFP is editable, not only while the cell selection is open. The same menu can mark a column as Don’t answer, hide or show it, and mark it as conditional. A conditional column is answered only when the values in other columns match the conditions you configure. When an uploaded questionnaire itself states such a rule, for example “only elaborate in the comments column if you answered No”, Realm configures the condition automatically during parsing. You can review or change it from the column’s actions like any other condition.

​

Adding a column

Open a column’s actions and select Add column left or Add column right to insert an empty column beside it. The section menu’s Add column at end still appends one after the last column. A column keeps the position you gave it everywhere the sheet is read, including the exported spreadsheet. The fill plan decides which cells the AI answers. It does not restrict what you can type: every cell in the grid stays editable, including the question columns. The Answer details panel groups a row’s cells into Question and Answer by the same fill plan.

​

Assessing AI-generated answers

​

Reviewing sources

Click the answer to select it, then click it again to open the Answer details panel on the right side of the RFP grid. You can review the sources used to generate an answer and see an explanation of how Realm produced it, when that version of the answer has one. To read the explanation without leaving the grid, open the answer’s actions and hover over Explanation. The explanation appears in a tooltip; clicking the entry opens the full explanation under the answer.

​

Answer quality score

The Answer quality score appears next to each answer in the RFP grid. A detailed breakdown is available in the Answer details panel. See Understanding the answer quality score for more details.

​

Editing answers

​

Manually editing answers

Edit any cell by double-clicking it in the RFP grid, or by clicking it in the Answer details panel (question cells included). Cells that the questionnaire restricts to a fixed set of values open their option list on a single click.

​

Cells that still hold the questionnaire’s text

A cell Realm has not written to still shows exactly what the uploaded sheet said: question text, template values, and anything else that came with the file. The Answer details panel marks such a field with a small lock icon. Editing one asks you to confirm once, and you can tick Don’t show again to stop asking. Nothing is blocked, so a parsing mistake in a question stays fixable.

​

Working on several cells at once

While an RFP is in progress, you can also select a range of cells in the grid without opening the cell selection: click a cell and Shift-click another, or hold Shift and use the up and down arrow keys. A bar floats over the grid with Regenerate N, With prompt…, and Revert N for that range. Here Regenerate covers only answer cells that are not already generating, so question cells and cells outside the fill plan are left out of the count; to answer those, use the cell selection instead. Press Escape to drop the range.

​

Reverting to the original

Open a cell’s actions, in the grid or in the Answer details panel, and select Revert to original to put back what the uploaded sheet said in that cell, or to empty it if the sheet left it blank. The cell counts as untouched again and, when the sheet had text there, the Answer details panel shows its lock icon again. Undo restores the answer. To do the same for a whole column, open the column’s actions and select Revert column to original. Realm asks you to confirm and lets you choose whether cells it was never asked to answer are reverted as well.

​

Editing answers with AI

Use the Refine or update with a prompt feature in the Answer details panel to give the AI further instructions for regenerating the answer. Realm refreshes the Answer quality score after the regenerated answer is saved. When you regenerate with your own instructions, Realm writes the requested detail into the answer itself, so that version has no separate explanation. Columns limited to fixed options keep their explanation, because the answer can only be one of the configured values. Earlier versions of the answer keep the explanation they were saved with. To regenerate all answer cells in a single question row, hover over the row number and select Regenerate row. You can regenerate immediately or add row-specific instructions before regenerating. To regenerate every answer cell in one column, open the column’s actions and select Regenerate column. This is the quickest way to apply a new column prompt, because it refills that column only and leaves the rest of the section untouched. Existing answers in the column are replaced, so Realm asks you to confirm first. A conditional column is regenerated only in the rows that match its conditions, and the action is unavailable while the section is already being filled.

​

Collaboration

Realm shows each RFP assignment, comment, mention, and deadline as a separate card in the in-app notification panel. Use the All, Due, and Past views to focus the list. Assignment links open the RFP in the My Tasks modal, while comment and mention links open the unfiltered RFP context so the referenced discussion stays visible. Opening a card or marking it as read moves it to Past. Slack and email group related RFP activity into a contextual briefing. Mentions are sent immediately, and new assignments follow after a short grouping window. Other activity arrives in a daily briefing, including being added to a project. Work due today or tomorrow, and reminders sent by a teammate, also trigger an earlier briefing after the same grouping window. Overdue reminders appear in Realm and Slack, but are not sent by email. The Monday workload summary is delivered in Slack only, and it covers active RFPs: those with an upcoming or recently passed deadline, or rows edited in the last 30 days. External briefings include affected questions, comment excerpts, current deadlines, and a link to My tasks. In your personal notification settings, you can:

• Choose how much RFP activity is sent to Slack and email.
• Include assignments, mentions, manual reminders, and work due within a day with the Important only level.
• Enable or disable the combined daily briefing and Monday workload summary.
• Select individual reminders for three days before, one day before, the due date, and one, three, or seven days overdue.

To receive RFP briefings in Slack, an organization admin must install the Realm Slack app or connect Slack as a data source. Each recipient’s Slack email must match their Realm account email, and their personal Slack notifications setting must not be Off. Syncing Slack messages into Realm is not required. When a notification cannot be delivered to Slack, Realm sends it by email instead, as long as your email notification settings allow it. In-app RFP notifications remain available so important work is always visible in Realm. New reminder preferences start with 3 days and Tomorrow selected.

​

Assigning work

Assign individual questions or entire sections to team members. Click the Assigned column in the RFP grid to select a user. The Assigned column menu can assign all rows or only unassigned rows to yourself or another user, unassign all rows, and filter the grid to your rows, unassigned rows, or selected assignees. To move a lot of questions at once, use Assign with prompt and describe the change in plain language, tagging people with @. Prompts can add people (“assign all security questions to @Ville”), take them off (“unassign all questions assigned to @Ville”), or hand work over (“reassign all pricing questions from @Ville to @Sara”). Realm shows the matching questions and the exact changes for review before anything is applied, and you can drop individual rows from that list. The Reviewer column offers the same prompt.

​

My tasks

Every open item assigned to you is collected on the My tasks tab at the top of the RFPs page. It covers two kinds of work:

• Questions where you are the assignee or the reviewer, until the answer is approved.
• Unresolved comment threads assigned to you on a Document response.

Each row is a questionnaire or Document response with work waiting for you. Rows belonging to the same project are grouped under it; expand the project to see them. A row shows how many items are assigned to you, the status, the RFP deadline, your own task deadline, the owner, and the creation date. Click a column header to sort. By default the nearest deadline comes first and work without a deadline comes last. Click a row to open the questionnaire’s grid in a window over the list, filtered to your own questions. Answer or review it there, then close the window to return to the tab. The tab has no separate “done” action. A question leaves the open list when its review status becomes Approved, and a comment thread leaves when it is resolved. Questionnaires that are completed or archived never appear in the open list. Finished work is not lost. Switch the tab from Open to Recently done to see the questionnaires and Document responses holding work that recently left your plate: answers you handed off to review or that were approved, and your assigned comment threads that were resolved. It covers the last 30 days, with the most recent activity first.

​

Viewing team workload

The Workload tab on the RFP list gives team leads a timeline view of who is working on what. Each person is listed with the RFPs they are assigned to answer or review. Every RFP shows as a bar spanning from when it was created to its deadline, and the filled part of the bar runs to that person’s own task deadline. Where a person has no task deadline set yet, click the bar to set one. Counts next to each RFP show how many rows that person still has to answer and to review. Zoom smoothly between a wide, multi-year view and a close-up week view by pinching on a trackpad (or holding Cmd/Ctrl and scrolling) over the timeline, or with the zoom buttons, and use the Today button to jump back to the current date. Switch to the By RFP view to see the same timeline grouped by RFP instead of by person. This view lists every RFP you can access (including ones with no one assigned yet) with the people working on each below it. A filter bar lets you search by name, pick specific RFPs, and filter by creator, status, assigned person, or deadline. Your filter choices are remembered when you leave the page and come back. When you expand an RFP that has no one assigned, an “Assign people” row appears that opens the RFP so you can add people. The status chip on each project and RFP header can be changed from the timeline. Project status is open to any member of that project, while RFP status follows the Can mark RFP completed permission. Where a status cannot be changed, hovering the chip explains why.

​

Review process

Optionally, designate a reviewer for each question to ensure quality and accuracy. Click the Reviewer column in the RFP grid to assign a reviewer. The Reviewer column menu provides the equivalent bulk controls: set the reviewer for all or only unassigned rows, clear reviewers, and filter by your reviews, unassigned reviews, or selected reviewers.

​

Review status

Use the Review status column in the RFP grid to track the progress of each answer. Statuses include Pending, Ready for review, and Approved.

​

Leaving comments

Add comments to any question or answer by clicking it twice to open the Answer details panel on the right side of the RFP grid.

​

Finalizing and exporting

​

Marking as complete

Once all questions are answered and approved, you can mark the RFP as complete. This also adds the questions and answers to your knowledge base, improving future AI suggestions. Marking an RFP as complete also approves every row that is not yet approved. Realm first asks you to confirm and tells you how many rows this affects. Each of those approvals is recorded in the row history, so you can see who approved a row and what its previous status was.

​

Exporting the file

Click Export to download the completed questionnaire. There are two options:

• Fill the original file: Fills the answers into the original RFP file. Note that any rows added during the process will not be included.
• Export as a new spreadsheet: Exports the questionnaire as a new Excel file.

A translated questionnaire also lets you pick the export language: the original document language, which restores the uploaded file’s questions verbatim and translates your answers to match, or the working language, which exports content exactly as written. Exports default to the original document language.