eForms Preview environment

Scope and purpose

The Publications Office (OP) has developed a range of applications for the collection, validation, processing, visualisation and dissemination of eForms notices. These applications are collectively known as "TED Apps for eForms" and went into production use on 14 November 2022.

We have prepared an additional "Preview" environment for eSenders and stakeholders, where we deploy releases of the TED Apps for eForms as they become available. This environment allows access to the applications before they are deployed in Production, and provides a testing environment that is closely aligned with production.

The application features, URLs as well as the data present in the "Preview" environment, are subject to unannounced changes.

URLs and API keys in "Production" and "Preview" environments are not interchangeable. For accessing the web applications in the "Preview" environment (eNotices2 and the TED Developer Portal), you need an EU-Login acceptance environment account which you can get at https://ecas.acceptance.ec.europa.eu/cas. To access eNotices2 API in Preview, you need to generate a key from the TED Developer Portal in Preview: https://developer.preview.ted.europa.eu/home

TED Apps for eForms

The TED applications for eForms are:

TED eNotices2

eNotices2 is the reception system for eForms. Notices can be submitted and managed through the web front-end or via the TED API. eNotices2 replaces the current eNotices and eSentool applications. eNotices2 calls the Central Validation Service to validate submitted notices before sending them to TED Monitor for processing and publication.

TED Central Validation Service

The Central Validation Service (also known as TED CVS) provides an API for validating eForms notices. It is called by eNotices2 to check the validity of a submitted notice, but it can also be called by eSender applications to validate a notice at any time.

TED Viewer

Also known as "TED Viewer 2022" this notice visualisation service provides an API that allows applications to render an eForms notice in the HTML or PDF format.

TED Developer Portal

The TED Developer Portal is envisioned to be a central hub for TED developer services. At this point in time, the portal allows eSenders to sign-up and obtain/manage their API key which is required for calling TED APIs.

TED Monitor

Also known as "TED Monitor 2022", this application is the internal production system used by OP to prepare the publication in the Supplement of the Official Journal (hosted in the TED website) of the public procurement notices submitted every day. It also allows OP to check the lawfulness of certain notices and to mask unpublished fields.

TED Monitor is not accessible by eSenders in the "preview" environment.
TED Website

TED is the public dissemination website for European procurement notices. It is the digital (and only) form of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU (OJ S). The current TED website, which has been adapted to handle eForms notices, is scheduled to be replaced by a totally new, built-from-scratch version (also known as TED 2.0), in summer of 2023.

The TED website is not available in the "preview" environment.
systems diagram

Accessing TED Apps in PREVIEW

eNotices2

The URLs and parameters may change in subsequent releases.
Please be aware that the interface and the notice forms still need further work to improve the user experience.

Currently available

Application version

1.6.2

SDK versions

1.3.2, 1.4.1, 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.6.1

In this version, the application is expected to allow users to create the 40 eForms notice types plus the 5 other notice types which include the 2 transport regulation notices, the European economic interest grouping and European company/cooperative registration forms, and the call for expression of interest. The fields which are available, along with their behaviour, are consistent with SDK versions 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6. SDK version 1.6 is supported both in Preview and Production environments as of 15 March 2023.

In the codelist fields, prefilling of values is supported.

Users can see the validation returned from CVS and have their notices rendered in HTML and PDF.

Before you can create a Change notice or continue a procedure on a published notice, bear in mind that submitted notices go through another workflow in TED Monitor before they can be published, which takes place every working day.

The application also allows users to act upon notices and procedures, archiving, renaming and transferring them to other users or other procedures as well as export notices in XML.

There is also a search feature which allows users to sort through long lists of procedures.

Users can create workgroups between themselves and test the definitions of roles and permissions within these workgroups. They can also work and submit notices worked upon collectively.

Users can define personalised settings for the legal basis and notice types that they want to use, as well as default languages in the notice, and tailoring of some fields is available:

  • Optional fields can be set to mandatory or hidden, however, please note that we have removed the Conditional rules as of SDK 1.3 – for these please leave the default behaviour.

  • Confidential fields can be set to be always confidential or non-confidential.

  • To get started, please fill in Organisation Name, Organisation Identifier and Oganisation Part Name under My Form Settings > Main Buyer Settings.

In the notice sections a search feature has been added and pagination for up to 2000 lots is supported.

As of SDK version 1.6, the lot distribution for lot groups has changed; there is a new section for that in the procedure.

Known issues

At this point, the application is incomplete and many use cases are not fully implemented.

All validation errors are currently displayed as a pop-up window, without pointing to the error location. Please set a default currency to avoid validation errors in the notices created in the user interface that can lead to a message that the: “notice is probably incomplete”.

All the error messages and labels in the user interface (UI), notices and fields are subject to change – translation of labels is still work in progress.

Notices go through CVS validation when they are submitted, or when the user clicks on "validate" in the user interface, however, the feature may be unstable. Notices created in the user interface of eNotices2 that trigger a lawfulness warning cannot be submitted.

For the moment, CVS validation does not work dynamically, i.e. there is no check between notices. This has implications, e.g. for checking notices of the same procedure or the same UUID v4 and different version ID; currently, it is possible to submit and publish two notices that carry the same notice ID and different version IDs. See in contrast: https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/latest/schema/notice-information.html#noticeIDSection.

For the moment, it is not possible to link a TED-Schema notice to an eForms notice via the Previous Notice (OPP-090) as described in the documentation: https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/latest/schema/procedure-lot-part-information.html#previousNoticeSection.

eNotices2 uses the codelists from the SDK, which have not been completely tailored.

In Change notices, section "Information about the change" should not be repeated.

As of 19 December 2022, status “published” may not have been shown in Preview for notices that were submitted successfully; this issue is now fixed.

On 10 and 11 January 2023, notices submitted may have acquired status “not published”; this issue is now fixed.

Due to an error in the processing of notices at export time some notices remain in "submitted" status; we are working on fixing this issue.

Notices created before 15 March 2023 in Preview or Production environments and updated to SDK 1.6 may have issues. If editing a notice leads to an error (server error) or 'Notice Locked', the workaround is to export (download) the xml and reimport it somewhere else in eNotices2, even if it is in the same procedure.

Known eNotices2 API issues

The eNotices2 API URLs and parameters will change in later releases. The Swagger UI provides basic documentation of the four functions.

Currently, "stop publication" on a submitted notice will return error 500 in certain cases, i.e when the notice is being processed and ready to be published. The process will be simplified in the future with the introduction of status “PUBLISHING”, which will forbid stopping publication of a notice of this status. For more information on notice statuses, please see the eForms FAQ.

Currently, when submitting an XML to eNotices2 API that is invalid against XSD, error code 500 will be returned. To see if this the case, i.e. the XML is not compliant against XSD, please check the notice for now through CVS API.

The 'validationReportUrl' property present in the response body for submit notice is currently not fully correct; /api/v2/ is missing in the URL. Until this bug is fixed, eSenders should use instead URL pattern: 'https://enotices2.preview.ted.europa.eu/esenders/api/v2/notice/notices/{businessId}/validation-report' where the {businessId} is replaced with value taken from the submitted notice ('noticeId-versionId') or with {businessId} from validationReportUrl.

The Preview environment is for testing purposes; new SDK releases will first be made available on Preview before deployment in Production. Please note, however, that Preview only simulates Production and notices submitted in Preview are not published in a test environment of TED. “Published” is only a mock status that is automatically assigned to submitted notices at around 15:00 CET when they enter the export (notices are not actually published on TED). If there is a preferred publication date, Preview will show status “published” as soon as the export finishes, which is the previous working day at around 15:00 CET. As an example, if the preferred publication date falls on a Monday, the status will change to "published" the previous Friday at around 15:00 CET, when the export takes place (provided Friday is not a public holiday). Notices submitted in Preview are not checked for lawfulness.
In Production (live environment), the actual export to TED happens on workdays around 16:00 CET depending on the number of notices to be published in the next OJ S. When this process is initiated and a submitted notice is in the daily export, it will be published on TED at 09:00 CET in the next available OJ S based on the release calendar. Its status will then change to “Published”. Please note that stopping publication of a notice is not allowed at this stage, i.e. between the export and publication. We will later introduce the status “Publishing” for such cases to avoid confusion. For more information on notice statuses, please see the eForms FAQ.

Tips for using the form-filling tool of eNotices2

We are currently in the process of providing more guidance for users of the eNotices2 web interface. In recent weeks we have loosened many rules that required fields to be mandatory under certain conditions, which makes it easier to fill in the forms. However, as certain co-constraints and conditional rules have been removed, the same is not true for CVS validation upon validating a notice or trying to submit it via the user interface of eNotices2. Until we can provide some more guidance and until known issues are fixed and more rules are re-enforced, we have provisionally gathered here some tips to help users with avoiding validation errors:

  • BT-747 Selection criteria must be entered 3 times using the 3 values from the codelist (except none).

  • In multi-stage procedures (BT-105), the second stage indicator should be set to 'yes' on one of those 3 groups where the criterion is used.

  • "Award criteria complicated" should be filled-in with a variation of "See the procurement documents" to avoid having to fill in Criterion parameters.

  • Please avoid using the section “Information about late submission” except for the mandatory fields and the “Description of the NDA”.

  • For Exclusion Grounds, use only once the code value and enter ”all other exclusion grounds apply" in the description; avoid repeating codelist values.

  • Group "Post Award Process" both indicators should be always set to "true".

  • Any date field which has a time attached must always have a value in the time field.

  • In Contract notices of the Defence directive, BT-71-Lot should not be filled in.

Tips for eSenders

  • If you are an eSender, please note that the concept of Workgroups is reserved for users of eNotices2 web User Interface (UI). eSenders/ users of eNotices2 API can still create workgroups in the UI of eNotices2 but the API is not aware of the context or workgroups, i.e. no API function can be performed on a notice that has been manually transferred to the context of a Workgroup.

  • To avoid authorisation issues when using eNotices2 API, make sure you generate your API key in the corresponding environment of the TED Developer Portal:

  • To avoid authorisation issues when using eNotices2 API, log in at least once in the corresponding environment of the User Interface to pair your API key with your eNotices2 account and make sure that your eNotices2 account is active:

  • eNotices2 API supports currently SDK versions 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6. SDK version 1.6 is supported both in Preview and Production environments as of 15 March 2023. For the value to indicate in the cbc:CustomizationID element, it should always have the format "eforms-sdk-major.minor". See this page for more details: https://docs.ted.europa.eu/eforms/latest/versioning.html#_significance_of_the_sdk_version_in_notice_handling_and_validation

  • Until dynamic rules are in place, please avoid using past dates for preferred publication date in the XML; this may cause your notice to remain in status "submitted" and not be published.

Planned updates

Indicative planning

March 2023

Application version

1.7

SDK version

1.6

This version of the application is focused on improvements to the UI experience and the correction of bugs.

The current application version of Preview went into Production on 16 February 2023.

TED Central Validation Service

Currently available

Application version

1.3.0

SDK versions

1.0.0, 1.1.1, 1.2.1, 1.3.3, 1.4.2, 1.5.2, 1.6.0

Scope

Complete implementation, including the execution of the validation rules (Schematron).

We are working on resolving the following limitations and known issues:

  • Large notices (3 MB or above) cannot be sent, due to a technical restriction.

  • The validation mode "dynamic" currently does not fetch information from other notices, so it is equivalent to the "static" validation mode.

TED Viewer

Currently available

Application version

1.2.8

SDK versions

1.0.0, 1.1.1, 1.2.1, 1.3.2, 1.4.2, 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.6.0

Scope

Final version of the application with full rendering of HTML and PDF and using the view-templates defined in the SDK

Planned updates

Scope

Ongoing improvements with successive SDK releases

TED Developer Portal

Currently available

Website URL

https://developer.preview.ted.europa.eu/home

Scope

Users can generate an API key

Planned updates

Indicative planning

Q2 2023

Scope

Addition of a Developer Profile for eSenders; this feature is currently scheduled to be deployed in the Preview and the Production environment of the TED Developer Portal in Q2 2023. Setting up a Developer Profile will be part of the sign-up process and mandatory before eSenders are able to generate an (or a new) API key. Making your profile public is entirely optional. Public profiles will be made available at a later stage and will eventually replace the list of eSenders on SIMAP.