First-time setup in Tender Navigator
First-time setup in Tender Navigator has five steps, shown as a checklist on the dashboard Overview: create your account, activate a plan, build your first filter, turn it on, and see your first evaluated result. The first evaluations arrive within about a day of activating a filter.
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The getting-started checklist
After you sign in for the first time, the dashboard Overview shows a Getting started card with five rows. The card is derived from your live data, so it ticks itself as you go and disappears once everything is done.
- Create your account. Ticked as soon as you can see the dashboard.
- Activate a plan. Done at checkout, including for the free Basic plan. Until a plan is active, the dashboard sidebar shows only Results, My Lists, Subscription and Account, and the checklist marks the remaining rows as locked.
- Build your first filter. Opens the filter editor. See Creating and editing a filter.
- Turn it on. A new filter starts paused. Switch it to Active on its page. See Activating, pausing, duplicating and deleting filters.
- See your first evaluated result. Ticked when the first evaluated tender appears on the Results page.
You can dismiss the card. The Product tour dialog in the dashboard topbar offers a way to bring it back.
The fastest route to a good first filter
The filter editor can be filled in by hand, but two shortcuts give a better starting point:
- Search first, then save. Open the Pre-search tool in the sidebar, enter a few keywords your buyers would use, add at least one classification code, press Search and check that the notices look like work you want. Then press Save as Filter. The filter inherits the keywords, countries and codes that just returned real tenders. See Turning a search into a filter.
- Generate from your Business Profile. Fill in the Business Profile once and press Generate filter. The draft includes a structured AI prompt assembled from the profile.
Either way the filter is created paused with a prompt that needs your attention. A filter saved from a search carries a line starting with TODO in its prompt; replace it with your own words before switching the filter on.
Four things make a filter work
The filter page shows a Filter setup checklist. A filter is ready to activate when it has:
- at least one keyword,
- at least one country,
- at least one CPV, NAICS or UNSPSC code,
- an AI prompt.
Keywords, countries and codes decide which tenders the filter picks up; the prompt decides how each of them is judged. A filter with no keywords matches on codes alone, which is usually far too broad.
When the first results arrive
Filtering and AI evaluation run daily. After you switch a filter on, expect the first evaluated tenders within about a day; the Results page says "Your first evaluations are on the way" until then. Each filter also sends a digest email on the schedule you chose, daily by default. If nothing has arrived after a couple of days, see No tenders found.
The tours
Two short guided tours cover this setup: "Find tenders and save a filter" on the Pre-search tool, and "Finish and switch on a filter" on a filter's page. The second one starts on its own when you arrive at a filter you just saved from a search. See The platform tour.
Related articles
- Creating a Tender Navigator accountHow to sign up for Tender Navigator: the signup form, choosing a plan, confirming your email with a six-digit code, and completing checkout, including the free Basic plan.
- Turning a search into a filter (Save as Filter)How Save as Filter in Tender Navigator turns a Pre-search query or an open notice into a paused filter with a seeded AI prompt, what carries over, and what to finish before switching it on.
- Creating and editing a filterEvery field of the Tender Navigator filter editor explained: Basics, Search criteria, AI evaluation, Notifications & schedule, Usage, Tender budget, the setup checklist, and the three ways to start a filter.
- Activating, pausing, duplicating and deleting filtersHow to switch a Tender Navigator filter on or off, what a paused filter does, the active-filter limit per plan and the message when it is reached, and how duplicate and delete behave.
- The platform tour in Tender NavigatorThe four guided tours in the Tender Navigator dashboard, where each one runs, how to start, replay or leave a tour, and what the Product tour button does.