Entering your proposal outline

The first step in Proposal Content Planning is to set up the document shell based on your proposal outline. Before you can get started in the MustWin Proposal Performance Support System, you must enter your outline. The MWPPSS does not create the outline for you. Once you have your outline, you enter it to set up the proposal sections for people to begin planning.

Warning: You want your outline to be reliable. It is a pain to change the outline after you begin planning around it. It's a good idea to create a compliance matrix and use it to build your outline. It is a good idea to intensively review your compliance matrix and outline before starting to plan the content of your proposal.

The first time you enter your newly created proposal, you arrive at another page that looks empty. At the bottom of this page is a place to enter the section number and heading for each item in your outline. Click the "Add Another Section" button and it will appear in the list. It should only take a few minutes to enter most outlines. The list is sorted by the section number. 

When you are done, click on any section to begin planning it. That's where things get fun.

To the right of each outline item is a set of icons. They look like this:

The icons are for:

• Reviewing the section (check mark)
• Controlling access to the section (people)
• Editing the section number and name (pencil)
• Deleting the section (x)

To plan the content of the section, just click on the section name.

The reason for the "warning" above is that to make changes to the outline, you will have to manually edit the section numbers and name, add new sections, and delete sections. For minor changes, it's manageable. You want to avoid major changes by making sure the outline is reliable before you start.

In a future version, we will add the ability to import your compliance matrix straight from an excel file. While that will be a cool feature, it will only save you a few minutes. The hard part is validating your outline before planning and writing around it. Even with the import, you'll still want to make sure your outline is reliable.