You use Ariba Enterprise Sourcing to initiate and manage the sourcing event, called an RFX activity or simply RFX, related to a CSR. To learn more about RFX activities, see What is an RFX activity? in the Ariba Enterprise Sourcing Online Help Contents tab.

When working with a CSR, you must begin and end the process in the same partition. You cannot create a CSR in one partition and award suppliers in a different partition.

You cannot source items from a supplier’s Internet Catalog (also called a PunchOut Catalog).

Once a contract request (CR) is created from a sourcing event, you cannot change the supplier.

If Ariba Contract Compliance encounters an unknown supplier, users with the appropriate Contracts permissions are notified to correct the problem. The requester also receives a courtesy notification message.

If you have the permission required to work with sourcing requests, you can create contract sourcing requests (CSRs) in Ariba Contract Compliance. Follow these basic steps to create or work with a CSR in Ariba Contract Compliance:

1. Add a title.
2. Add items or add non-catalog items.
3. Edit line items as needed.
4. Submit the CSR for approval.
5. Monitor the CSR status using the status screen.
6. View the details of the approved CSR and click Source to connect to Ariba Enterprise Sourcing and set up the corresponding RFX, which is pre-populated with information from the CSR.
7. Monitor the RFX status using the Sourcing screen or directly in Ariba Enterprise Sourcing.
8. Complete and submit for approval the draft contract requests (CRs) that Ariba Contract Compliance generates when the RFX has completed and selected suppliers have been chosen.
9. Continue with the steps involved in the contract request process.