Alerts
How we make sure you never miss an opportunity
Never Miss Another Opportunity
The best opportunities don't wait. Government tenders often have tight bidding windows, and by the time you discover a relevant notice through manual searching, you've lost valuable preparation days. Sometimes you've missed the deadline entirely.
OpenOpps alerts solve this by bringing opportunities directly to you. Instead of checking the platform daily and hoping you catch everything relevant, set up alerts that match your criteria and let new opportunities arrive in your inbox automatically.
Every alert is built on a saved search—the same powerful query system you use to find opportunities manually. Any combination of keywords, filters, locations, sectors, and value ranges can become an automated monitor. When new documents matching your criteria are published, you'll know about it.
For sales teams managing multiple market opportunities, bid managers tracking competitive landscapes, or business development professionals building long-term pipelines, alerts transform procurement monitoring from a daily chore into a passive intelligence feed.
Alert on Any Criteria
If you can search for it, you can set an alert on it.
Our alert system uses your saved searches as triggers. This means every filter and parameter available in our search interface can define what generates an alert. Some common configurations:
Keyword-based alerts monitor for specific terms, phrases, or technical requirements. Get notified whenever a tender mentions your proprietary technology, your competitors' brands, or niche capabilities you specialise in.
Buyer-focused alerts track activity from specific organisations. If you have target accounts you're cultivating, know immediately when they publish new requirements—whether tenders, contracts, or early planning notices.
Sector alerts use CPV codes or category filters to watch entire market segments. Cast a wide net across your industry and qualify opportunities as they arrive.
Geographic alerts focus on specific countries, regions, or localities. Combine with other filters to monitor, for example, IT tenders in the Nordics or construction opportunities in the US Midwest.
Value-based alerts set thresholds on contract size. Filter out opportunities too small to pursue profitably, or focus specifically on the large-scale programmes that warrant dedicated bid effort.
Mix and match these criteria freely. A single alert can combine keywords, geography, sector codes, and value ranges—whatever combination accurately describes opportunities you want to see.
Two Types of Trigger
Alerts fire based on time, but you control what kind of timing matters.
New Document Alerts notify you when opportunities matching your criteria are published. These are your primary tool for catching fresh tenders and early planning notices. Configure your saved search once, and every new document that matches triggers a notification. No more daily manual checks—relevant opportunities come to you.
Deadline Reminder Alerts warn you as submission deadlines approach. Perhaps you've already spotted an opportunity and begun the qualification process. A deadline reminder ensures it doesn't slip through the cracks as the closing date nears. This is particularly valuable for longer-lead tenders where several weeks may pass between initial awareness and submission due date.
Both trigger types are available on every alert. New document notifications help you discover; deadline reminders help you deliver.
Frequency That Fits Your Workflow
Not everyone wants email constantly. We offer three delivery frequencies so alerts integrate smoothly with how you actually work.
Daily Alerts arrive once per day, summarising all matching documents published in the previous 24 hours. For most users, daily delivery strikes the right balance—frequent enough to stay current, infrequent enough to avoid inbox overload. Review each morning and you'll see every relevant opportunity from the day before.
Weekly Alerts consolidate a full week of matches into a single digest. This works well for lower-priority saved searches—markets you're monitoring casually, sectors you might enter in future, or general competitive intelligence that doesn't demand immediate action.
Monthly Alerts provide the broadest overview. Use these for strategic monitoring: tracking macro trends, reviewing overall market activity, or watching sectors where you're not actively bidding but want periodic visibility.
You choose the frequency for each alert individually. A high-priority search for your core market might run daily, while a exploratory search for adjacent sectors runs monthly.
Managing Your Alerts
Creating an alert is straightforward: save a search, then enable alerts on that saved search.
Start by building and refining your search until the results reliably match what you're looking for. Use the filters, try different keyword combinations, check that the opportunities surfaced are genuinely relevant. Once you're satisfied, save the search and set it as an alert.
From your alert management dashboard, you can:
- View all active alerts and their criteria
- Adjust frequency settings without rebuilding searches
- Temporarily pause alerts during busy periods
- Delete alerts you no longer need
Each user can maintain up to 10 active alerts. This limit encourages focus—rather than alerting on everything imaginable, configure alerts for opportunities you'll actually act on. Most users find that 5-8 well-tuned alerts cover their needs comprehensively.
Need to adjust an alert's scope? Return to the underlying saved search, modify the criteria, and your alert automatically updates to use the new definition.
Getting the Most From Alerts
Effective alerts share some common characteristics.
Be specific enough to avoid noise. An alert for "services" in all countries will bury you in irrelevant notifications. An alert for "cybersecurity assessment services" in the UK, valued above £50,000, from central government buyers—that delivers actionable leads.
Start narrow and widen gradually. It's better to receive fewer highly-relevant alerts than to drown in marginally-relevant ones. Begin with tight criteria and loosen filters only if you're not seeing enough volume.
Review and refine regularly. Your first alert configuration is rarely your best. Check results weekly for the first month and adjust keywords or filters based on what's actually appearing. The goal is a reliable signal you trust.
Use multiple alerts for distinct markets. Rather than one catch-all alert with complex criteria, create separate alerts for each market segment you're pursuing. This keeps notifications organised and makes performance tracking clearer.
Combine with saved searches. Alerts work best as a notification layer on top of saved searches you also check manually. The alert catches new documents; periodic manual review catches anything the keywords might have missed.