In preview: SME-ask tickets with SLA timers

In preview this week: every “needs SME input” event in the proposal builder can now create a ticket with an explicit deadline. The deadline is derived from the bid submission date, working backwards through the gold-team review, the compliance pass, and a standard SME response window. The proposal manager doesn’t compute it manually — the system computes it from the bid timeline. The Proposal Builder page describes section-level assignments and approval gates as the marketed surface; SLA-timed SME tickets and the Slack-DM bot below extend that surface and are still rolling toward general availability.

What’s in the ticket:

• The question text, verbatim from the response.
• The classification (which compliance bucket).
• The proposed answer, if the drafter has one. SMEs review faster than they write.
• The SLA deadline.
• A status: open, answered, declined, missed.

Tickets show up in the SME’s Slack DM (via the SME bot) and on the proposal manager’s dashboard. The dashboard surfaces missed SLAs as a flag — it does not auto-escalate, auto-chase, or auto-pester. Chasing is a human decision; we covered why in the bot architecture post.

This is the backbone of the SME collaboration series we’re publishing across September. The Sarah part-one essay on async interviews lands next Wednesday and walks through the workflow this ticket pattern supports.

Docs: in-app help under Proposal Builder → SME tickets. The full team-workflow surface is not yet on the marketing platform site.

What’s intentionally missing: there’s no notification escalation, no manager-cc, no “your SME is late” email blast. We considered all of these and removed them in the design pass. The discipline of SME work is owned by the proposal manager, not the tool. The tool surfaces signal; the human acts on it.