Dear DACIS Subscribers,
Over the years we've provided you with a number of productivity tools to enhance your DACIS experience.
You can flag and export records to everyone's favorite spreadsheet program using the ReportGenerator. You can flag topics, companies, and customers of interest and have "hits" emailed to you using Profiles. And you can email a record of interest to a colleague using DACIS FYI—including 10 "clicks" built in so that they get the context of the record, and a taste of the DACIS experience.
Today I'm pleased to announce our most richly-featured, deeply integrated productivity tool yet: Datasets.
Datasets works a lot like the ReportGenerator, in that you use it to flag and export DACIS records which are of interest to you. But you'll quickly see differences:

• You can organize each of your Datasets into sections, using a drag-and-drop capability that you'll intuitively grasp and deeply appreciate.
  
• You can add comments.
  
• You can share your dataset with colleagues and clients—assigning them View and/or Edit privileges.
  
• And, most importantly, your Dataset becomes a permanent part of your account. That's right, you don't lose your flagged records when your session expires. Or ever.

So, what are some of the uses to which you might put this new capability? Well, we keep coming up with new ones ourselves, and we expect your imaginations will quickly outrun ours. But here are a few that we've been playing with:

• Capture. Create a Dataset as a repository of information on a procurement you're pursuing. Divide it into Sections for each of the primes and significant subs, and also for the Customer. Assign records from Companies, Contracts, SAM, FBO Pro™, FPDS, etc. And then share it with your capture team.
  
• Recompetes. Assign contracts coming up for recompete. Organize them into Sections based on year, or customer, or NAICS. And again, share. Who knew it could be so easy to share?
  
• Markets. We're very excited about the integration of Datasets with Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). Click on an FPDS contract number anywhere in DACIS, and you'll see why. Individual contracts, exported to a Dataset, show up with contract obligations totaling by fiscal year. All the contracts in each section will total, on the fly.
  
• Tracking Competitors. The top contracts for any of your competitors can be stored in a Dataset, where they will total, with all amounts kept absolutely up to date, at all times. (Being mindful of that pesky three-month delay which FPDS imposes in reporting DoD obligations.)
  
• Building an M&A Pipeline. Whether you're screening or going in for a deeper dive on individual companies, Datasets is a great repository for information on recent deals, strategic moves, important contracts, etc.

As you use Datasets, we think you're going to appreciate the richness of the tool and the attention to detail. This one took us half a year of a programmer's time. And we're not done yet. Coming next are "public dataset" features. Some may have a DACIS Partners dimension. More about that later.
Datasets will be more fully discussed in our next "Intro to Datasets" webinar on Wedn. Dec. 16th at 1:30PM ET. Please sign up for that, or hit up Bill Burton, our VP for Customer Care, with any of your individual questions.
And… we hope you enjoy.
Best regards,

Stuart McCutchan
President
InfoBase Publishers, Inc.
Dec. 7, 2015