TED eSender workshop (25 September 2025) - Q&A summary

These consolidated questions and answers have been reviewed and may have been regrouped or modified to provide a more cohesive and complete response. Some answers might no longer be accurate, as the Publications Office (OP) has updated its approach based on feedback.    

The presentation slides as well as the recording of the live session are available in the agenda section.   

Questions from the participants:  

• In SDK 1.14 you mentioned number controls will be implemented. What about text fields; are they truly unlimited, and could this create a DDoS risk? 

Answer: No. All free-text fields already have maximum lengths defined in the SDK; see the fields.json file where each text field has a maxLength value. Some limits are quite large, but they are not infinite. There was a question in the chat about some fields (like BT-5421-Lot-List or BT-137-Lot-Scheme) that don’t seem to have limits. These are not free-text fields but XML attributes (fields ending with “-Scheme” or “-List”), so they don’t represent large, unbounded user input. For genuine free-text fields, maximum sizes are always set. SDK 1.14 focuses on number controls, but text fields already have safeguards against unlimited input. 

• In a multi-lot procedure, can one or more lots be withdrawn before the tender submission or participation deadline, while the procedure continues for the remaining lots? 
  If so: 

• Which notice must be sent to TED and what information must be published about the withdrawal? 

• Should the withdrawal apply to the whole procedure or only to the affected lots? 

• In later Change notices, should all lots be included again or only the active ones, and what happens with the withdrawn lot’s data (for example, its submission deadline)? 

• Is it possible to withdraw a “part” from a Planning (PIN) notice before the Contract Notice is published, and how should that be handled? 

• Finally, can the number of lots in a Contract Notice change after publication, and should Contract Notices provide a way to indicate explicitly that a lot has been cancelled? 

Answer: 

• Adding or removing lots is generally considered a major change of scope, which requires launching a new competition. A Change notice is meant only for corrections and smaller changes, not for altering the structure of the procedure. 

• However, withdrawal is possible at lot level as an exceptional case. Each lot has its own lifecycle. Once a lot has been withdrawn with a Result notice, it may also be removed from subsequent CNs through a Change notice, provided the withdrawal is clearly documented in the Change section referencing that Result notice. This is only acceptable if the overall scope of the procedure is not changed significantly; for example, the remaining lots are still coherent without the removed lot. 

• Notice type: When a lot is closed, you must always publish a Result notice. In the case of a withdrawn lot you would state "No winner chosen”, with the competition for that lot closed. You must also provide the non-award reason, and if tenders were received, the mandatory statistics on submitted tenders. 

• Scope: You only need to cover the withdrawn lot(s) in the Result notice; other lots continue normally. 

• Later Contract Notice changes: If a lot has been withdrawn before the deadline, you should remove it in subsequent CN changes. You should document the withdrawal in the Change section of the CN change, targeting the procedure, mentioning the relevant lot and explaining the withdrawal, with a reference to the Result notice. This makes it clear what has happened to the lot while keeping the overall lot structure consistent. 

• Deadlines: A withdrawn lot has no ongoing deadline. For active lots, you may adjust deadlines via CN changes as usual. 

• Including all lots in Result notices? You may, but avoid repeatedly re-submitting award notices for already awarded lots; this inflates statistics. Only report what has actually changed. 

• At PIN stage (planning “parts”): Parts in a PIN do not bind you one-to-one to CN lots. You can drop a part before publishing the CN. Once the CN is published and deadlines are running, withdrawals must go through a Result notice as above. 

See eForms FAQ: Forms and procedures

⚠️ Note: BT-634 was removed from Contract Notices in SDK 1.14 as it was confusing to declare “This cancelled or unsuccessful procedure or lot will be relaunched" during the competition phase. The field can still be used in the Result notice if needed. The earlier practice of using BT-634 to flag a withdrawn lot is discontinued  and should no longer be used. 

• Must lot technical IDs (e.g. LOT-0001, LOT-0002) be sequential within a notice? 

Answer: No. IDs only need to be consistent within the notice itself. They don’t need to start at 1, and gaps are allowed.  
See eForms FAQ: Schema and field definitions 

• Do lot IDs have to stay the same across the whole procedure (CN → Result → changes)? 

Answer: No, consistency across notices is not enforced. Many eSenders do keep them stable, but it’s not mandatory. The recommended approach is to use the internal identifier (BT-22) consistently for traceability across notices. 

• Are you aware that “publish later” fields can still be seen in XML, making them not really unpublished? 

Answer: In the public XML, unpublished values are masked, so their content is not revealed. For example, an unpublished amount appears as −1, and text values appear as “unpublished.” In the HTML/PDF viewers, the field is shown as “unpublished.” The real value is not present in TED outputs but you will see the fields do exist in the XML. 

See eForms FAQ: Not Immediately Published / BG-8 for details on how masking works. 

• When is the next SDK 2.0 release planned? Will there be a beta or release candidate? 

Answer: There will be an additional alpha release of SDK 2 and the EFX Toolkit within 2025. We expect to enter a beta phase in February. Release candidate versions will follow in Spring 2026, subject to the progress of integration of EFX with eNotices2, TED Viewer and the other TED information systems as well as the feedback from early adopters among the eSenders. 

• What about Business Entities; will documentation be published? 

Answer: Yes. Business Entities are tied to our ontology work, which is ongoing. Once finalised, documentation will be published to explain how they connect fields into stable business-level concepts. 

• Can we have a clear answer on GitHub discussion #1258 (conditional mandatory fields)? 

Answer: Please see the answer provided on GitHub after the workshop. 

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Last update: 21 November 2025