Technical information

Browsers supported

We primarily support and recommend evergreen browsers. That is, browsers that self-update. This means Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or the new Microsoft Edge.

We do try to ensure the planroom functions in the two most recent versions of Safari, even if without certain non-critical features. We have many happy Safari users. However, it is not fully evergreen, not updated on old versions of Mac OSX, and if any user experiences difficulties we usually recommend they try one of the three evergreen browsers listed above.

We do not recommend users use Internet Explorer at all, as this browser is not supported and even Microsoft is urging customers to stop using it.

Security practices

We know that it is tremendously important to handle bid documents securely.

1. The entire process for bidders and bid managers takes place over HTTPS (secure, encrypted), including the uploading and downloading of all bid documents.
2. Bid documents are stored on a highly-redundant storage backend that provides AES-256 encryption at rest.
3. The planroom software provides no mechanism for the bidders, the bid managers, or even the planroom administrator to access the submitted bid documents prior to the bid deadline.
4. Bidding activity that takes place on the planroom is tracked and logged, with that activity log made available to the planroom administrator and the bid managers.

System availability

The ReproConnect planroom cloud platform has provided stellar uptime and availability, with over 99.99% uptime over the past year. If there is a known issue that impacts the availability of our planrooms we post details at http://status.reproconnect.com/.

Outages have been exceedingly rare. That said, it is important for any agency using an online system for electronic bidding to consider what their contingency plan would be in the unlikely event that the system was unavailable prior to the deadline or during the bid opening. Even the biggest, most reliable tech companies in the world experience outages at times.

More information

We maintain an in-depth whitepaper on our security implementation and related infrastructure topics, including contingency planning and recovery. This is made available upon request through a planroom provider.