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How to Use the Bid Companion

The Bid Companion is designed to help you work faster and smarter when preparing proposals. It allows you to deeply analyze documents and interact directly with their content, helping you move more efficiently from requirement to response.

Where to Find the Bid Companion

You can find the Bid Companion in the left sidebar of Altura under “Bid Companion.”

When opened, the Bid Companion appears directly on your screen.

You can also open the Bid Companion from within a project or a tender.
When viewing a tender, click the white “A” icon to open it.

Within a project, you’ll find it in the top-right corner of the screen under the “Bid Companion” button.

What You Can Do in the Bid Companion

The Bid Companion offers multiple use cases. Let’s walk through them.

Chat with Documents

You can use the Bid Companion to chat with documents from your projects or tenders. This helps you quickly find answers within tender documents, saving you time and effort.

To chat with one or more documents, follow these steps:

  1. Click “Documents”

    • If you opened the Bid Companion from the left sidebar, you’ll first need to select a project.

      • Click “Add a project as context”

      • Select the relevant project.

      • Once selected, then click the Documents button.

  2. You’ll see a list of available documents, such as:

    • Tender guidelines

    • Clarification notes

    • Attachments or annexes

    • Project documents

  3. Select one or more documents to use as context.

  4. Use the “Ask Altura Bid Companion” field to ask questions and extract information from those documents.

Prompt Library

Not sure what to ask? The Prompt Library helps you get started, it’s a curated set of prompts designed to guide you in using the Bid Companion effectively.

You can open it by clicking “Prompt Library” in the top-right corner.

Document Analysis

Within the Bid Companion, you can also perform a Document Analysis, a pre-configured, in-depth analysis on the documents you select.

To run a Document Analysis:

  1. Click “Documents.”

    1. If you opened the Bid Companion from the sidebar, first add a project as context by clicking “Add a project as context.”

  2. You’ll then see a list of available documents (tender guidelines, clarification notes, attachments, etc.).

  3. Select the document(s) you want to analyze.

  4. Click “Document Analysis.”

  5. A “Templates” button will appear in the chat bar — this lets you choose the type of analysis template you want to run.

What is a Template?

Templates are pre-configured analyses that define what information the Bid Companion extracts for you.
They’re tailored to your organization’s specific use cases.

If your organization has unique requirements, your Customer Success Manager can help set up a new template or modify an existing one.

Once you’ve selected a template, the Bid Companion will go through three steps:

  1. Processing documents: Uploads and prepares your files.

  2. Analyzing report: Scans for relevant data and structure.

  3. Generating report: Creates a complete summary report.

💡 Note: Processing time may vary depending on the size and number of selected files.

Once the analysis is complete, the Bid Companion displays an overview of the key information.

You can download the report by clicking the download icon in the bottom-right corner.
This will download a .docx (Word) file containing all findings.

You can also continue asking follow-up questions about the analysis directly in the Ask Altura Bid Companion field.

Starting a New Conversation

To start a new conversation, click the New chat button in the top-right corner.
Your previous chats will remain available.

Viewing Previous Conversations

To view and continue your previous chats, click the Chat history button in the top-right corner of the Bid Companion.
This will show you a list of all past conversations within that specific project or tender, making it easy to revisit earlier insights.

Write Mode

Write Mode allows the Bid Companion to automatically generate draft proposal text for you.
The AI uses the documents you provide as context — such as tender guidelines, clarification notes, or attachments, and creates a first version of your response text.

You can access Write Mode directly from within the Bid Companion by clicking the “Write” button.

Want to know step by step how it works, what settings are available, and how to add context correctly?

See the separate article: Bid Companion Write Mode.

Search Mode

Search Mode helps you find relevant information from previous proposals, such as policy documents, project examples, or winning paragraphs, without leaving the tool.

You can activate Search Mode via the “Search” button.

The Bid Companion will then show relevant excerpts based on your query, including source references and brief explanations.

For a detailed explanation of how Search Mode works, the available search options, and how results are displayed, see the article: Bid Companion Search Mode.