Search for partners

Search fields and some tips

Partner Search on the Funding & Tenders Portal allows you to search for potential partners for project proposals.
You can access the Partner Search in the F&T Portal, under Funding select the Partner Search in the list.


You can search basing your query in at least one single field, but you are advised to combine different criteria, since the amount of matching results is limited to 10000 entries.

On the left-side of the screen, you will see the basic filters. Clicking on All filters, the detailed filters will appear on the right side of the screen:

1. Keyword. Note that the search looks for complete and partial matches. For example, "knowledge" will look for organisations containing "knowledge" and "acknowledge" words among the keywords.
2. Organisations/Persons. Tick the one of them (or both) to specify your search.
3. Programme. The list includes the EU funding programmes that publish calls on the Funding & Tenders Portal.
4. Topic. A topic is a sub-category of a call. For example, a call for "green cars" might include several topics such as "Infrastructure", "Communication", "Power plant", "Drive train", etc.
5. Country. The countries are not listed alphabetically, but by numbers of projects by country.
6. City. Contrary to the country field, you do not need to combine the city field with any other fields and you can launch searches based on the city only. (search depending on language)
7. Organisation type. You can filter among the available organisation types.
8. Professional profile. You can filter among the available professional profiles.
9. Profiles with published Partner Search announcements. Select Yes or No, depending if you wish to see profiles with or without published Partner Search announcements..

The fields are not case sensitive, regardless if the organisation has been registered using upper or lower case, or even a combination of both. This applies to all the free text fields.

Also, special characters are considered, but still, since the city and the name of the organisation are manually typed when registering, Latin equivalent transcriptions can apply depending on how the organisation got registered. It is also possible to find examples where original language has been used including non-Latin characters.

Please note that the names of the cities and the organisations can appear either in English or in the official language of the organisation, depending on how it was registered. For instance, imaging you are interested in finding partners from Bucharest, either do a search for 'buc' or for 'rest' combined with the country field, or perform two searches, one for 'Bucharest' and one for 'Bucaresti'. This is also applicable for examples of non-Latin characters such as the last example above. For example, if you are looking for partners in Sofia, Bulgaria, you are advised to do a search for 'Sofia', for 'Sofiya' and for 'София', since the partial search will be less effective in those cases. Still, most of the participants usually register their organisation using the English names of the city, so do your searches for English equivalents first.

The Topic field is a special free text field because even if you are able to type, only existing topics matching what you type will be presented as a list from which you can select one. 

Search Results

Your matching results will appear in cards on the right of the Search form fields, including the number of projects in which the organisation is involved, as well as the Partner searches announcements.

Click on View Results to see the result of the selected filters.

Click on Clear All button to erase all the selected filters and go back to the main partner search page.

You can display 5,10, 25 or 50 entries at once, distributed in different pages, to a maximum of 10000 matches. This means that if your results reach 10000, not all possible matches are being displayed for you, so please consider adding extra criteria to narrow results.

See organisation profile

To display the details about an organisation click on it in your search results list.

Depending on the amount of data available in the profile, loading can take more or less time.

At the upper part of the screen, you will be provided with the PIC number of the organisation (1) and the possibility to Contact the organisation (2).

The different sections contained in the page can be accessed by scrolling down or using the menu on the left (3).

General information

In this section, you will be provided with some information about the organisation: the information about the projects and announcements (1) as well as identification information such as type, location (2). Just below, the presentation of the organisation, if filled in, and the keywords are listed (3). The keywords displayed are those that organisations have selected to enter manually and the ones of funded projects in which the organisation is involved.

Programmes and roles

The charts pies are interactive visual representation of the programmes in which the organisation has participated and the roles that the organisation adopted in the different projects.

These are interactive graphics, meaning that you can hide information by clicking on the corresponding item in the legend. For our example, the organisation above has only hold beneficiary and third party roles, it has participated both in FP7 and H2020 projects. Clicking one of the programmes/role in the legend will remove that particular item from the pie, showing the rest of programmes:

1. Filled circle : this data is currently shown in the pie
2. Unfilled circle : unselected data

Main Collaboration partners

Clicking on one of them will open the Partner Search of those organisations:

Projects list

Click on the title of the project to read the full details of the project and its results. If the list contains many items, you can use the search box on the upper-right corner to filter out and find a specific project.

Use the Contact project button to contact the contacts of that organisation in the selected project.

Partner search announcements

Finally, you find a list of topics on which the organisation has an interest to participate in and for which they are currently searching for partners. The partner search can be requests for expertise or offers of expertise on a given topic.

Use the search box on the upper-right corner to search for specific requests/offers. By clicking on the topic, you will see the page where the offer/request for expertise has been published. Finally, use the actions button to send a message to the organisation, click on the Contact Organisation option.

Find requests for partners

You can look for requests for partners in two different ways: either directly from the topic page, contacting the organisations having expressed their interest for a partnership to apply for that topic, or from the organisations profile replying to their request for a partnership appearing at the bottom of their profile.

Partner Search section of the topic page

Access the Funding / Calls for proposals menu option in the F&T Portal. Search for open or forthcoming topics.

Then access the topic page by clicking on the topic name and either scroll down to the Partner search section or selected from the menu on the left:

The section has been renamed to "Partner search announcements":

LEARs, Account Administrators or self-registrants can publish partner requests on behalf of the organisation for open and forthcoming topics after logging into the Portal. Any user having an active public Person Profile can also publish partner requests, but they will publish them on behalf of themselves, as individuals.

List of Partner Search announcements

After clicking the button, you can view the list of searches:

You may also search for a specific expertise request or expertise offer:

• Expertise request: To find partners for your project ideas, you may publish an Expertise request announcement and make it visible to other users of the Partner search pages on the portal. For instance, you are beneficiary of a funded project, and you need additional experts to join the consortium and help on the project.
• Expertise offer: To find partners for your project ideas, you may publish an Expertise offer announcement and make it visible to other users of the Partner search pages on the portal. For instance, you are an expert in the field and you want to find experienced partners who already have ongoing projects.

The Contact button is used to send a message to the organisation:

The following box pops up:

Mandatory fields:

• Text box filled in with your message.
• Tick the box to agree to use this Contact request Form in accordance with the Terms and Conditions
• Antispam box

Add a Partner Search announcement

Logged in users owning a profile are led to an empty input form when clicking the +Add button on the top right corner of the page of the list of search announcements:

This new layout shows an identity card of the topic on the left pane: ID, Title, Status:

The first step you have to do is to choose the profile from which the announcement will be published:

• • If you have only 1 eligible role, the organisation or person data is automatically pre-filled
  • If you have several eligible roles, the person or organisation has to be selected from the available list of values (pre-filled with the profiles you are owning)

Once the profile selected, additional data about the profile is displayed:

• • For an organisation: type of organisation, PIC
  • For a person: professional profile (" – " is displayed if this is not available)

Then, you have to choose between request for partnership or offer for partnership (see definitions).

The description is a free text explaining what the organisation or person can offer to potential partners on this topic, or its motivation for requesting partnership on this topic. The text length is limited to 500 characters.

By clicking on the Cancel button, you quit the input form without saving the last changes and leads back to the calling screen.

The Publish button saves the data, makes the announcement public (pushed to the Corporate Search to make it visible to other users), and leads back to the calling screen.

By clicking on "Go back" or another menu item when some changes are not published or cancelled triggers a warning pop-up window:

Manage your organisation partner search profile

Accessing your organisation profile

To access the Partner Search of your organisation, click on My Organisations in the Funding & Tenders Portal.

Then click on Actions, next to the organisation, and select View Partner Search Profile from the list of available actions. You will see this option only for those organisations for which you hold a Self-Registrant, a LEAR or an Account Administrator role.

Editing your organisation profile

Adding keywords to your organisation profile in Partner Search will make it easier for potential partners to find your organisation. Also, a good description will provide them with clarity on the areas of expertise of your organisation. To update the profile, log in to the Funding and Tenders Portal first and access the Partner Search profile of your organisation.

You will see the  button, click on it to add a description to your organisation.

Finally, enter a keyword in the box and click on the add your keyword button; they will be displayed under the Tags/Keywords area.

At the bottom of the page you have the list of topics for which your organisation is currently searching for a partner, see the following section to know how to manage your Partner Search requests.

Understanding Keywords/Tags

There are two types:

1. Keywords freely added to the organisation's profile.
   They look like the image below; they can be added via the 'Add your keyword' button and removed by clicking on the cross. They are completely managed by the organisation itself:
   
2. Keywords used according to the funded projects where the organisation has participated. These ones cannot be deleted nor added, since they depend from the participation of the organisation in projects and proposals.
   
    

Unpublishing/Republishing your Partner Search

To withdraw a partner search request/offer for one of your organisations from the Partner Search profile of the organisation, select My Organisations on the right, and then, select the View Partner Search Profile option under Actions.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Partner search announcements section. Only currently published offers/requests for the organisation display in this screen. 

Under the Published partner searches tab, click on the Actions button to edit or withdraw the published partner search.