Overview
The Pink Team Draft is a formatted Word-ready draft generated from your proposal configuration, one per volume in your outline. It includes formatted sections, generated narrative content, and an organized structure aligned to your Proposal Outline.
The Pink Team Draft is designed as a working draft for review, not a final submission.
Since Proposal Outline is the last item generated in the Kickoff Package workflow, your draft will automatically reflect everything built and reviewed earlier in that sequence, Compliance Matrix, Win Themes, Key Personnel, Past Performance, Technical Solution, and the Outline itself.
Goal
Generate a structured Word document that is ready for Pink Team review, including:
Aligned proposal structure and section hierarchy
Generated narrative content
Integrated Win Themes, Technical Solution, and Past Performance
Formatting based on your selected template (if applied)
Step 1: Navigate to Drafts
Select Drafts from the left-hand navigation panel within your proposal workspace. This page lists your outline and any drafts already generated from it, and is where you generate new ones.
Step 2: Generate a Draft
Click Create Drafts to open the Generate a draft window.
Outline: confirm the outline to generate from (shown with its volume count, e.g., "Proposal Outline 3 (1 volume)"). A draft will be generated for every volume in the selected outline
Template (optional): choose a template to apply your organization's formatting, or leave as "No template." Click Upload template if the template you need isn't listed yet
Templates let you apply:
Corporate branding (logo, fonts, colors)
Header and footer formats
Page numbering conventions
Margin and spacing requirements
Pre-defined styles
Uploaded templates should be Microsoft Word (.docx) files including cover page structure, header/footer configuration, style definitions, and branding standards. Once uploaded, templates can be reused across proposals.
Click Generate drafts. Drafts take a few minutes to generate, you can keep working elsewhere, NextStage will email you when they're ready.
Tip: ensure your outline is finalized, structure, requirement mappings, writer guidance, and page targets, before generating the draft.
Step 3: Review What's Generated
Each volume appears as its own row (e.g., "Volume I - Technical Proposal") with a status (Ready or Completed), the template applied, and when/by whom it was created. From here you can:
Export the volume to work offline with your proposal team
Click the edit icon to open the draft in NextStage's built-in editor
Archive or delete a draft you no longer need
If you haven't made any further changes since generating, the draft is ready to download as-is.
Editing a Draft
Clicking into a draft opens it in the built-in editor, with a Back to pink team drafts link at the top, the volume title and its status (e.g., Completed), and Download and Save buttons.
The formatting toolbar includes bold, italic, underline, headings (H1-H3), bulleted and numbered lists, text alignment, and links. Make your edits directly in the document, then click Save to keep your changes, or Download to export the current version.
You may also see highlighted placeholder text in brackets, for example, "[Table: 3-Phase Curriculum Development and Implementation Plan]", marking where a table or figure should be inserted before the draft is finalized. Review these placeholders and replace them with the actual content before moving to Red Team.
Click the three-dot menu at the top right of the editor for two additional options:
Edit with AI: opens Nexus AI to help revise the draft's content
Compliance Review: opens a side panel where you can run a compliance check on the draft itself, confirming any edits you've made are still compliant with the Compliance Matrix and Outline. Click Create Volumes Compliance Review to run it. Each requirement (REQ-#) appears with its text and a Status (starting as Not Reviewed), and an Assigned to volume checkbox to confirm it's covered in this specific volume. Update the status of each requirement as you confirm it's addressed in the draft content
Step 4: Download and Begin Review
Download the generated document and upload it to your collaboration environment (SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive).
Your team can then:
Review structure and compliance alignment
Refine narrative content
Add comments and assignments
Prepare for Red Team and final submission
Best practice: install NextStage for Word so your team can continue to review, edit, and export drafts, and keep using Nexus AI, without leaving Word.
Important: Regenerating After Outline Changes
If you edit the Proposal Outline, change a requirement's mapping, or map a requirement that was previously unmapped, after a draft has already been created, the existing draft will not automatically reflect that change. On the Drafts page, the outline card will show a "Not the active outline" warning, telling you the draft on file no longer matches the current outline. Click Create Drafts again to regenerate the draft against the updated outline.
How the Pink Team Draft Is Used
The Pink Team Draft supports:
Early-stage proposal review and validation
Alignment checks against solicitation requirements
Content refinement and messaging improvement
Collaboration across proposal teams
Best Practices
Finalize your Proposal Outline before generating the draft
Review all upstream inputs (Compliance Matrix, Win Themes, Key Personnel, Past Performance, Technical Solution) before generating
Use a template to ensure consistent formatting
Treat the draft as a starting point for refinement, not a finished product
Conduct structured Pink Team reviews before moving to Red Team
Regenerate drafts after making outline changes rather than assuming they'll update automatically
Expected Outcome
A structured, formatted proposal draft that reflects your outline and inputs, ready for team review, refinement, and progression to final submission.
Have a question not answered here? Use the chat bubble in the lower right corner of NextStage or email hello@nextstage.ai.