Revision as of 05:07, 22 January 2021

ICI Release Notes - Release 7.15

Overview of Release 7.15

The 7.15 Release introduces significant enhancements to the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform. It strives to enhance user experience, intelligence, analytics, intuitiveness and usability by continually improving ICI functionalities and the user interface.

The key enhancements of this release include:

• Enhancements to the ICI Application
  • User Experience
    • Introducing  the ability to preview an agreement at the verifications stage, allowing users to have a comprehensive look before publishing the contract. This will help users to make updates to respective sections and understand the impact before contract creation.
    • Providing  localization support to reason codes, as per the logged in user language, thus improving the experience for new and potential customers globally.
    • Enhancing the search option on index pages, so that external users can easily search records and derive more refined results.
    • Displaying tagged agreement and template clauses on the respective pages in ICI Web and Icertis Experience for Word, in the same order as they are tagged inside the agreement document or template, providing a seamless user experience.
    • Viewing amendments in the grid view by default, for ease of use.
    • Improving the scroll length and width dynamically for multi-select and choice attributes, for better usability, data input and post-selection data review of entities, for improved experience.
    • Providing the ability to configure alternate user interface (UI) control for drop-downs of choice attributes (radio button for single-select, checkbox list for multi-select) at contract type, global attributes and template variable levels.
    • Defining the display sequence for masterdata records at the contract type level, using a seeded display sequence attribute, for easy and faster selection.
  • Workflow Enhancements
    • Introducing  the ability to create instances of associations as part of the agreement creation wizard itself, thereby considerably improving usability.
    • Allowing  creation or initiation of the termination process from the contract request using role action mapping, thus providing a coherent user experience.
    • Viewing clause extension attributes on the agreement entity for easy reference.
    • Approving or rejecting agreements from within the email itself, thus reducing turnaround time for approval cycles.
    • Reviving terminated agreements by adding amendments, instead of creating new agreements from scratch.
    • Terminating agreements in bulk using the bulk actions process, thereby reducing manual errors and saving the time in terminating agreements one by one. 
    • Allowing administrator to set preferences at the time of user creation or updation, as default, according to their locations, so that ICI users can access the system with appropriate details as default after first login.  
    • Adding custom labels to external, internal and fully signed copies of agreement document versions, making them easily identifiable.
    • Allowing users to skip uploading documents to move agreements from “Waiting For Signature” to “Executed state”, thereby speeding up the process when executing a large volume of documents.
    • Allowing sharing associated documents as part of the various email notifications that get triggered for the agreement, rather than having to share them separately.
    • Providing a separate data management user interface to manage workload, so that users can replace a user on supported   entities with one or more users, by selecting a subset of an entity   or on all instances of the entity, for all records available for the user.
    • Defining common agreement attributes for a contract type that can be copied to amendments, by enabling the “Is Inherit On Amendments” flag, at the agreement contract type and template variable level.
    • Providing the capability to control the supersede functionality for agreements by configuring rules.
    • Defining multiple and complex conditions to display attributes on the ICI UI dynamically based on business scenarios.
    • Providing the capability of showing or hiding the “No Team Available” message to minimize the number of clicks.
    • Supporting special characters in the attribute display name for contract requests, agreements, associations and masterdata.
    • Providing the ability to download all amendments of an agreement in separate folders, named “Amendment_1”, “Amendment_2”, and so on, within the downloaded zip package for ease of access.
    • Supporting larger files for masterdata and associations.
    • Providing faceted filters using string operators such as “Contains”, “Starts With”, “Does Not Contain” to the “Business Status” search filter, for more targeted results.
    • Improving the parsing logic in ICI for handling string combinations with special and alphanumeric characters.
    • Providing the ability to configure filter on a lookup attribute   with the “IN” operator on agreement contract type and template variables. 
    • Enhancing the contract type publish capability, so that the published contract types are not available at the time of contract creation.
    • Providing automation to supporting bulk upload of clauses and templates, thus reducing the dependency on manual approvals and delays in onboarding clauses and templates.
    • Allowing users to add custom labels for peer associations that define various business relationships in the context of contracts (such as, “Related To”, “Linked To”, “Addendum Of”, “Addendum To”, “Parent To”, “Child To”, and so on.).

• Mobile App Updates
  • Enhancing  the “Refresh” functionality for “Tasks” and “Commitment” tabs, to improve usability and the user experience for mobile app users.
  • Updating the logo and attributes in the mobile app as per the new ICI branding guidelines.

• Enhancements to ICI API 2.0
  • Providing script attributes as cascaded attributes for lookup fields and configuring them at the contract type level. This is applicable for retrieval, creation and updation of the instances of contract requests, agreements, associations and amendments.
  • Adding the identifier “createCorrelationId” which can be passed by subsequent APIs for correlating from logging perspective, to ensure that the existing implementation and code does not break.
  • Provisioning success or failure message for workflow operations.

• Enhancements to ICI Add-ins
  • Icertis Experience for Word
    • Supporting  online editing for agreement documents, and allowing contract owners to enable a subset of authorized users to participate and better control which team member can participate in the editing session.
    • Improving the filtering and searching capability, so that users can easily retrieve the desired template and clause record, thus improving usability for customers handling large number of clauses and templates in the respective libraries.
    • Improving labeling of internal, external and fully signed copies of agreements for easy identification.
    • Defining and updating clause groups as per business requirements for easy categorization and management. 
    • Allowing tagging of clause extended attributes inside clause along with the metadata while creating or modifying clauses.
    • Allowing updation of all or selected templates with the latest version of the clause whenever a clause is modified, thus eliminating the need to manually do so.

• Enhancements to Artificial Intelligence Applications
  • Enhancing the AI powered legal playbook to provide more options to open the “Details” page on a larger window, and add deviations as well. All the playbook positions for a contract type now have the option to search and filer, and users can create or edit the playbook records based on their authorization. In addition, they can manage it from within Icertis Experience for Word.
  • Improving the clause delineation logic to merge or split discovered clauses or selected text in a clause, and create a sub-clause within a discovered clause.
  • Extending the support of formatting-based clause delineation in WordAI to PDF documents, for easy identification of section-based clauses to improve legacy migration.
  • Improving discovery based on the user’s actions on attributes and clauses, to be able to use them in subsequent discoveries.
  • Providing support for additional languages such as “French”, “Dutch” and “Swedish” in AI apps, for playbook discovery and contract highlights.
  • Allowing users to manually trigger attribute discovery on the agreement “Attributes” page itself, while uploading third party paper, when creating or editing agreements, thus reducing the overhead of maintaining two different attributes pages. 
  • Introducing the DiscoverAI rules engine framework to quickly configure custom rules for obligations, attributes and playbook discovery. 
  • Enhancing  and optimizing performance of ML service to simplify deployment and run the workload on demand, with zero or less management of infrastructure.

• Enhancements to Reports
  • Introducing the “Tagged Attributes Report”, enabling administrators to understand the complete profile of an attribute and its utilization across clauses and templates.
  • Introducing the “Notifications History Report” for an entity, enabling users to track notifications sent to users.
  • Providing the ability to filter the “Agreement Deviation Report” and “Agreements Pending Execution Report” by “Agreement” status. 
  • Enhancing the “Clause Summary Report” to display information on extended clause attribute version.
  • Adding an “Organization Unit” filter in the “Cycle Time Report” for users to be able to derive desired information.
  • Improving the “Agreement Clause Content Report” so that duplicate clause text is removed and only a single record is displayed, thus improving usability.
  • Adding a new column in PowerBI for “Agreement Code” which has a hyperlink that navigates the user to the agreement in ICI.
  • Enhancing localization support in reports.

• Improving the Icertis Experience
  • Signature Workflow
    • Improving the electronic signature process when using DocuSign to provide a unified flexible signature workflow. This hybrid signature process enables users to add and modify signatories, preview the DocuSign console and tag signatories in the console. Support has also been provided for Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) and Qualified Electronic Signature (QES).
      Enabling ICI platform to support more than one esignature vendors at the same time, to execute agreements and amendments, thus improving flexibility for users.
      Supporting parallel signatures in DocuSign to reduce the overall turnaround time for the complete signature process.  
  • Icertis Experience for Salesforce
    • Providing the ability to send success and failures alerts for improved monitoring of messages.
    • Triggering document assembly for automatic data sync and displaying completion notification.
    • Supporting OAuth in Salesforce adapter for a more secure authentication and authorization process.
  • Icertis Experience for MS CRM
    • Providing server-to-server OAuth support, so that the adapter and task service will use client Id and secret key from AKV, invoking MS CRM APIs. 

• Enhancements to Platform Tools
  • Enhancing ICI to support additional entities such as orgs, org groups, users, security groups, role action mapping, currencies, reasons, attribute group, SLA matrix, notification category, default search columns, cascade team, application settings and admin saved searches.

• Additions to Icertis Software Development Kit for Partner Enablement
  • With this release, the following SDK documentation has been upgraded for this release – ICI Coding Guidelines, ICI Customization and Use Cases, Working with ICI Tasks, Working with ICI Hooks, ICI Developer Library, Local Environment Setup using ICI Binaries and Self-Serve Tools.

These release notes provide an overview of the enhancements to ICI, the mobile app, ICI experience for integrations, and so on.

ICI Application Enhancements

514613 – Introducing the ability to preview agreements before publishing

Previously, contract owners had to view the first version of an agreement in order to get a comprehensive view of the agreement that they had created.

With this release, a preview functionality is being introduced, so that primary owners or contract creators can review whether the selected template is appropriate, the rule-based clauses have been correctly added to the agreement, among other factors, and make changes to the agreement before the version is created. 

A “Generate Preview” button has been introduced on the “Verify stage” of agreement creation, before publishing or updating the document. The PDF preview is for indicative purposes only and is not an agreement version. Associated documents, coming through inline associations, for example, will also be included and displayed in the preview document.

Note: The preview functionality is configurable and will not be available by default.

575640 – Creating associations on create or edit wizard of agreement

Previously in ICI, contract authors had to create associations for agreements using the association management functionality. However, in practical terms associations such as annexures, supporting documents, SLAs, product specifications, rate tables, and so on, are all an inherent part of agreement information that is critical to business.

In view of this, the ability to create association instances as part of agreement creation is being introduced in this release. A separate page is displayed to the user during agreement or amendment creation to create, view or delete inline associations. The user also has an option to select the columns and their order in the association grid.

Support is also provided to copy attribute rules, association events and agreement assembly, in case associations are tagged in the agreement template.

 
549900 – Supporting localized reason code values as per logged in user language

Adapting existing products to new markets through translation and localization is the key for global growth. The localized versions of the product improve the overall user experience and helps to better connect with new and potential global customers.

ICI now extends its localization support to reason code values. Users can see localized reason codes as per their preferred language settings. Administrators can enter the translated values in the local language for each reason code using the “Translations Editor” tool. The reason code will be displayed in English if there are no local values available in the ICI system for that specific reason code.

614944 – Initiating termination for parent agreement from contract request

In ICI, to terminate an agreement, users create and execute a termination agreement on a main agreement. ICI has now extended this capability to contract requests also. 

Users can enable the termination process at contract type level using the seeded attribute "Request for Termination", select the parent contract request, and create the termination contract on a contract request. The termination instance for contract request will have all the common attribute values inherited, if the inheritance is enabled. The termination record will be displayed as a peer association under the “Association” tab for the contract request. 

The access privileges for the contract requests termination process is controlled through role action mapping.

506398 – Enabling search for external users with login privileges

ICI’s collaboration portal allows external users with login privileges to access the platform and perform tasks assigned to them within ICI itself. 

In our continuous effort to improve usability, a search option has been introduced on index pages, so that external users can easily search records. To perform a more refined search, the attributes displayed as columns of the search grid are included as facets in the filter options. This is applicable to index pages of contract requests, agreements, associations and masterdata.
Note: This is not applicable for:

• Global search.
• Attribute group privilege restrictions on search results, filters and categories.
   

514605 – Supporting extended clause attributes in agreements and reports

In ICI, users capture additional details for a clause in the extension attributes.  

With this release, users will be able to view these clause extension attributes on the agreement entity for easy reference while working with agreements. 

Users can now: 

• View additional clause attributes on the “Agreement Clause” and “Clause Approver” tabs.
• View the hyperlink “Show Clause Information”, which displays all clause extension attributes in a separate window.
• Select and save extension attributes to display in the grid view.
• View clause extension attributes in the “Clause Profiling Report”.

514615 – Approving a contract from emails

Email notifications, in ICI, allow users to customize text, add tags (attributes) inside the email body, define recipients, and so on. This capability has been further enhanced such that approvers can directly approve or reject an agreement from within the email itself, as part of the approval or request review process, thus reducing the overall turnaround time and increasing efficiency.

They can also add notes on approval, add reason code on rejection, and enable download or upload of the agreement document along with comments. This is applicable to contract requests, agreements, associations, amendments, masterdata, templates, clauses and user information instances.

514643 – Ordering of clauses as tagged in an agreement

Previously in ICI, list of clauses available inside the agreement or amendment displayed clauses in a random order on the “Agreement Clauses” tab, in ICI Web and Icertis Experience for Word.

With this release, the tagged clauses are displayed on respective pages in ICI Web and Icertis Experience for Word, in the same order in which they are tagged inside the agreement, thus making it easier for users to identify them. The order is refreshed on every upload to display the latest.

514621 – Reviving terminated agreements

Users may terminate an agreement with the other party for various business reasons. To improve usability, ICI now provides the capability to add and execute amendments on a terminated agreement. This considerably saves the time for users who may want to re-instantiate their existing relationship with the other party, as they no longer need to create an entirely new agreement, and go through several workflows such as clause deviations clearance, template process, and so on.

Adding and executing an amendment on a terminated agreement will move the agreement back to the “Executed” or “Expired” state, based on its expiry date, thus reviving the terminated agreement. It will also revive any amendments of the base agreement terminated through the agreement termination process and move them back to their respective previous states. However, any previous amendments terminated through review process will remain in the terminated state.  

Users can set an identifier attribute "Is Termination Revived" for such revived base agreements and use them in search filters, configuring saved searches, notification rules, and so on.

Note: By default, only primary owners and contract managers can add an amendment to the terminated agreement. The access privileges are controlled through role action mapping. 
 

514625 – Terminating agreements in bulk

Users may need to terminate agreements in bulk in many business scenarios such as regulatory changes, changes in product offerings, and so on. Users can now initiate termination of agreements in bulk, thereby reducing the manual errors and saving the time to terminate agreements one by one. Bulk termination is carried out using ICI’s existing “Bulk Actions” process. The termination related attributes will be pre-selected, and the Workbook for the bulk action batch will be generated with the executed agreement records from the saved search, as per the selected contract type and termination contract type. 

Users can now: 

• Initiate the termination workflow using “Bulk Actions”, by creating and executing a new batch.  
• Generate and view a status report for agreements terminated in bulk. 
• Create termination agreements for “Draft”, “Published” or “Send for Approval” states, as per the batch Workbook configuration for bulk action.

Note: All the prerequisite configurations applicable for the Termination workflow should also be set for the bulk termination process.
 

555898 – Defining display sequence on lookup attributes at contract type level

Previously in ICI, users could not define the display order for lookup attribute’s values in a drop-down on ICI UI to reference masterdata. Users then had to scroll through all populated values in order to find the desired values during agreement creation.  

The configurators can now define and maintain the display sequence for masterdata records, starting from 1 to n, at the contract type level, using a seeded display sequence attribute. The configurators can also define the order only for selected records in the masterdata. The frequently selected values will be thus displayed at the top for easier and faster selection in lookup attributes, without the need to scroll through all values.  

This setting of display sequence is supported on create, edit and lookup search pages of contract requests, agreements, amendments, associated documents, extended clause and template entities, and template variables.

The display will revert to the default alphabetical order if the display sequence is not configured in masterdata. 

558605 – Viewing amendments in grid view on agreement details page

Previously in ICI, users could only view the agreement’s amendments in a “Tile” view, when opened from the left navigation pane on the agreement “Details” page. 

ICI now allows users to view amendments in “Grid” view as well, and have the capability to toggle between the grid view and existing tile view. The grid view is the default view for amendments and supports all existing grid functionalities, such as standard search, filter, column selection, pagination, export to CSV/Excel, and so on.
 

561410 – Enhancing the multi-select drop-down 

The multi-select choice drop-down has been enhanced for better usability, data input and post-selection data review of contract requests, agreements, amendments and masterdata entities. 

Users can now: 

• View eight default options in a drop-down list (instead of six), without scrolling. 
• View larger values with adjusted drop-down width, according to its size, in the post-selection view. 
• View all selected values at the top of the drop-down.
• Deselect the selected values individually or all with a single-click, without opening the drop-down.
   

819453 – Configuring opening of drop-down menus on mouse hover

ICI has improved usability by providing the capability to configure the expansion of drop-downs on mouse hover, instead of a mouse click. 

This can be configured at a contract type level and supports contract requests, agreements, associated documents and masterdata. It is applicable for lookup, multi-select lookup, choice, multi-select choice and currency drop-downs.

620411 – Defining IN operator when applying lookup filters

In ICI, the configurator can filter the lookup masterdata table with “Must” and “Must Not” conditions, to achieve necessary business scenarios, while configuring a lookup attribute on contract types. 

ICI now also provides the ability to configure a lookup attribute with the “IN” filter operator, and display selected multiple values, by referencing multiple values on another lookup master data attribute. 

Configurators can now: 

• Use the "IN” operator in lookup filter attribute on agreement contract types. 
• View applied filter on the attribute “Details” tab on ICI UI for the selected attribute. 
• Standard ICI users can view only selective values in the lookup attribute as per the referenced value in another attribute.  
   

573339 – Managing user preferences as part of profile management

Users can set preferences for their ICI Web UI account such as language, color theme, time zone, and so on. 

ICI now provides the capability for administrators to set preferences as default, for users, according to their locations or offices they work in. This reduces the end user’s effort of setting up the ICI account with required parameters after first log-in, and presents the system with appropriate and specific pre-settings.   

Administrators can: 

• Set and manage preferences for single user through single user update, and for multiple users through bulk process.
• View preference settings modifications details in the “History” tab for audit. 
• Search users based on parameters related to preference settings.

Users can: 

• Access the ICI system with appropriate details as default after first login. 
• Override the default preference settings as per individual preferences.

604775 – Moving agreement to executed state without uploading document

Previously in ICI, users could not move agreements and amendments from “Waiting For Signature” to “Executed” state without uploading the supporting document, in case of manually signed agreements. 

With this release, users can now skip uploading the document to move agreements from “Waiting For Signature” to the “Executed - Document Upload Pending” state. Users can then search or create a saved search for such agreements and upload the required documents later using the “Upload Fully Signed Copy” action. 

Notifications can be configured to inform users about skipped document uploads, so that users can cover for delays occurring due to the scan and upload process while executing a large volume of documents. 

This functionality is available for agreements, amendments and orphan amendments.
 

614860 – Attaching associated documents to agreement notifications

ICI users could share the main agreement document as part of various email notifications that get triggered for the agreement from time to time. 

This capability has now been extended to supporting (associated) documents as well, so that users no longer need to manually share them offline.

With this release:

• Administrators can tag the associated document contract type in the email notification template for agreements, assignment agreements, termination agreements and amendments.
• Users can define the notification as internal or external. 
• Users can define the type of associated document instance as internal, external or restricted.
• Based on the type of notification and type of tagged associated documents, documents are attached to the email notification.

586492 – Defining different relationship types while associating peer instance

ICI allows users to define the linkage type as parent, child or peer while associating peer entities with each other. 

Users now have the capability to define custom labels for peer associations by configuring the “Linkage Type” masterdata. The custom labels define various business relationships in the context of contracts. For example, “Related To”, “Linked To”, “Addendum Of”, “Addendum To”, “Parent To”, “Child To”, and so on. 

The custom labels will support existing two-way linkage and self-linkage types. The amendments on executed agreements will be associated as peer, with default peer linkage type label, defined in default peer mapping for amendment. 

Users can select custom peer linkage type labels in the linkage type drop-down list and view them on various ICI functionalities as:  

• Agreement creation workflows for peer entities, assignment, initiate termination flow. 
• Associate and Inheritance icons.
• Legacy upload and bulk actions.
• Agreement creation through business APIs.
• Broadcast – “Attachments” tab, beside peer-to-peer instances.

Note: Custom labels are not supported for parent and child linkage types, as there is specific business logic built with them in the ICI system.

619558 – Downloading amendments using download all functionality

ICI users can download an agreement and all its associations in a zip file using the “Download All” action available on agreements and bulk operations. 

With this release, users can also selectively download amendments of an agreement with corresponding parent child associations in the downloaded zip package.

For ease of access, each selected amendment will be downloaded with its selected associations in separate folders. The folders are named “Amendment_1”, “Amendment_2”, and so on (from oldest to latest), instead of actual amendment names. This helps to overcome the Windows limitation of supporting 260 characters in the file path, and gives users the flexibility while creating association’s names.
 

615291 – Configuring attributes inheritance for amendments at contract type level

ICI already provided the capability to exclude certain agreement attributes from being copied to the amendment through technical configuration which applied to all agreement contract types by default. 

ICI now provides the flexibility for users to decide which attributes of an agreement can be copied to amendments, per contract type, as per business requirements. Configurators can enable or disable the attribute’s inheritance for amendments, using “Is Inherit On Amendments” attribute, at the agreement contract type and template variable levels. Users can then copy these defined attributes values from base agreement to amendment during amendment creation. 

Note: 

• The technical configuration settings for excluding parent agreement attributes from its amendments will always take preference over the settings at agreement contract type and template level.
• The existing validations or dependencies for an attribute’s properties set for agreement will not be inherited to amendments.
   

614877 – Replacing a user with multiple users

In ICI, administrators can replace user(s) with all associated records using the “Replace User” functionality. In practice, administrators may need to replace a user with more than one user. For example, if a user leaves the organization, the administrator may want to replace that user by dividing agreements associated with that user, in subsets, among multiple users. This would help the organization to balance the workload within its employees.  

Administrators can now: 

• Replace the user with one or more users by selecting the entity and all/selective instances of that entity.  
• Validate the replaced user role against the assigned role. 
• Get notification on adding or completing a task. 

This capability is available across ICI for contract requests, agreements, associations, masterdata, template and clause teams, user groups, and rules. A separate data management user interface is provided for these admin actions.
 

614963 – Superseding agreement values as per amendment using rules

In ICI, users could supersede all parent agreement’s attributes configured as supersedable with values from its amendment, either manually using “Supersede” action or automatically through auto-supersede backend task. 

With this release, users can now selectively supersede individual entities based on business conditions.

The administrator can control the supersede functionality for agreements by configuring rules with: 

• The rule type “Supersede Rule” with an “Auto Supersede option”, as true or false. 
• The rule actions as “Is Auto Supersede by Amendment”, “Is Auto Supersede by Termination” and “Is Auto Supersede by Assignment for Amendment”, “Assignment and Termination”, with required attributes set, as per the business condition.
• The attribute selection field with all or multi-select capability. 

Users can preview the attribute’s supersede value on the agreement and view the captured history as per the rule execution. When no rule is configured, the supersede functionality will work as per existing behavior.

615293 – Showing or hiding the no team available message

In ICI, users may encounter specific workflow configurations such as self-approval process that do not require users to be added to the team. The “No Team Available” messages, displayed in such cases, add to the number of non-value clicks for users to continue.  

ICI now provides the capability to suppress this message, thereby minimizing the number of unnecessary clicks through technical configuration. 

Administrators can: 

• Selectively enable or disable the “No Team Available” message window, at entity contract type level, appearing at various states. 
• Disable the “No Team Available” message window completely, at instance level, for all entities. The instance level settings will override any entity level settings. 

Note: This capability is available across ICI for all entities, events, integrations and add-ins in ICI.

618345 – Defining complex conditional logic for attributes visibility

Previously, users could configure a conditional attribute for a contract type with simple conditions using single “equal to” operator. 

With this release, configurators can now set multiple, complex conditions to display attributes on ICI Web UI dynamically, based on business scenarios. Configurators can define conditions for attributes for all entities, except for template variables. For example, the configurator can set conditions to display an attribute based on the selection of specific value in any of the attributes mentioned in the condition. The user experience would be similar to the existing ICI conditional attribute functionality.  

Users can now: 

• Apply multiple and complex conditions to display an attribute by enhancing the enable expression (visibility expression) for contract requests, agreements, associations and masterdata contract types. 
• Support conditional expressions for extension attributes.  
• Define conditions with different operators based on the selected attribute datatype. 
• View the conditional attribute value according to the value entered in the attribute on which a condition is set, which in turn helps to enter the information in the required attribute as per business requirements.
   

616901 – Applying facets to business status search filter

Previously, the ICI search functionality supported filters on “Business Status” for users to narrow down results. However, manually selecting filters often becomes a tedious task in case of several business statuses. 

In order to provide a better user experience, faceted filters using string operators, such as “Contains”, “Starts With”, “Does Not Contain”, and so on, are being added to the “Business Status” filters for ease of use.

694211 – Improving handling of exceptions for string combinations

Previously, some combinations of special and alphanumeric characters used as input values resulted in generic exceptions. The parsing logic in ICI is now improved for handling string combinations with special and alphanumeric characters, so that no errors are generated.

This is applicable to all entities across ICI, where a combination of special characters, alphabets and numbers can be used.

732929 – Uploading clauses and templates in bulk

New customers or new groups, onboarding to ICI, mostly have their templates and clauses already created in a separate file. Previously, manual efforts were needed to onboard the hundreds to thousands of templates and clauses. 

With this release, an automation has been provided for bulk import, which will reduce any human dependency, manual approvals and delays for onboarding templates and clauses using the current capabilities. ICI administrators can now import templates and upload clauses to ICI in bulk.
 

655507 – Uploading and downloading large files with file path attribute

ICI now provides support for larger files. This is applicable to masterdata and associations.

Users can now:

• Upload files up to 4GB under the file selection attribute. 
• Upload files with all supported files extensions allowed in the file selection attribute.
• Download All/Download Package up to 6 GB.

ICI supports virus scanning of large files if the virus scan feature is enabled.
 

Note: This is not applicable for contract requests, agreements, associations with large files in the DocuSign/Adobe Sign association selection pop-up, document assembly, bulk actions, legacy upload, integrations (Salesforce, Workday, etc.), and APIs.

697367 – Enhancing contract type publish to limit schema change for entity

ICI has made the following enhancements to the contract type publish capability:

• There is zero downtime when a contract type is published. 
• The schema of only selected contract types that are being published will be blocked for write operations, hence they will not be available at the time of contract creation. However, all other contract types will be available to the user.
   

618994 – Supporting special characters in agreement templates and support to skip empty columns while a saved search/association is tagged in a template

Previously in ICI, attribute names did not support special characters apart from _ (underscore).

Now, support is provided for special characters in the attribute display name. The characters *(asterisk), - (dash), : (colon), ( (parenthesis open), ) (parenthesis closed), ’ (apostrophe), , (comma), and . (period) can be used in the display name of attributes for contract requests, agreements, associations and masterdata contract types. The same attribute display name, as provided by the configurator, will now be displayed including special characters.

In scenarios where association or saved search is tagged as table in the agreement, and a particular column of the table does not have any data, we have introduced a functionality to skip such empty columns. During template creation from Icertis Experience for Word, configurator can add a “SkipEmptyColumns” property while tagging an association or a saved search as a table. This enables empty columns to be skipped in document assembly, thereby eliminating unnecessary empty columns  in the agreement version.

573336 – Displaying drop-downs as radio buttons or checkbox list for user selection

With this release, ICI provides new controls for multi-select and single-select choice attributes. 

Users can configure an alternate UI control for drop-downs with limited number of values for choice attributes at contract type, global attribute and template variable levels. This improves the user experience as the number of clicks and scrolls required to view options in a drop-down are considerably reduced, and provides better readability in terms of post-selection data review.   

Users can select: 

• Radio button for single-select choice attributes. 
• Checkbox list for multi-select choice attributes.

The configuration is applicable for creation and editing of contract requests, agreements and amendments.
 

752540 – Upgrading client-side libraries

With this release, some client-side libraries have been upgraded, whereas some that were not being used have been removed. 
 

Mobile App Updates

773907 – Refreshing tasks and commitments
Icertis mobile app users perform actions such as approve, reject and request review on contract requests and agreements. However, the status of the requests or agreements list did not automatically refresh. Enhancements have now been made to the “Refresh” functionality for “Tasks” and “Commitment” tabs to automatically refresh on these actions and improve usability.

850259 – Updating logo and attributes to new guidelines
As part of our effort to consistently improve user experience, the logo and all attributes in the mobile app have been updated as per the new ICI branding guidelines.

773923 – Changing compatibility in Android 11
With this release, Android 11 compatibility changes have been made by setting the target SDK version to 30 for and deprecated methods have been updated.

773917 – Deprecating the UI WebView component for iOS
With this release, the UI WebView component for iOS has been deprecated.

ICI API Enhancements 

Enhancements to ICI Add-ins 

745266 – Supporting online editing of agreements

As part of contract management, agreement and amendment documents regularly go through reviews, where multiple stakeholders and teams have to review and/or edit a contract before it is sent out to external parties for their reviews and signature. 

To make changes or modifications to an agreement, ICI users previously had to download a copy, perform edits and upload it back to ICI. This created a version of the document in ICI. Primary owners had to send the documents over emails to get inputs from multiple departments such as delivery and legal, which they would later have to consolidate to create the contract document. This approach not only led to aggregation overheads, but audit information was often lost too, and it was not possible to trace what was approved and by whom.

With this release, ICI offers online editing support for agreement documents creating radical operational efficiency for contract owners.

It is now possible for:

• Primary owners, secondary owners and reviewers with edit privileges to initiate an online editing session, where more than one party can edit parallelly using existing MS Word capabilities. 
• An agreement document, which has been edited using online editing, to be published to ICI, without any loss of information.

Note: 

• The online Word editor is available only for users with valid Office 365 subscription.
• Only users with edit privileges on a document can make changes to the document online.
• Users must either allow third-party cookies or add “*.officeapps.live.com” to their browser's cookie “Allow” list, in order to use Office Online smoothly.

588686 – Tagging clause extended attributes in clause text

ICI allows users to capture additional details for clauses in the extended attributes. 

Now, users have the capability to tag clause extended attributes, if configured, inside the clause along with clause metadata, while creating or modifying the clause from within the Icertis Experience for Word.

The value of tagged clause extended attributes will be resolved and displayed in the clause text upon tagging of the attribute or saving the clause.

668859 – Enhancing filtering and searching of clauses  

In ICI, clauses can be filtered on the basis of clause groups and searched on the basis of their clause name. This filtering and searching capabilities have been improved, so that users can easily retrieve the desired template and clause record, thus improving usability for customers having large number of clauses and templates in their clause and template library.

Users can now:

• Search and filter clauses and templates based on the name or text inside the clause or template respectively.
• Perform free text search on clauses and templates.

603690 – Updating templates automatically with latest clause version

Legal teams may need to make changes to a clause available in the clause library for varied reasons. This clause may be used in multiple templates used for various transactions. It may also require template updation, so that the latest version of the clause can be used in all future transactions.

To facilitate this, users can now update all or selected templates with the latest version of the clause whenever any clause is modified, thus eliminating the need for the legal team to manually do so. 

Users can select templates to be updated when a clause is modified. The selected templates are automatically updated after the clause is approved and will move to the next logical state once modification is done.

 
593421 – Labeling agreement document versions as per signature copy

Previously in ICI, agreements signed only by external, internal or both signatories were termed as “Internal Signed Copy”, “External Signed Copy” and “Final Signed Copy” respectively, and were displayed on the “Version” tab.

This capability has been further enhanced so that the signature versions are clearly labeled as “Internal”, “External” or “Fully Signed Copy”, as applicable, so that the user can easily identify the agreement version.

Enhancements to Artificial Intelligence Applications in ICI

727318 – Enhancing AI powered playbook in Icertis Experience for Word

ICI provides the legal playbook in Icertis Experience for Word that uses artificial intelligence to identify exceptions in the contract document, allowing users to review and take corrective actions on them, and assess the risk when these exceptions are accepted by negotiators.  

With this release, the legal playbook is enhanced and provides more options to work with playbook from Icertis Experience for Word. 

Users can now: 

• View the visual indication for clauses with playbook exceptions on “Agreement Clause” page.  
• View playbook details in a separate resizable window. 
• View all playbook positions for a selected contract type with options to search and filter within. 
• View all playbook positions for a selected agreement clause. 
• Add deviation to the clause from playbook “Details” page. 
• Add a new playbook record and edit the existing playbook record from within the Icertis Experience for Word.

575475 – Automating user feedback for clauses, obligations and attributes

ICI AI apps have been positioned to be intelligent assistants to help users in taking decisions when populating details for agreements. While AI discovery recommends values to users, it is expected that users would select the correct value at the time of review.  

During clause review of discovered clause, AI suggests a list of library clauses to be matched with the discovered clause. If a user selects one of them or selects a completely new clause from library, the AI algorithm learns from such user actions. These learnings are incorporated in the next discoveries to improve the accuracy of clause recommendations.

539492 – Improving clause delineation in DiscoverAI

Clauses in an agreement document that are found using DiscoverAI are displayed along with clause categories in the “Clause Discovery” section on the Web UI. 

ICI has now improved its logic for clause delineation to determine the start and end of the clause text. 

Users can now: 

• Edit the discovered clauses list or manually selected clause text to merge or split into multiple clauses. 
• Create a sub-clause within a discovered clause. 
• Change the clause category and the level (parent or child) of the discovered clause.  
• Choose to view only the level 0 clauses.

770375 – Merging metadata discovery page with attribute page

Previously in ICI, the AI attribute discovery process on agreements with third party paper was triggered on create and post-create events such as publish. Users might have already entered the attribute values before initiating the create/publish action, thereby making attributes discovery process redundant. Also, the process needed to maintain two different attribute pages, with customizations and validations not being available on the attribute discovery page. 

With this release, users can manually trigger the attribute discovery on the “Attributes” page itself, while uploading a third-party document, during create and edit agreement process. Discovered values will then be auto-filled in empty attributes and users can view additional recommended values for the discovered attributes. 

Users can: 

• View the discovery completion progress. 
• Identify discoverable attributes marked with the spinner icon.
• Get side-by-side document view for discoverable attributes.
• Get side-by-side document view for tagged attributes upon completion of discovery.

The merging of “Metadata Discovery” page with “Attributes” page will only work for agreements with third party papers.

727312 – Formatting based clause delineation for additional document types

In the previous release, support was introduced to display clause hierarchy in well-formatted .docx agreements.

With this release, the clause delineation functionality has been enhanced to support PDF documents, as well as for Word documents which do not use any styles. This enhancement helps to get better clause delineation while migrating legacy contracts, as AI assisted configuration is largely dependent on accuracy of formatting-based clause delineation for PDF documents.

Clause discovery processor is now trained to identify sections, and sub-sections in Word and PDF documents, up to 3 levels. Support for formatting-based clause delineation has now also been extended to the Icertis Experience for Word, wherein the discovered clauses are displayed to the user in hierarchical format.

727314 – Supporting additional languages in AI apps

In the previous release, support was provided for clause and obligation discovery for agreements in German, Spanish and Portuguese languages.

With this release, the discovery models will be enhanced to support the following additional languages – French, Dutch and Swedish. Support will be provided for DiscoverAI, NegotiateAI and DiscoverAI for legacy, for auto-detection of language, as well as for bilingual contracts.

Note: Scanned PDF documents are currently not supported for automatically detecting the language.

710739 – Configuring custom rules in DiscoverAI

Previously, attribute discovery and obligation discovery were dependent on inbuilt schema Excel files. Adding and updating the schema rules for any attribute or obligation required technical details of the code. 

With this release, the Excel schema has been deprecated and has been replaced with a rule engine, which can be used to easily write a rule in simple language, and the schema will be generated dynamically, thereby making it more user friendly. 

The rules engine will help configure custom rules for Obligation Discovery, Attributes Discovery and Playbook Discovery, using an inbuilt .NET based rule editor and the ICI master data entity.
 

Enhancements to Reports

514593 – Introducing Tagged Attributes Report for attributes tagged in clauses and templates

With this release, a new “Tagged Attributes Report”, which helps administrators understand the complete profile of an attribute and how it has been tagged across different clauses and templates. This provides them better visibility into attribute usage and saves them considerable time.

This report, available on the “Reports” tile, can be accessed based on the security groups configuration. The report can be filtered using the “Select Attribute” and “Select Entity” parameters. Based on the selected entity, the following columns are displayed – Clause/Template Code, Clause/Template Name, Contract Type, Clause/Template Version, Clause/Template Created By, Clause/Template Created On, Version Updated On, Attribute tagged as Template Variable, Attribute tagged as Clause Extended Attribute and Attribute Display Name

769602 – Displaying clause extension attribute summary in the Clause Summary Report

Previously, the “Clause Summary Report” displayed “Clause Summary” and “Clause Version Summary” sections on the report index page.

In this release, the report is being enhanced to display “Clause Extension Summary” which displays details on extended clause attributes. If the clause extended entity is defined for an ICI instance, then this report will display the information of the clause extension attributes. The “Clause Extension Version Summary” will display the latest values of clause extension attributes.

 
514611 – Enhancing Notifications History Report for an entity

ICI administrators can set up subscriptions for different entities, for notifications to be sent to subscribed users at the occurrence of certain events. Notifications can also be sent using the broadcast functionality. The “Notifications History Report” provides visibility into which notifications were sent, when, and to whom, by displaying an audit history of notifications for the particular entity. 

The default report is available for contract requests, agreements and associated documents, and is accessible through the left navigation pane of the details page, for an instance of the aforementioned entities. This report displays a list of notifications sent for an entity, including details such as the event that triggered the notification, the message body, subject, the To, CC, BCC recipient names and email addresses; along with other details such as the attachment file names or sent date and time. 

742607 – Providing additional localization support in reports

With this release, localization support will be provided in the Core platform, Sourcing, Obligation Management and Insights SSRS reports, in the following areas: 

• Contract type names, if the respective entity has locale resource key values in database. 
• Drop-down with Yes/No values.
• Graph and Time zone tool tips, if present in the report.
• Column headers.  
• Any error or validation messages.
• Informative messages such as “No data available”. 

583297 – Filtering additional reports by agreement status

Previously the "Agreement Status" filter was available for the “Agreements Pending Approval Report”, “Expiring Agreements Report”, “Average Agreement TurnAroundTime Report” and “Expired Agreements Report”. 

This filter is now also available for the "Agreement Deviation Report" and "Agreements Pending Execution Report". Users have the option to exclude terminated or archived agreements from this report, thus allowing them to derive the exact number and information as required.

746607 – Enhancing the Cycle Time Report

The “Cycle Time Report” displays the cycles for contracts requests, agreements, agreements with contract requests, and the change of status for each entity from the date of creation to the date of execution, as well as the elapsed time. This enables users to get the turnaround time for tasks and take corrective actions wherever necessary. 

With this release, an “Organization Unit” filter is being introduced in this report for users to be able to derive the desired information.

737196 – Adding hyperlink in PowerBI for agreement code

A new column has been added in PowerBI for “Agreement Code”, which has a hyperlink, that navigates the user to the agreement in ICI.
 

Integrations

605434 – Providing a unified flexible signature process

ICI has now improved the electronic signature process to provide a unified flexible signature workflow.

With this release, the following capabilities have been added to the ICI signature process:

• Introducing the hybrid signature process.
• Enabling DocuSign console for users to add and modify the signatories.
• Support for preview in DocuSign console.
• Support for tagging signatories in DocuSign console.
• Support for Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) and Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) in DocuSign.

641289 – Allowing parallel signatures using DocuSign

Previously, DocuSign integration provided support for sequential signatures. This capability has been improved to allow parallel signatures, so that multiple signatories can sign the agreement simultaneously, thus reducing the overall turnaround time for the complete signature process.

With this release:

• Users can define the parallel signatories using rules.
• Users can configure parallel signatories via the DocuSign console.
• DocuSign process can be triggered in parallel for the configured signatories.
• Sync back, audit and history can be captured in the ICI agreement.

701825– Supporting multiple vendors for electronic signature

Previously, ICI supported one signature vendor within one instance of ICI. Now, multiple electronic signature vendors are supported in the same instance. 

With this release, users can:

• Select the provider at the agreement or amendment level, for electronic signature and execution. This is achieved by using the choice attribute “Esignature Provider” with “DocuSign” and “Adobe Sign” as options.
• Define standard rules and conditions to automatically select the provider for agreements and amendments.

Note: This is applicable to DocuSign and Adobe Sign.

751651 – Syncing data task in Salesforce to publish completion notification on ASB

Sales agreements with customers are created in Salesforce using the ICI adapter for integration. Previously, users had to click “Assemble Contract” to sync data and reflect any changes on the agreement document.

With this release:

• Document assembly is triggered automatically after every update from Salesforce. The changes will reflect in the generated agreement document once the instance and associations are synced, without clicking “Assemble Contract”.
• Upon completion of data sync task for an opportunity, the Salesforce data sync task raises a “Data Sync Complete/Failed” event on the Azure Service Bus (ASB) upon completion of data sync for the given opportunity.
• A message containing the opportunity Id and agreement SysId is updated, and the time stamp is also displayed.

796155 – Improving data flow between Salesforce and ICI

Previously, when changes were made to an agreement in the "Sent for External Signature" status, the data was synced from Salesforce to the ICI UI, but not in the template document. 

Additionally, the agreement status changed only when an attribute which is tagged in the template was changed. However, if an attribute which was not tagged in the template changed, it was updated in the ICI UI and the status of agreement also remained the same.

With this release:

• Changes made to agreements in Salesforce while they are in Send for External Signature, Send for Internal Signature, Executed or Expired statuses will not be updated to the ICI UI. 
• When attributes are not tagged in the template document and the same attribute is mapped with Salesforce, updating the value of that field in Salesforce will change the status of the agreement from "Waiting for Approval" or "Approved" to "Draft"; unless it is a tracking attribute. 

This will ensure that the ICI UI and the template document will always be in sync and there are no compliance issues.

674469 – Sending success or failures alerts for monitoring in Salesforce

An alert mechanism is introduced for successes and failures in Icertis Experience for Salesforce integrations. 

With this release:

• All messages at ICI end can now be monitored by customers, and they will be able to retry transactions, if needed. 
• Additional logging has been introduced for ICI-Salesforce integration messages. Every message log will include the status, message Id and the incoming JSON details. 
• Configurators also send email notifications to ICI users on forward/reverse data sync so that the recipients can take appropriate actions.

679797 – Supporting OAuth in Salesforce adapter

Effective password management is an integral part of any corporate security policy. However, there are some risks involved in using user Id and password for authentication and authorization of production systems in an enterprise. Security organizations also had stringent security policies which do not approve user id or password authentication process. 

With this release, support is provided for OAuth, a more secured authentication and authorization process. This makes the ICI application more secured and is easy for customers to manage using an actual business user Id, instead of a service user to update the records in ICI. It also removes any access issues involved in the business process. Customers do not have to add owners of the record to contracts team to obtain access.

When entities in Salesforce are updated by a user, the process builder sends a message to ASB queue with minimal data such as entity Id. ICI task service picks the message, obtains integration user credentials from JSON or AKV, and makes an API call to Salesforce to fetch the changes. There are no user interactions involved in this asynchronous process, the task service uses the service user login to update the ICI records. 

When data in Salesforce is updated and data sync job is triggered, the Salesforce adapter will use client Id and secret key from AKV to fetch a user token, for invoking Salesforce APIs, using OAuth protocol.

749083 – Supporting OAuth in the MS CRM adapter

Previously, MS CRM plugin used logged in user credentials to invoke ICI APIs when sales users updated any entity in MS CRM. Also, reverse data sync flow used service user login credentials to invoke MS CRM APIs when data was updated in ICI. 

ICI now uses the client id and secret key instead of user id and password for authentication/authorization process between Salesforce and ICI. The server-to-server OAuth support is provided, so that the adapter and task service will use client Id and secret key from AKV, invoking MS CRM APIs. 

Users will have the option to choose the authentication mechanism to be used. The system will provide the support for backward compatibility of old username and password flow.

ICI Platform Tools

514636 – Enhancing P2P Tool in ICI Admin user interface

With this release, enhancements have been made in ICI to support additional entities for a seamless P2P experience. This functionality, provided to administrators, can promote configurable entities in pre-production environments to production environments, thus reducing the manual efforts to do so.
The following entities are now supported:

• Organizations (Orgs), Organization Groups (Org Groups)
• Users, User Groups, Security Groups
• Role Action Mapping
• Currencies
• Reasons
• Attribute Group
• SLA Matrix
• Notification Category
• Default Search Columns
• Cascade Team
• Application Settings
• Global/Admin Saved Searches

Note: Customers using ICI versions before 7.15 will need to upgrade to use this feature.

Partner Enablement

703386 – Icertis Software Development Kit for Partner Enablement

Icertis develops strategic partnerships to drive shared business growth, deliver quality implementations and maximize customer satisfaction. In release 7.12, we introduced the Software Development Kit (SDK) to provide the resources and tools needed while implementing ICI. 

As part of our continuous efforts to support our partners, we have upgraded the following documents for this release:

• ICI Coding Guidelines (version 2): This document helps developers to follow specific guidelines and best practices while coding. The database coding guidelines have now been added.

• ICI Customization and Use Cases (version 2): This document explains how to perform customizations and provides some sample use cases that will help understand how to implement and execute ICI customizations. The document has been updated to support typescript.

• Working with ICI Tasks: Updated for the 7.15 release.

• Working with ICI Hooks: Updated for the 7.15 release.

• ICI Developer Library: Updated for the 7.15 release.

• Local Environment Setup using ICI Binaries: Updated for the 7.15 release.

• Self-Serve Tools: Updated for the 7.15 release.

Technical Requirements for Release 7.15

The Icertis Contract Intelligence base system can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection and a supported Internet browser. Not all features may be available on all environments. Specific customer environments may have other requirements. The software and hardware requirements for client system as well as mobile application are listed in the table below.

Related Topics: Agreement Management | Association Management | Compliance Management | Template Management | Clause Management | Configuration | Reports | Advanced Analytics | User Administration | ICI Tools |  Icertis Business Apps | AIML | ICI Add-ins | ICI Mobile App | ICI Business Apps Release Notes |