ICM Release Notes - Release 7.8

Overview of Release 7.8

The 7.8 Release introduces significant enhancements to the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform. It strives to improve user experience and intuitiveness by continually improving the ICM user interface. It offers rich visualization and discovery methods for Agreements by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Substantial changes have been made to improve the Search and Saved Search functionalities for better visibility. The tagging of Associated document saved search in Agreement Templates and ability to define Rules have also been enhanced for better usability. The bulk actions functionality is now extended to multiple entities.

With this release, the Power Business Intelligence (BI) integration allows you to generate reports on multiple datasets. Reports are further modified to improve insight by enhancing names, formats, etc. It also augments the Icertis Experience by providing better redirecting options to Salesforce users, sending notifications in localized languages to Adobe Sign users, allowing DocuSign users to send Associated documents along with the main Agreement, and enabling end-to-end management of Contract lifecycles across Coupa and the ICM platform through synchronized data exchange and configurable integration.

The key enhancements of this release include:

• Incorporating Artificial Intelligence apps in the ICM platform to enable real-time negotiation by looking up similar Agreements or Clause text at the time of the Agreement review, applying natural language processing and machine learning to discover Obligations from the Agreement without having to read the entire document, and offering rich visualization for Agreements to make them searchable, readable, and understandable.
• Revamping the ICM user interface to improving the user experience by standardizing tabs, accordion headers, etc., and sending ICM email notifications in different languages based on the users’ language preferences.
• ICM now provides support to the Agreement workflow as per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 to improve usability.
• Performing Bulk Actions to create new Agreements and Masterdata, and updating Associations along with Agreements or Amendments within ICM itself.
• Allowing tagging of Associated document saved search in the Agreement Template and making significant changes to improve the Search functionality in ICM.
• Providing the capability to tag the saved search result of Associations that are assembled as a table in the Agreement Template/document.
• Enhancing Rules to support inclusion, exclusion, and modification of Clauses in an Agreement, supporting multiple rulesets for Template Selection and Clause Assembly Rules, and locking/unlocking rules when updating them to prevent data loss.
• Improving the Icertis Experiences for Coupa, Salesforce, Adobe Sign and DocuSign by:
  • Enabling users to exchange data to manage end-to-end Procure-to-Pay, Source-to-Contract and Masterdata sync lifecycles between Coupa and the ICM platform.
  • Improving usability by providing users an option to be redirected to the ICM Contract Details page or the Salesforce Record page from where the creation process was initiated.
  • Improving user experience by providing support to send notifications to signatories in the localized language when using Adobe Sign, instead of sending the notification in English to all users.
  • Allowing users to send Associated documents along with the main Agreement for signatures using DocuSign.

• Extending support of Template Variables when using the Microsoft Word Add-in (.Net version) to be able to add, modify and remove Template Variable tags in the Template.
• Modifying the Agreement Cycle Time Report, Attribute Value Report, Detailed Report, My Pending Requests Report and the User Login Report.

ICM Application Enhancements

333317 – Enhancements to Bulk Actions

The Bulk Actions functionality is further enhanced so that you can create and update multiple entities directly within ICM. When uploaded, these records become part of the ICM workflow and can be managed within ICM itself. Earlier, you could only Add Amendments. With this release, you can:

• Create new Agreements and Masterdata.

• Update existing Amendments and Agreements. 

• Create/update Associations with Agreements or Amendments.
• Process multiple batches in parallel, instead of sequentially processing them.
• Get drop-downs in the Workbook for static and dynamic lists to select from. For example, Type Of Paper, Workflow Action, Org Unit, Lookup/Cascade Attributes, etc.
• Easily differentiate each column in the Workbook for mandatory, user selected, Information fields due to the color-coding.
   

345526 – Power BI Integration with ICM

ICM integration with Power Business Intelligence (BI) provides real-time analytics and ad-hoc report generation capabilities to the user. Access to the Advanced Analytics tile on the Dashboard is controlled through Privileges defined in Security Groups.

With this release, this capability has been enhanced so that:

As a User, you can:

• Access self-generated reports quickly from the My Reports section on the Advanced Analytics page.
• Access global reports from the Global Reports section of the Advanced Analytics page, if the Administrator provides access through Security Groups.

• Generate a report based on multiple datasets. For example, Agreement, Clause, or template.

As an Administrator, you can:

• Provide access to Advanced Analytics reports through Security Groups. These reports will appear in the Global Reports section of the Advanced Analytics page.

 

242205 – Sending ICM Notifications in the recipient's preferred language

ICM now offers the standard ICM Email notification in different languages. When ICM sends a notification email to multiple recipients with multiple language preferences, a single email notification goes to all the recipients that contains the same message. However, the subject line and content in the email body is displayed in different languages. The language that the most recipients prefer is set at the top of the email subject and body.

The ICM Administrator can create Notification Templates only in English on the ICM UI. The localization of the Notification email is achieved through a technical configuration. It is applicable to all ICM entities and events.

44803 – Addition of Filters and Clear All buttons

In this release, the Filters and Clear All buttons have been added across all Index pages, Lookup and Search pages, and the Select User Grid view. The Filters button extends the view of the displayed results, whereas the Clear All button clears all the added filters in one go to display the unfiltered list.

275819 – Secondary Owner role extended for User Entity

The Secondary Owner has now been extended to User Entity for a user or user groups. This makes it easier for the Administrator to make the required changes for a user or user groups, instead of having to login multiple times to do so. You need to configure actions for User Information entity and Secondary Owner via Role Action Mapping on the user interface.

The Secondary Owner can be added to the User Entity:

• Through a configuration key.
• From the ICM user interface.
• Using Excel Add-in.
• Using Legacy Upload.

337801 – Accessibility support for Agreement Workflow

With this release, ICM has provided accessibility support for Agreement workflow as per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, thus enhancing the user experience and improving usability.

 

337750 – Formatting for Rich Text Area

With this release, default values associated with the rich text area table is retained during document assembly and document preview. These values are configured as RichTextArea Attribute type when creating a Contract Type. The same is applicable when creating or editing Agreements, Amendments, Associations, Masterdata, Templates and Clauses.

The rich text values are displayed on clicking the View icon on the Summary, Details and Verify pages of all entities. In addition to the plain text, the default value can contain rich text with various formats, fonts, colors and tables. The table supports hyperlinks, indentations and headers outside the table.

Note: The table does not support Description and HTML Prompt. For document assembly, the table supports up to eight columns.

Enhancements to Rules

209003 – Clause Inclusion, Exclusion and Modification in an Agreement

With this release, you can configure Rules to include, exclude or modify Clauses from an Agreement.

The following conditions apply to this feature:

• The Clause Approval Rule is evaluated for Edit and Upload actions by comparing the current Agreement with the previous version.
• The Agreement created from a Template will not trigger Clause Approval Rules.
• The Clause Approver is always added based on Approval Rule and cannot be added to the team manually.
• The Clause Approval Rule is evaluated until the Agreement is approved.
• When the same Clause is tagged for both Deviation and Clause Approval, then the review and approval will be triggered at the same time.
• Selecting a different Template will remove all users from the Team and restart the Clause evaluation process assuming there is no baseline version of the Agreement.

275824 – Extending support for multiple Rulesets to Template Selection and Clause Assembly Rules

Previously, ICM users could create multiple Rulesets of Approval Rules for the Approval Rule type, allowing the users to manage similar Rules with ease. Now, this functionality is also extended to the Template Selection and Clause Assembly Rule type.

The name of the Ruleset remains unique throughout the system. For example, Template Selection Rulesets of the same entity cannot have the same name.

When multiple Template Selection and Clause Assembly Rules are defined, ICM executes these Rules sequentially, and not in parallel. The Stop Processing More Rules option within a Ruleset, when set to Yes, allows users to stop evaluating further Rules for the Ruleset.

356497 – Locking and Unlocking Rules when updating

Previously, ICM allowed multiple users to edit the same Rule at the same time, which occasionally resulted in data loss. This has now been addressed by allowing users to lock and unlock the Ruleset from the UI, using the Lock icon on the Rules Grid view.

Enhancements to Templates

333437 – Tagging Saved Search of Associated documents in an Agreement

With this release, ICM provides the capability to tag the Saved Search result of Associations that are assembled as a table in the Agreement Template/document.

Enhancements to the ICM User Experience

345303 – UI Enhancement for Multi-Select drop-downs

ICM now supports the Typeahead functionality for multi-select lookup and choice drop-down fields, so that users do not need to scroll through the entire list to search and select the desired values. This feature is available on all pages, except on the Configuration page, for creating and modifying conditional values of multi-select lookup and choice control in Contract Type.

Incorporating Artificial Intelligence Apps in ICM

With this release, the following Artificial Intelligence (AI) apps have been embedded in the ICM platform to help you make informed decisions with accuracy and speed, as well as enhance user experience:

• Negotiate AI
• Obligation AI
• Visualize AI

331508 – Negotiate AI

The Negotiate AI app enables real-time negotiation and provides assistance at the time of the Agreement review by:

• Discovering Clause text and Attributes in the Word document of the Agreements and matching them with the Clause Library.
• Updating these discovered Clauses and Attributes, and saving them to ICM.
• Looking up similar Agreements to assist during the negotiation process (overall Agreement similarity).
• Looking up Agreements with similar Clauses (particular Clause similarity).

This app is available in ICM through a technical configuration.

Note: This app works on Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows version 16.0.4390.1000 or later, and Office .JS installed.

331509 – Obligation AI

The process of identifying Obligations in an existing Agreement manually is tedious, time consuming and error prone. Obligation Discovery automates this process by applying Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning to this problem. This enables the discovery of Obligations from the Agreement without having to read the entire Agreement text by looking up similar Obligations from the Obligations Library, and automatically extracting key metadata from the discovered Obligations.

This app is available in ICM through a technical configuration.

331521 – Visualize AI

It is difficult to search and analyze a large volume of data with Agreements and discover the meaningful relationships between contracts and associated entities. The Visualize AI feature offers rich visualization using diagrams, graphs, charts, images, and visually structured layouts to make Agreements easily searchable, readable, and understandable.

This app is available in ICM through a technical configuration.

With this release, two types of visualizations are available:

1.Agreement centric: Visualize AI is launched for the selected Agreement allowing the user to easily navigate through the related entities and possible actions.

2.Saved Search centric: Visualize AI is launched based on the selected saved search allowing users to view a collection of Agreements grouped and aggregated as per the configuration, and to easily navigate them using the rendered graph.

Note: Saved Search centric visualization is available only for Agreements, and no other entities.

Enhancements to ICM Add-ins

337242 – Extending support of Template Variables when using Word Add-in (.Net version)

With this release, the capability of tagging a Template Variable to Templates has been extended to the Word Add-in (.Net version). Thus, users can now add, modify and remove the Template Variable tags in the Template.

413509 – Removing support for adding Rule based Clauses in the Agreement document when using Word Add-in

With this release, the ability to add Rule based Clauses in the Agreement document when using Word Add-in is no longer supported. Rule based Clauses can only be defined at Template level.

Enhancements to Reports

345372 – Improvements to Reports

With this release, enhancements have been made to the following Reports:

• Agreement Cycle Time Report:
  • It is renamed to Cycle Time Report.
  • A new filter Entity has been added with the following values: Agreements, Agreements with Contract Request, and Contract Requests.

• When the user selects Agreements:
• Amendments will also be displayed.
• An additional column, Parent Agreement Code, has been added to the tabular data that will display the parent Agreement of the Amendment.

• When the user selects Agreements with Contract Request:
  • A chart appears that displays the Contract Type by Average Cycle Time for all Agreements that have been created through Contract Requests. Clicking the Contract Type on this chart opens another chart that displays the Contract Requests by Status. The Waiting for Contract Creation status is added with this release.
  • The following columns have been added to the tabular data – Contract Request Code, Contract Request Name, and Contract Request Created Date.
• When the user selects Contract Requests:
  • A chart appears that displays the Contract Type by Average Cycle Time for all Contract Requests. Clicking the Contract Type on this chart opens another chart that displays the Contract Requests by Status (Draft, Waiting For Approval, and Approved).

• Attribute Information Report:
  • The date format for the Date Attributes are now displayed in the mm/dd/yyyy format.

• Detailed Report:
  • The History Date format is changed to Mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm AM/PM format.

• My Pending Requests Report:
  • It is renamed to Approved Requests Waiting For Contract Creation.

• User Login Report:
  • The IP Address column now captures the IP address from all possible scenarios along with the Session Start Time.
  • The Session Duration column has been removed.

Integrations

Icertis Adapter for Coupa Integration

341756 – ICM-Coupa Integration

The ICM-Coupa integration allows exchange of data between the ICM platform and Coupa Spend Management platform through a configurable integration framework that uses a REST based Connector. Thus, users can manage end-to-end Procure-to-Pay, Source-to-Contract and Masterdata sync lifecycles between Coupa and the ICM platform.

Through this integration, you have the following capabilities:

• As a Procurement Manager, an Agreement authored or updated in ICM is automatically created or updated in Coupa. When the Agreement is executed in ICM, it is automatically published in Coupa. It can then be used to initiate the Coupa requisition process and management of downstream steps like Purchase Orders, Invoices, etc. for any procurement contract, which can then be synced back to ICM.
• As a Sourcing Manager, when Sourcing events (RFx – RFI, RFP, RFQ, RFB) are created/updated in Coupa, the same can be pushed into ICM. Once events are closed with one or more supplier responses in Coupa, Agreements can be auto-created in ICM and they can then be authored and managed within ICM itself.
• As a System Administrator, an external object Attribute mapping can be configured for any of the Coupa entities (such as Supplier Master, Payment Master, etc.), so that the Masterdata for the required entities from Coupa can be synced to the ICM Masterdata (based on the object/field mapping definition).

 

Icertis Experience for Salesforce

207220 – Allowing users to be redirected to the ICM Details page in Salesforce

When creating Contracts, Contract Requests and Amendments from Salesforce, Administrators can now configure whether the users should be redirected to the ICM Contract details page or the Salesforce Record page from where the creation process was initiated.

This can be configured by selecting the Allow Redirect checkbox on the ICM Endpoint Configuration page. By default, the checkbox is not selected. When selected, the user is redirected to the Salesforce Record page, else to the ICM Contract detail page.

 

Enhancements to Adobe Sign

244360 – Sending Adobe Sign Email notifications in the recipient’s preferred language

ICM has now improved user experience by providing support to send notifications to internal and external signatories in the localized language when using Adobe Sign, instead of sending the notification in English to all users.

You can toggle the Agreement Preview to On or Off. When it is turned On, you can tag the signature by toggling the Adobe Add Signature Tags field to Yes. By default, this field is set to No.

Note:

• This feature is only available for Agreements and Amendments.
• Only 1000 characters are allowed for the Default Message and the Additional Information combined.
• Ensure that you open a new browser window to perform the Adobe Sign Signature action after opening the Adobe Sign Email to Preview and Send; else it may result in an error.

Enhancements to DocuSign

275831 – Ability to send Associated documents along with the main Agreement for Signature

ICM now allows the Primary Owner to select and attach individual copies of the Associated documents along with the main Agreement and send them for signatures using DocuSign. 
The Signatories view and sign these Associated documents provided the Signatory tags are added. 
When the signing process is complete, ICM synchronizes back the Associated document and generates the Version and History record by the name of the last Signatory. Parent-child Associations, which are not signed but are part of the DocuSign envelop are also synced back.
Note: This feature is applicable only for parent-child Associations. The .docx and .pdf file types are supported.
 

Technical Requirements for Release 7.8

The Icertis Contract Management base system can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection and a supported Internet browser. Not all features may be available in all the environments, and 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.