Revision as of 12:20, 3 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. 
  • Improving  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

659853 – Upfront chevron view of agreement journey

In ICI, as per the contracting business paradigm, an agreement entity goes through different workflows and stages starting from authoring to execution, and expiration or termination. 

Users can view the current status of an agreement on the Agreement Index or Details page, a generic progress view on the Team tab, and logged audit details on the History tab. To understand the progress of the agreement and find relevant information, the user needs to navigate through multiple tabs. 

With this release, a horizontal chevron has been introduced, which is a visual depiction of the agreement’s journey that provides a simple, upfront and consolidated view of the agreement’s lifespan.

The 4 stages of the chevron prominently communicate an entity’s journey including the previous, current and possible future states of the agreement. This considerably improves usability for new and existing users as they can now find information easily and with minimum clicks.

The colors of the chevron are indicative of the stage of the agreement. It displays the following 4 tabs corresponding to the various stages of the agreement’s journey:

1. Generate: Displays the list of actions taken by the user on the agreement before it is published.

2.Approve: Displays the list of approvers as per the defined steps in the agreement, users that have approved the agreement, users with pending approval actions and for how long it has been pending with them. 

3. Execute: Displays details such as internal/ external signatories that have either signed the agreement or whose signatures are pending.

4. Manage: Displays the 5 most recent logs of the actions taken by the user to manage the agreement post-execution.

Note: 

• The chevron view is only applicable to agreement contract type (agreement and amendment).
• By default, the chevron is disabled; it can be enabled for selected contract types.
• The chevron labels support localization.

The administrator can configure access control for users who are not part of the team to sections/ sub-sections in the left navigation pane at the contract type level. The non-team users are generally at a higher level in the organization and may want a quick glance at the contract. 

This can be achieved through a backend configuration for the non-team user role in panel mapping as required and is applicable to agreements, amendments, contract requests and association.
 

659725 – Ability to easily navigate to related entities in multi-level hierarchy

With this release, ICI Business Applications and Implementation teams get the flexibility to set smart link as a means of easy navigation across related entities.

• Configure a smart link across any ICI entity that defines the entity relationships.
• Set the configured smart link in the left navigation pane and control its access privileges using ICI standard left pane configuration capabilities.

Users can: 

• Click on the left navigation link from an agreement contract type that will render the smart link result in grid. 
• Access existing ICM grid’s capabilities such as searching, sorting, filtering or exporting results as CSV/Excel for Smart Link results.

584439 – Introducing the Contract Manager role for agreements 

In the contracting process, a Contract Manager/ Owner manages or owns the agreement and is generally different from the user who has created/ initiated the agreement.

This user who is managing the agreement might change from time to time. For example, User A may have ownership during authoring process, whereas User B might look after the agreement during the negotiation process. 

Hence, the Contract Manager role has been introduced to manage agreement ownership throughout the agreement lifecycle.

With this release: 

• Assignment of the user against contract manager role in the team can be only achieved through event rules using the Add To Team action.
• Only one contract manager is available inside the agreement at any given point of time.
• The contract manager will have provisions same as that of primary owner.
• The contract manager name is displayed on the agreement summary page.
• Agreements can be searched using the contract manager name.
• Managing adhoc modification for the contract manager role user will be restricted inside the agreementTeam tab similar to primary owner role user.

555890 – Ability to create peer agreement from within the base agreement

Previously, it was possible to create an agreement from the Create Agreement page and link it to another agreement contract type and inherit values from it. 

With this release, you can create peer agreements directly from within their associated base agreement inheriting all the attribute values of the base agreement. For example, you can create a SOW directly from the MSA. This is achieved by enabling the following flags - Allow Peer Creation Wizard, Allow Multiple Instances and Allow Two-Way Linkage.

732038 – Ability to use parent’s Organization Unit path when creating associated document

Previously, when creating an associated document, the Organization Unit path of the logged in user gets set, irrespective of the parent agreement’s organization unit path. However, when the parent document is updated, the associated document’s organization unit path is updated to reflect the parent document’s organization path.

With this release, during creation, the organization unit path of the parent document will be displayed by default as the organization path for the associated document, thus improving the usability. 

• Import of Association (Line Item)
• Auto Attachment Association
• Obligation/ Fulfillment (Association of Association)

The existing event rules apply for the association creation and changes made to organization path via event rules are captured in the History.

575665 – Ability to capture multiple email IDs in a single data type

Previously, while processing agreements/ requests, email notifications were only being sent to the users who were provisioned in the ICI system.

With this release, users will now be able to capture multiple email addresses at run time in a single attribute configured at the contract type level and send automated email notifications. With this, the business processes and requirements emails are communicated in a better way. 

Users can now: 

• Capture multiple valid internal or external email addresses while working on agreements/ requests.
• Configure email attribute in Notification Subscriptions as To, Cc and Bcc recipients.

583186 – Ability to add amendment on expired agreement

Currently in ICI, users have to revive the agreement from Expired to Executed state by resetting its expiry date and then add amendments to it.

With this release, the process is standardized by providing the option to add amendments to expired agreements. The amendment creation for expired agreement follows the existing ICI amendment workflow. The agreement is then revived by extending its expiry date as per the amendment. 

The Add Amendment action is configurable through role action mapping on the expired state of the agreement. By default, the primary owner, secondary owner and contract manager can add amendments to the expired agreements.

593928 – Ability to configure sender email ID for automated emails

Previously in ICI, all automated emails were sent with one generic email ID based on the set up done for subscription under the notifications.

With this release, the capability is provided to configure the sender’s email ID (From email address) dynamically based on the specific contract type or instance of a record. 

Administrators can now:

• Configure the sender information while setting up the subscription under Notifications using the specific user and/ or user attribute information in the agreement.
• Configure the email addresses for Reply To in the subscriptions setup which recipients can revert to.
• Send automated notifications from the configured email address with the configured Reply To user email addresses.

593938 – Time Zone support for date-dependent automated processes

In ICI, there are scheduled jobs that perform certain actions on agreements based on conditions. For example, an executed/ reviewed agreement gets expired based on the expiry date by a scheduled job. These scheduled jobs followed the Universal Time Zone (UTC) for taking actions on activities of agreement status changes.

To satisfy the requirements of our customers worldwide, ICI now provides the flexibility for enterprise organizations to track the time zone/ region based on their regional offices or as needed by their vendors/ suppliers, etc. A time zone attribute is now provided that supports date factor which needs to be considered for the instance of an agreement.

With this release:

• Users can configure a time zone attribute to track activities such as expiration, termination, auto-renewal, assignment and auto-supersede (supersedable by assignment, supersedable by amendment, supersedable by termination).
• Based on selected time zone, day light saving constraint will be taken care of by mentioned scheduled job activities.
• Scheduled jobs can be run based on the time zone captured on the agreement instance or based on the default behavior to follow UTC if the time zone is not configured or not captured on the agreement instance.
• ICI application will take care of running scheduled jobs in different time zones which helps to consider multiple time zones used by an organization within the same ICI instance.
• Expiry task is enhanced so that agreements expire at end of the day based on the expiry date.

Note: The time zone-based processing can be enabled for all contract types across ICI through a technical configuration. If time zone selection is enabled for the specific agreement at the contract type level, it then overrides the time zone at the system level.

512930 – Triggering service bus events for all actions

For implementation of outbound integrations, they will be listed on various event messages to performance downstream or upstream actions as per customer requirements. To do so, the missing event messages must be added for outbound integrations. Icertis integrates with customers using message bus, where they will be actively subscribing to all the events triggered by ICI. 

With this release, subscribers will receive a notification if the agreement expiry has been reset. The subscriber will be informed about the update only when the agreement is updated. 

The following system events are published on the message bus - Reset Agreement Expiry, Peer Agreement Association Creation, Peer Agreement Association Deletion, and Confidential and Non-Confidential Actions.
 

545126 – Availability of business status value in ICI event messages

For outbound integrations to work seamlessly, the business status values along with the ICI status is required. Previously, the business status values were not available in event messages.

With this release, the event messages will also be available on adding items in the data properties via a hook to add the key/ values. This will be fetched at the time of custom integration. This flexibility can also be extended to add other key/ values as per the business requirement.

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 suggests values to users, it is expected that users correct them at the time of review.  

With this release, the AI algorithm continues to learn from user actions in attribute and clause discovery and incorporates those in the next discovery. So, when a contract owner selects values for attributes on the Attribute and Clause Discovery pages, the system learns the actions and provides same or similar values at subsequent discoveries.

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

ICI provides default reports such as “Attributes Value Report” which captures the attribute values and edits made over time, and the “Attribute Information Report” which provides details of the attribute properties and its incorporation in different contract types. Previously, attributes tagged in clauses and templates could also be checked by using the Preview mode or using Icertis Experience for Word. However, administrators often need to understand how an attribute has been used in these entities; for example, to carry out an impact analysis before removing an obsolete attribute.

With this release, a new “Tagged Attributes Report” has been introduced as part of Admin Reports, which helps administrators understand the complete profile of an attribute, and how it has been tagged across different clauses and templates. This saves them considerable time as they no longer need to manually examine each clause and template, in addition to reducing manual errors.

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 and Attribute Display Name. 

Note: Historical data for clauses and templates, added prior to Release 7.15, will not be considered by default for this report. In such cases, a utility needs to be run which generates report data for historical clauses and templates.

769602 – Enhancing Clause Summary Report for extended clause attribute version

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

In this release, the report is enhanced to display a “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 for each clause. It also displays a column for each version number, similar to the “Clause Version” summary section.

 
514611 – Enhancing Notifications History Report for an entity

ICI administrators can set up notification subscriptions for different entities to be sent to subscribed users at the occurrence of certain events. 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. This provides better visibility to backtrack whether a user received a certain notification (or not). 

The default SSRS 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. 

The report can be filtered by “Notification Type” – “Broadcast” or “Subscription”. 

• When filtered by “Broadcast”, the report displays the following columns - Contract Type Name, Subject, Body, To Recipient, Cc Recipient, Bcc Recipient, Sent Date and Time and Attachment File Names. 
• When filtered by “Subscription”, the report displays the following columns - Notification Template Name, Entity Name, Event Name, Category Name, Subject, Body, To Recipient, Cc Recipient, Bcc Recipient, Sent Date and Time and Attachment File Names.

742607 – Supporting localization for status and business status

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

• Obligation Management Health Report, Obligation Management Dashboard Report. 
• Contract type names, if the respective entity has locale resource key values in database. 
• Status filter on all reports, drop-down with Yes/No values. 
• Graphs and graph tool tips, page numbers, text written in RDL, hidden textboxes. 
• Dynamic column headers (for example, RFx Details Report in Sourcing). 
• 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”. 

Now, this filter is 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 |