ICM Release Notes - Release 7.12

Overview of Release 7.12

The 7.12 Release introduces significant enhancements to the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform. It strives to improve user experience, intelligence, analytics and intuitiveness by continually improving ICM functionalities and the user interface.

The key enhancements of this release include:

• Enhancements to the ICM Application
  • Enhancing extended template attributes to make them searchable on the Template Index page, global search, advanced search and on the search in Icertis Experience for Word
  • Enabling Download All button for expired agreements and amendments
  • Enhancing the functionality of Associations added as tables with localization of table headers 
  • Providing localization support for clauses and templates to enable users to configure templates and create localized agreements 
  • Providing administrators the ability to add global favorites to entity detail pages 
  • Establishing the differentiation between Internal Reviewer and External Reviewer along with respective role-action mapping 
  • Introducing a Click to Sign process, whereby signatories can directly preview and accept agreements
  • Enhancing bulk creation of agreements with an option at configuration level to set the target workflow action for the agreements to be created  
  • Provisioning users to preview Approvers when swapping primary clauses for alternate clauses
  • Introducing online editing support for agreement documents to greatly improve operational efficiency for contract owners
  • Enhancing commitments functionality with an option to send reminders
  • Enhancing user experience by grouping buttons on all entities' index pages, among other major functionalities
  • Providing the flexibility to control users' actions on agreements based on their roles
  • Enhancing the agreement index page with a button which allows copying an existing agreement to create a similar agreement
  • Enhancing metadata of clauses with the ability to add details which can be leveraged in searches and defining rules
  • Extending the functionality to copy team roles for peer associations of contract requests /agreements/amendments
  • Providing users the option to clone commitments from existing ones
  • Enhancing Excel data upload functionality with validations on choice value attributes
  • Extending bulk download/upload functionality to associated documents enabling users to create line items with extended attributes or associated document attributes
  • Providing the flexibility for users to create line items using extended or associated document attributes
  • Providing users the flexibility to specify attributes for bid analysis per RFx Item and to enter value for bid analysis attributes per supplier item bid
  • Ability to have flexible contract type extension
  • Enhancing user experience by allowing resizing of popup windows
  • Supporting the trigger of rules in case of attributes which have been localized
  • Extending the number of records that can be added while adding a table as an association
  • Introducing the ability to uniquely identify records related to RFQs
  • Introducing flexibility in defining roles other than default roles provided in ICM
  • Providing support for auto-attachment functionality for agreements, amendments and contract requests
  • Enhancing associations with the ability to explicitly define the type of relationship between the association and agreement/amendment as parent, child or peer
  • Enhancing the functionality of copying associations with the flexibility to exclude attachments
  • Introducing a virus scan option for files uploaded into ICM
     
• Enhancements to ICM API 2.0
  • Introducing some new APIs that will allow business applications to interact with ICM using standard API nomenclature for amendments, contract requests and searches

• Enhancements to ICM Add-ins
  • Allowing users to stay on the document for further edits or reviews while publishing occurs in the background.
  • Enhancing the Word Add-in to display deviated clauses within the plugin
  • Introducing WordAI to enhance user experience by merging NegotiateAI and Icertis Experience for Word (previously known as Scribe)
  • Updating the logo for ICM Word Add-in
  • Providing users the ability to take workflow actions such as approve, reject, send for approval and others using Icertis Experience for Word
     
• Enhancements to Artificial Intelligence Applications
  • Establishing a contract lineage using AI so that users can visualize the changes done in the clauses, attributes, team members, statuses, versions, obligations and associations over the contract negotiation process or due to various amendments and addendums added subsequently
  • Introducing a parallel view of discovered attributes against the original document
    Enhancing the in-built discovery model to discover attributes from Statement of Work agreements
  • Enhancing the discovery performance to reduce time required for discovery of documents
  • Enhancing natural language search query with support for user created attributes

• Enhancements to Reports
  • Configuring core SSRS and Power BI reports to include contract types classified as Contracting 
  • Introducing additional support for associated documents enabling users to create custom reports in Power BI
     
• Improving the Icertis Experience
  • Providing configurators the ability to redirect emails to specific addresses when testing Adobe electronic signature on non-production instances
  • Introducing the new eSignature platform experience
  • Enabling Electronic seal tag for signing agreement documents
  • Supporting creation of ICM entities and contracts using SAP S/4 HANA as well as supplier masterdata integration and masterdata lookup using S/4 HANA
  • Enhancing generic integration framework to support contract requests, associations, amendments
  • Enhancing Salesforce experience by providing users the ability to take request review and upload document actions from within the Salesforce grid 
  • Providing users the flexibility to manage ICM tasks from within Salesforce
  • Providing Salesforce users the ability to configure auto creation of contracts

• Introducing ICM Platform Tools
  • Enhancing ICM support for the PToP tool to promote ICM configurations or modifications that are made to ICM configurations in pre-production environments to production environments
  • Providing support for contract types, contract type attributes, clauses and templates (along with the documents), notification templates, rules, masterdata, users, user groups and security groups
  • Providing support for elastic search sync
     

These release notes provide an overview of the enhancements to ICM and the ICM experience for integrations. Refer to the technical requirements and known issues for the release in this document. Refer to the detailed Wiki documentation for the explanation and capabilities of these and all other ICM features and functionalities.

 

ICM Application Enhancements

625385 – Displaying search results by relevance

The ICM search functionality on the Home and Advanced Search pages has been entirely revamped to provide a better, more user-friendly experience. In previous versions, the results were displayed in the descending order of last modified record. While the previous order helped users to find latest records based on the search term entered, they will now be able to find entries that are exact and/or close matches specific to their query.
Users can now view relevant records on the very first page of the results. The results are displayed in descending order of relevance to the term or keyword entered by the user in the search box. 
With this release:

• Search results are displayed in order of relevance to the entered search query, with the best match(es) appearing as the top-most or most relevant result(s).
• The top 10 most relevant search results will be displayed in the drop-down on the Home page, along with a View All Results link which redirects to the results details page for a more comprehensive view.
• Search results are made more meaningful to the user by displaying whether the keywords/terms have been found in full text or attributes.
• Entered keywords/terms are highlighted in the search results to provide the user with a context.
• The occurrence of the search term is matched against both – the document as well as attributes of a record, giving more options to the user.
• Hovering over the results displays details such as Created By, Created Date and Status about the entity. The details to be displayed can be changed through a technical configuration.

Note:

• On the Home page search result, the fields of types Currency and Date (or DateTime) are not as per the preferences of logged in user.
• On the Home page, clicking the Search icon without entering a search criteria directs the user to the Advanced Search page. The results here are sorted as per the last modified time, however the sorting drop-down displays the text Relevance by default.

551111 – Grouping of actions on index page

Earlier, the applicable set of actions available for any entity were represented using icons across ICM. For example, the agreement index page had icons for View Agreement, Preview Document and View Smart Link actions. As part of our efforts to continuously improve ICM, multiple new actions are added for an entity over time. Hence, actions are now grouped together to improve the usability and user experience.  

 
586165 – Support for 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, ICM users previously had to download a copy, perform edits and upload it back to ICM. This created a version of the document in ICM. 

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 also audit information was often lost, it was not possible to trace what was approved and by whom.
With this release, ICM 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 ICM without any loss of information.

Note: Only users with edit privileges on a document can participate in editing it online.

 

550178 – Enabling search for extended template metadata

Earlier in ICM, there were only predefined metadata for templates such as Name, Clause Code, Clause Group, and so on. To fulfill the requirements of some organizations, ICM provided the capability of extended template attributes to define additional custom metadata/attributes at the template level. However, users were not able to search templates based on these extended template attributes.
Now, users can search and retrieve required templates using these extended attributes as search parameters in the global search, advanced search and the template index page.

 

572767 – Ability to download all associated documents of expired agreements and amendments

Earlier in ICM, users could download all the associated documents of an agreement or amendment for all other states but not when the agreement was in the Expired state. 
This capability is now also provided for expired agreements and amendments. This considerably improves usability as users no longer need to navigate to the respective Association tab to download the required documents one by one. The Administrator can now define access permissions so that the Download All button is available for authorized users allowing them to easily download all the associated documents of agreements and amendments for reference. 

 
569901 – Ability to resize popup windows

Previously, popup windows within ICM had a fixed size and were static, which enabled users to only view information displayed on the pop-up.
Now, support has been provided for users to be able to resize and drag User Selection (Grid-View), Lookup and Add Association pop-up windows. This enables users to get a context of their location in ICM and what is behind the pop-up. Additionally, user-experience is enhanced for smaller pop-ups as they can be expanded on bigger screens.

551117 – Associated document content including table headers in the preferred language

Earlier in ICM, if the language preference was English and the user created an agreement using a French language template that had an association as a table, then the buyer could create the association instance and assemble the contract. However, the language for the entire assembled document would be French , but the association table header (title) would be in English. 

This functionality has been improved so that the table header also appears in the same language as the remaining text in the template. In the example above, the entire assembled document as well as the association table header would be in French.

 

571054 – Ability to add global favorites to entity details page

ICM Administrators can already set default favorites so that specific users can access relevant information targeted for them using global favorites. These global favorites are added to the corresponding index page of the selected entity. With this release, this functionality is further enhanced such that the Administrators can now choose to add global favorites to the Entity Details page. 

They can set different default favorites for different entities for their users. For example, a pinned favorite search for line items can have different relevance as compared to a pinned favorite search for bids. Having default favorites pinned makes it easy for users to easily identify the actions that they need to take. Having pinned default favorite saved searches at entity level also helps the users access relevant information from within an entity, rather than having to travel to the index page for the same.

ICM Administrators can now:

• Choose to add global favorites to Entity Details page for specific users to view them in the associated parent or peer entity's Details page.
• Have global favorites added by default to the corresponding selected entity's Index page.
• Choose to add global favorites to both entity details and index pages.

Note: 

• The global favorites will always be appended to the last for a user per entity type. 
• A maximum of 4 global favorites are displayed to the user based on the security group’s permissions.

 

572768 – Display internal and external reviewer roles based on user type

The Request Review functionality in ICM allows users to request their agreements to be reviewed. Before sending an agreement for approval or signature, the contract author can leverage the Request Review option and add a user or user group as reviewer. 

Previously, if the selected reviewer was an internal user, or a user group of internal users exclusively, still the team role/user role was depicted as External Reviewer in the Team and the History tabs respectively, on the agreement Details page.   
With this release: 

• If the user or all the users in the user group added as a reviewer are internal users, the role displayed will be Internal Reviewer.
• If the user or any one user in the user group added as a reviewer is an external or third party user, the role displayed will be External Reviewer.
• Administrators will be able to define actions and action display names for different entities and states for internal and external reviewer roles, respectively. 

Note: This change does not apply to Send For Review functionality as that review happens only after an agreement is executed and is applicable only for internal users.

 

551122 – Localization support for clauses into templates

Previously in ICM, there was no provision to have localization of clauses that could be used to create agreements in different languages. Hence, the users had to create multiple templates to be able to create agreements in different languages.

With this release, users can store the localized version of clauses and enable them when authoring and executing agreements. So, users can configure the template that can be used to create a localized agreement. This considerably reduces the efforts of creating and managing multiple templates to support different languages.

 

568718 – Additional Click to Sign signature option available for agreements

ICM already supports electronic and manual signatures. With this release, a Click to Sign signature process is being introduced where the signatory can preview the agreement and indicate acceptance to the terms in the agreement.  

If the signatory accepts the terms and conditions by checking the box in the Preview window, it is used to mark the agreement as accepted and signed by the signatory. The signatory also has the usual option to reject the agreement for signing, with the agreement going back to the Draft state. 

ICM Administrators who are authorized to create contract types can now add Click to Sign as an option in the signature type attribute. This would make this signature flow available for contracts of that type. 

 

574611 – Ability to swap alternate clause from Clause Comparison Report and view approvers

Previously in ICM, the substitute language of a clause was stored as an Alternate Clause to the Primary Clause. Contract authors had the provision to replace any Alternate Clause using the Clause Comparison Report. Whenever such clauses are replaced by alternate clauses, a certain set of approvers get triggered for the agreement. 

With this release, contract authors are being provided with the capability to preview the list of approvers that will be triggered due to the clause swap. 

Similarly, whenever new version of an agreement is created, the Content Control window which is now displayed now has a provision to preview the approvers that will be added or removed based on the changes made to the clause.

568773 – Ability to create and send agreements for approval during bulk creation 

ICM allows contract authors to create multiple agreements from a single agreement with the provision of copying associations and attributes as required. Previously, these agreements created in bulk would be in Draft status. In order to send the bulk created agreements for approval, users had to either do it individually for each agreement or they had to configure a Saved Search and take a bulk action on it.

With this release, this feature has been enhanced with an option at configuration level to define if these agreements are to be published, or created and sent for approval as part of the creation process. 
A choice-type attribute Target Workflow Action has been added in the existing bulk configuration masterdata contract type. Administrators can now specify whether bulk created agreements should be sent for approval or not. When the Target Workflow Action attribute is set to Create and Send for Approval and bulk agreements are generated on the model agreement: 

• Approvers get added to the agreement’s team based on the rules configured.
• Agreements will be sent for approval to the approver(s), and the agreement status will be updated to Waiting for Approval.
• If no approver is present in the agreement’s team, the agreement will be approved directly and its status will be updated as Approved.

By default, the agreements would be created in Draft status. Amendments can also be sent for bulk approval using the same functionality.
Users can also decide whether the templates for bulk created agreements would be different or same than model agreement during bulk creation process. An attribute Enable Template ReEvaluation is added in existing bulk configuration masterdata contract type. 

• When Enable Template ReEvaluation attribute is set to Yes, the Template Selection rules will be re-evaluated, and the first template from the list will be used for creating bulk agreements. The Template can be same or different than model agreement depending on the configured rules. 
• When the Enable Template ReEvaluation attribute is set to No, the template used for bulk created and model agreements will be same.

Any Template selection rule configured for bulk creation will not be evaluated if Enable Template ReEvaluation value is No.

 

550187 – Provision to send reminder notifications for commitments

ICM has the provision to track the milestones in an agreement with the Commitment functionality. 
Now, users can send notifications for commitments manually using Send Notification option as and when required. Users can also customize the notification and send for individual commitment or in bulk. 

With this release, the access control for Agreements and Amendments has been extended to control additional agreement level tasks and actions based on the user role.

Users can control:

• The agreement actions such as Compare Documents, Compare Clause Changes, Broadcast, and so on
• Creation and disassociation of associated documents from an agreement
• Linking and disassociation of peer associations from an agreement
• The visibility of the individual reports available on the agreement details page is controlled through technical configuration

 

572781 – Ability to copy existing agreement from the agreement index page

Previously, ICM supported the copy existing agreement functionality from the agreement Details page. Now, the same functionality has been added on the agreement index page for better usability. With this, the user can perform the copy action without having to navigate into the individual agreement details page.

Authorized users can now click an icon on the agreement index page to copy it to create a similar agreement. Along with the agreement, users now also have the ability to select any associated documents (parent-child or peer associations), commitments or obligations to be copied; where the Allow Copy with Association flag is set to True at the contract type level. If the association flag is set to False, a validation is displayed.

551116 – Support for extended clause metadata

Previously, ICM had limited capability to capture additional attributes as part of a clause creation.

With this release, an entity to extend attributes is introduced to add more attributes to clauses which will be useful in capturing more granular level details related to the clause.

Users can now:

•    Create masterdata contract types with additional clause attributes
•    View extended clauses attributes in the clause creation wizard
•    Configure clause assembly rules using extended clause attributes
•    Enter the values for extended clause attributes using Add-ins

569900 – Ability to cascade team from contract request, agreement, amendment to its association

Previously, ICM provided support to copy team role from contract request, agreement and its amendment to its parent child association. With this release, the support is being extended to copy team role from contract request, agreement or amendment to its peer associations.

A tile has been added under the configuration, where an authorized user can map all such team roles for a defined contract type to its parent-child as well as peer associations.

Administrators can now:

• Provide the capability to copy the entire or selective team of the entity (contract request, agreement or amendment) to its peer association.
• Copy all or selective team of the entity to its peer association on a parent or peer entity event.

Users can now:

• Sync/update the team of association when any team is added or removed from a contract request, agreement or amendment entity.
• Capture audit logs while copying the team from the contract request, agreement or amendment entity to its peer association.

 

574034 – Ability to have flexible contract type extension

ICM provides the flexibility to select and use masterdata attributes as extensions to agreements and associated documents at the time of instance creation. Users can create rules to add or remove these extended attributes to agreement and associated documents.

With this release, many ICM features such as lookups, saving a search, saving as a template, and so on are further enhanced to manage the extended attributes in the same way as normal attributes. This considerably improves usability and simplifies the process for users who deal with hundreds of items and need to have multiple configurations.

Users can now:

• Configure conditional attributes, tracking attributes, computations (enable expressions) to use as extended attributes. 
• Mark extended attributes as mandatory and validate.  
• Control access privileges for extended attributes based on the user’s role. 
• Maintain audits of the extended attributes. 
• Exclude extended attributes from copy while creating an agreement by copying the existing agreement. 

551119 – Ability to copy and create existing commitments

With this release, users now have the capability to copy an existing commitment and create new commitments from it with the provision to exclude certain attributes from being copied. This will considerably reduce time and effort required to create individual commitments.

550181 – Rules implementation for localized masterdata attributes

Previously, localization support for masterdata attributes was limited to display localized values in lookup attributes based on language set in User Preference. If the attribute had a lookup had a Localized value, its rule would not get triggered as the rule was supported only in English.

With this release, users will be able to:

• Trigger a rule if the masterdata value has been localized on the agreement, contract request, association or the masterdata on create/Edit page.
• Trigger a rule if any lookup type attribute is updated using Icertis Experience for Word.
• Configure any rule type as all rules now have localization support.

Evaluation of localized values will be supported for all rule types given that the rule is configured in the English language.

 

551105 – Ability to define nomenclature for Association Agreement Code for Peer and child entity

Previously, in ICM, tracking individual associated records such as line items, rounds and awards back to their related RFQ was very difficult. 

With this release, ICM provides a capability to define a custom agreement code with reference to the peer and parent-child contract type, at the time of creating associations for that agreement contract type. 

Users can now:

• Set a Boolean attribute to define the custom nomenclature for the selected association contract type which can be either peer or parent-child. 
• Define the separator for the association agreement code with available options. 
• Define the parameters for the association agreement code from the available selection attributes such as parent attribute, selected association attributes and agreement code suffix.

Note: Users will be redirected to the Create Agreement wizard while creating associations for the agreement contract type that has custom nomenclature enabled.

 

550193 – Extended number of records while adding a table as an association

ICM supports adding associations to an agreement in various forms, such as documents and tables. With this release, ICM has now extended support to 200 records that can be assembled in an Association tagged as a table. 

 
568776 – Export and import capability for associated documents

ICM provides a capability for bulk download (export) and upload (import) of line items from association grid using Excel. Now, users can create line items with extended attributes or associated document attributes based on the template selection and export/import through Excel into ICM.

Users can now:

• Select and add attributes from all attributes defined in masterdata contract type.
• Load Excel filled by the buyer (at the RFQ level) at the Round level to match the information.
• Create, edit and delete records in bulk using Excel.
• Manage import/ export of lookup attributes, conditional attributes, and attributes derived by computations or enabled expressions in bulk.
• Look up attributes in the same way as masterdata is looked up using Excel.
• Control the access privileges to import/export Excel based on the user’s role.
• Control access privileges for attributes in Excel based on the user’s role.
• Localize and display attributes and headers in the Excel.
• Validate data during import/export using Excel.
• Keep data in Excel in sync with data displayed on the user interface.
• Make attributes non-editable.
• Manage refreshing associations during import/export.
• Maintain and display audit of import/export operations.
• Generate log files for line items.

574036 – Ability to configure and control access privileges based on role

ICM now provides the capability to define new roles for agreements and amendments as per business requirements and control their access using existing ICM functionalities (such as Role Action Mapping, Attribute Group Privileges and Security Groups). 

Note: Custom roles do not support the workflow actions dependent upon other action requests (For example, Approve and Reject for Send for Approval action).

 

574087 – Ability to add auto-attachments as associations via event rule

As part of RFQ creation process, users need to add several documents as mandatory attachments to RFQs that may not change frequently. Previously, users had to attach multiple such documents manually to every RFQ which was a tedious and time consuming process.

ICM now has simplified the process by allowing users to attach predefined standard documents automatically to associations based on defined event rules.

Users can now:

• Maintain a repository of standard documents in masterdata.
• Define the mapping between associations for auto-attachments for agreements.
• Define rules and saved search to trigger the auto-attachment process for associations.
• Bifurcate auto-attachments from manual attachments when copying an agreement.

Note: This is applicable for agreements and amendments.

585000 – Ability to define parent-child relationship for peer associations

ICM provides the functionality to attach associations to agreement entities. This functionality has now been enhanced with the ability to define the type of relationship (association) as Parent, Child or Peer. The Linkage Type field is enabled through technical configuration.

With this release, agreements can have only one association as a parent and all existing related agreements will be tagged as peer associations.

 

572764 – Ability to scan files for viruses when uploading to ICM

With this release, ICM has added a generic virus scan framework which can be used to implement other virus scanning software. When configured, this will help to scan files for any malware and protect ICM against a wide variety of threats whenever a user uploads a file using the File Upload attribute in ICM or a file is uploaded through an API. The users will be notified with the details of the scan status if any malicious content found during the scan. 

Users can now:

• Scan all supported file formats by default during upload.
• Scan files in bulk.

File scanning while uploading through Word and Excel plugins is handled through API.

 

645417 – Ability to create agreement with latest approved version while using Copy Agreement functionality

Previously in ICM, the existing agreement’s template version was used to create a copy during Copy Record process even if the updated latest template was available in the system. 
With this release, the source agreement’s latest approved template will be selected by default to create the copy.

 
572756 – Ability to exclude auto-attached documents from the copied association

ICM allows attaching standard documents from the masterdata repository as associations to the agreement based on the defined event rule on the agreement.

When a user copies the agreement with auto-attached associations, system excludes all auto attached associations from being copied to the new agreement. The auto-attached associations won’t be displayed on the Copy Record window. The resulting agreement will have the selected manual associations and its own auto-attached associations as per the configured rules.

This avoids the unnecessary upload of files into the ICM repository and duplication of association records on copied agreement as it will have its own auto-attached documents.

Users can now select auto-attachment associations when an agreement is sent for signature along with the bundled association and download all associations of an agreement in the ZIP format. 

ICM API Enhancements 

Enhancements to ICM Add-ins 

619841 – Introducing Icertis Experience for Word

With this release, two of the ICM Add-ins - NegotiateAI and Icertis Experience for Word have been merged to provide users a seamless experience. 
Icertis Experience for Word can be leveraged to create, edit and manage templates, clauses and agreements. 

Using Icertis Experience for Word, it is now possible for: 

• ICM Administrators to configure and setup Icertis Experience for Word. 
• Other users to work with templates, clauses and agreements. 
• Perform different tasks such as creating, editing and deleting template variables.  
• Tag attributes, clauses, associations, signatories and template variables.  

Note:  

• Users can view and edit only those clauses and agreements for which they have Manage privilege in ICM.  
• To edit an agreement, a user needs to download the agreement document and open it in Icertis Experience for Word. 

 

571651 – Provision to show clause deviations in Icertis Experience for Word

Previously, users were able to view deviations in agreement clauses through the agreement details page. With this release, users can now see within the Word Add-in, any such clauses which have been tagged/added in an agreement and which are deviated. The details of the deviated clause are also displayed through Word Add-in.

With this release:

• A list of deviations is displayed in Agreement Clauses tab for an agreement or amendment’s document version. 
• Clauses that are added using the Add Deviation option through the Word Add-in are also displayed.
• View information regarding the deviated clauses such as Status, Deviated By, Deviated On in the Word Add-in as well as a View in ICM link.

The deviation clauses are visible based on role action mapping as per existing ICM flow. They are searchable, so users can easily navigate to a particular clause in the agreement document and view the highlighted content of those clauses in Word Add-in.

Note: 

• The deviation clauses are only displayed for the latest version of the agreement.
• Users cannot perform the deviation approval flow from the Word Add-in.

487082 – Ability to take workflow actions using Icertis Experience for Word

Previously, tasks related to template and clause management could be managed using Icertis Experience for Word. However, to manage agreement related tasks, users had to switch between ICM and the Word Add-in.  

ICM now enables the users to accomplish agreement related workflow actions such as approving, rejecting or recalling an approved agreement directly using Icertis Experience for Word. This considerably reduces the turnaround time and improves the user experience. User can view the updated status of the agreements on the Versions tab, History tab and Audit Trail on the ICM Web.

 

574616 – Icertis logo updation in Icertis Experience for Word

Enhancements to Artificial Intelligence Applications in ICM

510546 – Establishing a contract lineage using AI

Contracts go through multiple transformations over a period of time. During the contract negotiations, multiple attributes and clauses get added or changed. Team members, statuses, obligations, associations also get added, updated or removed. Once the contract is executed, many addendums are added later or multiple clauses are replaced with new clauses in the amendments, etc. With such high number of transformations, it is difficult to keep track of which clause or attribute is in force. 

ICM has now improved usability by using AI so that users can now easily see the changes in the clauses, attributes, team members, statuses, versions, obligations and associations due to developments in the contract negotiation process or due to various amendments and addendums added subsequently in one go. This helps contract owners to learn from these changes and devise an optimal negotiation strategy for further engagement with customers or vendors.

Contract owners can now: 

• Identify the changes done to the contract over a period of time, so that all the changes made are visible in the contract at one go. 
• Visualize how the attribute values are changed over a period of time. 
• Visualize how the clauses and their languages have changed over a period of time. 
• Visualize how the statuses of agreements have changed over a period of time. 

 

575397 – Improved discovery based on existing customer data

ICM’s existing discovery model discovers 15 attributes and more than 40 clauses from MSA or NDA type agreement documents. 

With this release, the process of discovering attributes and clauses is improved for better accuracy by training the in-built discovery model with wide variety of agreements. ICM discovery model now discovers out-of-the-box attributes from SOW type of agreements. 

The existing ObligationAI approach, which was model based, is now replaced by AI and Rule-based approach to discover obligations more accurately.

Contract negotiators can now: 

• Identify clauses and attributes from multiple MSA, NDA, IT MSA, SOW contract types more accurately and automatically using DiscoverAI and NegotiateAI apps. 
• Identify obligations from MSA, NDA and SOW contract types more accurately and automatically with ObligationAI.
• Select a discovery model specific to contract types to discover attributes and clauses with better accuracy as compared to other models.

575399 – UX revamp to display discovered attributes and original document side-by-side

Previously, contract negotiators had to periodically visit the AI discovery section to check for discovery completion. Then, they had to switch to the Document View in order to review the recommendations given by the AI algorithm.

With this release, when contract negotiators trigger the discovery process, they can view the progress of AI discovery on the agreement Details page. They will be able to view:

• The progress of all four discovery processes.
• The percentage of discovery process completed for each of discovery process and the overall discovery process.
• The approximate time it would take to complete the individual discovery process and the overall discovery process.

Contract negotiators will now have an option to launch an interface in a new tab/window where the discovered clauses, attributes, etc. are displayed along with the agreement document. An option is now available to launch side-by-side view of the document along with the discovered entities. Using this option, users can view different sections for discovered clauses, attributes, tables and obligations. 

Contract negotiators also have an option to search within the agreement document. The results are highlighted to the user and a count is displayed. Users can also save any changes made in the individual discovery sections.

 

575455 – Ability to process multiple documents simultaneously during the discovery process

Previously, upon receiving multiple requests, the AI discovery model added them in a queue form and processed each document individually. With this release, the discovery performance has been enhanced such that multiple documents can be processed simultaneously and within lesser time.

Users can now start the discovery process for their document without waiting for other discovery processes to complete. A total of 20 documents can now be processed in parallel.

The duration for a document discovery to be completed depends on the number of pages in a document. For example, discovery process for a .docx file with 10 pages and 1 table will take 120 seconds to complete; whereas one with 500 pages and 15 tables will take 1800 seconds.

 

602198 – Support for user created attributes in NLP search

Previously, the ICM AI enabled mode of searching allowed users to search agreements using a spoken language statement. With this release, the functionality has been enhanced to support user defined attributes as well. For example, queries such as “contract value above 20000 USD”, “contract value below 20000 USD”, “contract value between 20000 USD and 2000000 USD” and so on, can be entered to search contracts of a certain value.
 

 

Enhancements to Reports

570314 – All core SSRS reports to only include contract types classified as Contracting

ICM offers the functionality to classify Business Application Type/ Contracting agreement type at contract type level. With this release, core reports will be limited to Contracting business application type.

606134 – All Power BI Reports to only include contract types classified as Contracting

Users with access to Power BI dashboards will now only see data of agreements with business application type as Contracting while accessing the Business Summary, Legal Summary and Legal Details reports.

Since the Custom report is common to sourcing and contracting, having a filter which is configurable makes the experience more user-friendly than only restricting the create report for contracting use cases only.

 

567137 – Ability to add datasets for associated documents in Power BI for obligation and management

In order to have a comprehensive view of the state of obligation compliance users needed to have self-serve ways to build reports and dashboards. Users have now been given the flexibility to build reports on obligation compliance across hierarches – from agreements and obligations to fulfillments and fulfillment evidences. 

With this release, users have the option for slice and dice for viewing and narrowing down to the right type of Obligations for any given context. Advanced Analytics with Power BI is the ICM offering to let customers create and view custom reports. Users will now have OM application datasets for Agreement, Obligation and Fulfillment entities in the Power BI data model as well. 

With the additional data sets, users will be able to generate reports on Power BI such as for:

• The aggregate fulfillment status for a given obligation, especially for recurring fulfillments.
• Number of days it took for a fulfillment cycle, which is for an obligation or fulfillment to move from created to approved state.

657965 – Support for Service Principal Authentication method for Power BI

ICM has now extended support for Service Principal Authentication method to authenticate Power BI resources for Advanced Analytics. It has been implemented as the default method of Power BI authentication for improved security. However, the option to continue with the current authentication method of using user credentials for Power BI is still available.

 

573000 – Sub-role included in Detailed and User Profiling Reports

ICM provides the ability to define sub-roles for the Approver role. With this, all the capabilities of the Approver are enabled for users at the sub-role level. This capability has now been extended to reports so that users can have relevant information and make informed decisions. 

With this release, the Detailed Report, User Profiling Report and Agreements Pending Approval Report have now been modified to display the Approver sub-roles such as Contract Admin, Legal Approver and others.

 

573621 - Enhancement to reports processing error message

Previously, when viewing reports resulted in processing errors, the No data available message was displayed. This message has now been modified for clarity, as follows:
An error occurred during report processing, if the issue persist kindly contact customer support team.

 

601540 - Unavailability of Template Clause Report as Dashboard KPI

With this release, the Template Clause Report has been deprecated from the Dashboard KPIs. However, it will still be accessible from the Reports tile.

 

 

Integrations

541825 – Integration with the new eSignature platform   

With this release, customers can now use Namirial eSignAnyWhere as their electronic signature platform to send the agreements electronically for signatures to internal and external signatories. The invited signatories receive an email notification with a link to the document to review and sign or decline to sign or to delegate the action. The agreement will be executed once the document is signed electronically by all the involved signatories.   

Contract administrators can track the status of the agreements sent for signature within ICM. They can also recall the agreement sent for signature, if it was not signed by all parties.

569172 – Enabling Electronic seal tag for signing agreement documents   

Previously, users were able to sign agreements based on signature tags present in the agreement templates.   

With this release, ICM has extended the support for enabling electronic seal tags in templates that will be used for marking electronic seals during the signature process using DocuSign. The support of electronic seals will help the organization’s legal teams to certify the integrity and the origin of the contracts.

 

579067 – Ability to support additional electronic signature platforms

Just like support has been extended to Namirial eSignAnyWhere in addition to DocuSign and Adobe Sign for electronic signatures, ICM has enhanced adaptability by making it possible to implement and integrate any other electronic signature provider as well based on customer requirements.

 

572516 – SAP S/4 Supplier masterdata integration  

The Icertis Experience for SAP S/4 HANA allows users to search, display and select S/4 HANA masterdata required for completing the contracting process within ICM.

The ICM Experience for S/4 HANA adapter:

• Allows periodic data sync between S/4 HANA masterdata and ICM masterdata tables.
• Can be configured such that ICM Admin ca configure the data sync jobs and the related entity mappings.
• Is agnostic to masterdata entity i.e. it is generic enough to support any masterdata that the customer would like to sync from S/4 HANA into ICM to complete contracting business process. 

Some key use cases that customers should be able to configure the adapter to include:

• Supplier master data from S/4 HANA to ICM.
• Material/Items master data from S/4 HANA to ICM.
• Payment master (Terms, Types) from S/4 HANA to ICM.

 

572517 – SAP S/4 HANA masterdata lookup 

With this release, ICM and ICM business applications (Sourcing and Obligation Management) have been integrated with SAP S/4 HANA to render masterdata lookup from SAP S/4 HANA.

 
573373 – Generic integration framework to support contract requests via ASB

Previously, ICM supported a generic ASB adapter for inbound and outbound integration for Agreements. With this release, support is provided for creating contract requests for agreements. Users will now be able to create and update Contract Requests in ICM using an external application.

 

573377 – Generic integration framework to support associations via ASB

Previously, ICM supported a generic ASB adapter for inbound and outbound integration only for agreements. With this release, support is provided for creating contract requests for the agreements. Users will now be able to create and update contract requests in ICM using an external application.  

The ASB adapter will pick the JSON payload from the message queue and create associations to an existing agreement or RFx record in ICM. Users will thus be able to manage purchase requisitions, purchase orders, sourcing events and similar tasks by sending associated data.  

 

573379 – Generic integration framework to support amendments via ASB

Contract amendments are an integral part of business flow and the support for amendment integration is critical for businesses. With this release, the generic integrations ASB adapter will be able to update amendments to an agreement on the created, updated, approved and executed actions. 

 

594454 – Support for JSON files and Blob connectors

Previously, CSV files were supported for masterdata upload using ASB and SFTP, whereas text-based files were supported for uploads using SFTP. 

With this release, the file-based integration will additionally support JSON file format, while also supporting Blob connectors. Additionally, a new attribute Post Process Log has been added, which indicates the Service Bus topic to which the payload will be moved after its processing. 

In addition to post process logs, persistent logs have also been introduced in the ICM database for all processing failures. These logs will be used for reporting purposes.

 

554864/554868 – Support for request review and upload actions in Salesforce grid

Previously, ICM users could manage and execute contract management tasks using Salesforce Classic and Lightning user interface. The Icertis Experience for Salesforce introduced support for the following actions at the grid level: Assemble, Download and Send for Approval. 

With this release, support has been extended for the Send for Review and Upload document actions, thus considerably improving usability.  The action buttons displayed on the user interface are based on the privileges assigned to the user via role action mapping in ICM . The agreement can be sent for review to multiple users by selecting the users from the available list.

Note: If a user wants to view or edit a contract record, they will still have to double-click the contract record which will open the contract Details page in Salesforce. 

 

537774 – Ability to create contracts based on Opportunity or Quote

Previously, users could only manage contracts using the Icertis Experience for Salesforce. They did not have the option to automatically initiate a contract based on an Opportunity or Quote status. 

With this release, the contract creation process has been automated based on opportunity or quote status, will increase the productivity of sales users.
Sales Admin users can now:

• Configure the opportunity or quote status which can automatically trigger the contract creation.
• Configure the contract type which should be used to create the contract based on data from an Opportunity or Quote.
• Define the Type of Paper to be used as Own or Third Party.
• Configure automated contract creation or manual contract creation by creating a task for the opportunity (for which a contract needs to be created). 
  • If there is a task to manually create a contract, Sales users will be able to create a contract using a single button click that will assemble all necessary documents for the type of contract to be created i.e. follow the same steps as above.
  • For auto creation of contracts, the ICM for Salesforce will determine the dependencies for the contract. For example, if the opportunity is for an extension, the existing master agreement for the account will be identified and an appropriate contract type such as an order form will be selected and associated with it.

Additionally, Salesforce users will receive a Task and/or Chatter notification whenever a contract is automatically created.

 

580066 – Ability to redirect emails when testing Adobe Sign eSignature on other instances

As a part of the signature process, emails to signatories are triggered via Adobe Sign, starting from when the agreement is sent for signature till the agreement is signed. However, when ICM is set up on non-production environments, these emails need to be redirected (or overridden) so that real business users are not flooded with emails that require no action from them while the instances are being set up for testing purpose.

 
574458 – ICM task integration to Salesforce tasks

Previously, Salesforce users could manage all internal and external tasks within Salesforce itself. However, they could not manage ICM tasks from within Salesforce.  

With this release, ICM users can now: 

• Manage ICM tasks from within Salesforce. The tasks created in ICM are pushed to Salesforce that allows to view the summary of the tasks with the attributes such as Task Name, Status, Priority, Due Date.  
• View the task details after it is available in Salesforce. 
• Configure ICM task integration with Salesforce.  

 

ICM Platform Tools

588361 – PToP support for ICM

The 7.11 release, some enhancements were made to the Promote To Production (PToP) tool such as Vulnerability and Penetration Testing (VAPT) fixes, testing open bugs in PToP engine, some validations in the PToP engine, and an improved user interface to provide support to PToP and DevOps teams.

With this release, changes have been made in ICM to support the PToP engine. This functionality, provided to administrators, can promote ICM configurations/modifications that are made to ICM configurations in pre-production environments to production environments. This tool provides support for contract types, contract type attributes, clauses and templates (along with the documents), notification templates, rules, masterdata, users, user groups and security groups. The elastic search sync is also supported by the tool.

Note: UI changes on contract type, rule set, notification template are not included.

 

561717 – PToP support for Daimler

With this release, changes have been made in ICM to support the PToP engine. This functionality, provided to Administrators, can promote ICM configurations/modifications that are made to ICM configurations in pre-production environments to production environments.

This functionality:

• Provides AWS Support for File Copy in Auto PToP tool.
• Supports for movement of Security Group, User Group and Rule. 
• Gets the list of entities for which ES Sync has failed when ES Sync is not successful.
• Provides upfront validation for Source and Target DB version mismatch before actual P2P validation process starts.
• Gives an option to enable DB, ES and Store backup before PToP starts which is helpful for complex PToP.
• Gives a validation error if the same entity is added multiple times, so that PToP does not fail.
• Supports saved searches.
• Supports User groups, Security Groups and Org Groups (which is done through manual PToP in Daimler).
• Supports terminated clauses and templates. This is required when a user makes a mistake, for example in language, and this already has been pushed to production.
• Provides validations of PToP task using a small tool in Daimler to validate names of all clauses and templates, thus helping to resolve issues in naming CSV files, naming in ICM, etc. This is checked through VBA script). Also, users may need to manually verify Is Latest which may be in an issue in environments.

Note: Customers using ICM version before 7.12 need to upgrade to use this feature.
 

Technical Requirements for Release 7.12

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 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:

 

Known Issues for Release 7.12