Collaboration in Contracts

Previously, stakeholders involved in the contracting/sourcing process used to communicate via external tools such as Email, Skype, etc. Managing these conversations that involved multiple stakeholders and multiple discussions was a cumbersome task. With this release, ICM has eliminated the need to use external tools and created a dedicated space available within the Agreement itself. 
To collaborate, multiple stakeholders involved in the contracting/sourcing process can:
•    Use the Collaboration tab available inside the Agreement
•    Provision an internal/external Team member to communicate with other internal or external team member(s) by creating Topics and posting messages in it
•    Provision users to send and receive attachments along with the message
•    Provision users to mark the Topic as closed once the discussion is concluded
•    Send Email notification to participants when messages are posted in the topic
This can be achieved by setting the Enable Collaboration flag to Yes on the Agreement Contract Type, which displays a Collaboration tab on the Agreement Details page. To prevent data loss, once Collaboration is enabled for a Contract Type, it cannot be disabled.
 

Configuring Collaboration for Contract Types

To enable Collaboration for Contract Types:
1.    Click the Configuration tile on the Dashboard. The Configuration page opens.
 
2.    Click the Create Contract Type tile. The Create Contract Type page opens.
 
3.    Select the Agreement Contract Type you want to create. 
 
4.    Click Next. The Create Contract Type page opens.
5.    Enter a name in the Contract Type Name field. For example, Collaboration Contract Type.
6.    Enter all the details on the Details tab. 
7.    Toggle the Enable Collaboration flag to Yes to enable Collaboration at Agreement level.
Note: The Enable Collaboration flag is only available for Agreement Contract Type.

   
 
8.    Click Next. The Attributes tab opens.
9.    Enter the details in the remaining Attributes, Association, Display Preference, Team, and Verify tabs to send the Collaboration Contract Type to Approved state. Alternatively, you can edit an already existing Contract Type to enable the Collaboration tab.
Note: To prevent data loss, once the Enable Collaboration field is toggled to Yes, it cannot be turned back to No. 
Creating a new Topic and sending Messages by Internal user
Section 1.1    Sending Messages
(a)    Creating a Topic by Internal user and Sending Messages to another Internal user
1.    Click the Agreement Management tile on the Dashboard. The Agreement Management page opens. 
 
2.    Click the Create Agreement tab. The Create Agreement page opens.
  
3.    Enter all the details in the Create Agreement page.
4.    Click the Collaboration tab on the Agreement’s Details page. The Collaboration page opens in the right pane indicating that there is no topic for you to collaborate. 
 
5.    Click the New Topic icon. The Create a New Topic window opens.
•    You can now select participants who will collaborate and able to send and receive messages for a topic related to the agreement. For example, let’s collaborate with an Internal user, CLM Admin.
 
6.    To select Participants for the Topic, click the Add Team Members icon or you can select all Team members. The Select Participant(s) window opens. For example, let’s collaborate with an Internal user, CLM Admin.
 
7.   Click Add. The Create a New Topic window opens displaying the Participant.
8.    You can choose to keep the topic confidential from other users by toggling the Do you want to mark this topic as Confidential flag to Yes. In that case, Internal users that are part of the Topic conversation will not be able to view and reply the Topic.
9.    Enter the Subject for the Topic. 
10.    Enter the message in the Message field. 
 
11.    Click Create. The Topic is created. Based on the confidentiality, participants or other team members can view the created topic, in the Topics window of the Collaboration page.
Note: A notification email will be sent to the participants in the To section of the topic. In this example, it will go to the Participant - CLM Admin. 
 
 
(b)    Sending Message to External user
Let’s create a Topic and add Lee Yen Po as an External user.
1.    Click Show more option at the bottom right corner of the Agreement Details page.
2.    Click Collaborate. The Select User window opens. Let’s select the external user Lee Yen Po.
 
3.   Click Add. The Agreement collaborated successfully message is displayed, and the External user is added to the Team.
 
 
4.    Click the Collaboration tab on the Agreement’s Details page. 
5.    Click the New Topic icon. The Create a New Topic window opens.
6.    To select Participants for the Topic, click the Add Team Members icon or you can select all Team members. For example, let’s collaborate with an External user, Lee Yen Po.
 
7.    Click Add. The Create a New Topic window opens displaying the Participant. 
8.    You can choose to keep the topic confidential from other users by toggling the Do you want to mark   this topic as Confidential flag to Yes.
9.    Enter the Subject for the Topic. 
10.    Enter the message in the Message field. 
 
11.    Click Create. The Topic is created. The participants can view this topic in the Topics window of the Collaboration page and the body of the message at the right.
Note: A notification email will be sent to the External Participant – Lee Yen Po of this Topic. 
 
Details such as who initiated the conversation, who took the last action on a Topic, along with the Date, are displayed in the window.
 
Section 1.2    Replying Messages
(a)    Replying Message from External to Internal user
Now let’s see how the provisioned external user Lee Yen Po can respond to the message.
1.    Click the Collaboration tab of the Agreement Details page. 
 
2.    Click Reply to respond to the selected message. 
Based on the confidentiality, a message posted by an external user will be visible to participants or other team members, but not external users.
3.    Click Send. A notification email will be sent to all the recipients of this Topic. The authorized ICM user can see the external user response in the Topics window of the Collaboration tab.

 
 
Note: Internal and external users are identified in a Topic with two different colors.  

Let’s see how the Internal user view the External user’s response.
 
Note: Broadcast icon only be available when the internal users reply to all the participants.
 
Note: Reply/Reply All to reply to a single participant or broadcast the message to all participants respectively. 
 
Creating a new Topic and sending Messages by External user
Section 1.3    Sending Messages by External user
(a)    Creating a Topic by External user and Sending Messages to Internal user
1.    Click the Agreement Management tile on the Dashboard. The Agreement Management page opens. 
 
2.    Select the Agreement where you want to Collaborate. For example, SaaS Agreement.
 
3.    Click the Collaboration tab on the Agreement’s Details page. The Collaboration page opens in the right pane. 
 
4.    Click the New Topic icon. The Create a New Topic window opens.
 
 
5.    Enter the Subject for the Topic. 
6.    Enter the message in the Message field. 
7.    Click Create. The Topic is created. The participants can view this topic in the Topics window of the Collaboration page and the body of the message at the right.
A notification email will be sent to the Internal user of this Agreement as shown below. 
 
 
Section 1.4    Searching Messages
A user can search messages across topics using the Search tab available in the Collaboration window.  
To search messages in a topic:
1.    Enter the keyword in the Search for Messages field. For example, let’s search the word - Can. All the topics where the message contains the searched criteria are rendered in the search result along with the search word is highlighted.
 

 
Section 1.5    Closing the Topics
An Internal user can close the topic when the discussion/conversation is concluded. Once closed, the user cannot reply to a conversation or reopen the topic. 
To close a topic:
1.    Click Close Topic to end any Topic conversation. A message is displayed indicating that once you closed the topic, you can no longer post any new messages in this topic.
 
2.    Click Yes. The Topic is now closed.
 
The message is displayed in the message window indicating the name of the user who closed the topic along with the date and time.