Revision as of 05:18, 31 August 2019

ICM Release Notes - Release 7.9

Overview of Release 7.9

The 7.9 Release introduces significant enhancements to the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform. It strives to improve user experience and intuitiveness by continually improving the ICM user interface.

The key enhancements of this release include:

• Enhancements in AI applications such as providing the Agreement/Clause Similarity functions and some UX improvements in the Negotiate AI app, supporting Obligation discovery on Templates and incorporating user actions feedback in the Obligation AI app, adding some hooks in the Visualize AI app to support custom visualization, and adding support for Table discovery in the Discover AI app.
• Improving the ICM infrastructure to determine the Application Type (Contracting, Sourcing, Proposal, Obligation Management, and Supplier Lifecycle Management) when creating a Contract Type.
• Allowing multiple stakeholders to collaborate within ICM itself, thus eliminating the need for using external tools such as Email, Skype, etc.
• Enhancing Search filters to include Team roles. The search capabilities have been further improved to allow searching of Agreements and Associated documents based on Clause usage, so that users can tackle the high risk Agreements first and mitigate risks.
• Improving usability by allowing the comparison of any two versions of the Agreement document, displaying a banner for an announcement or scheduled event, Introducing the bulk import tool to import Templates/Clauses in bulk along with tagging and rules, enhancing bulk upload capability to create an assignment or initiate termination, provision users, and add team members when creating or updating an Agreement/Amendment.
• Introducing the ability to tag the same Masterdata localized Attribute multiple times to support bilingual Templates within ICM.
• Improving the ability to create Rules by introducing new conditions such as Has A Value and supporting Power Set conditions for multi-select data 
• Extending support to Template Variables to be able to track the dependency between the Contract Type Attributes and Template Variables.
• Improving Power Business Intelligence (BI) usability by making some UX related changes, displaying the Power BI Dashboard on the Advanced Analytics tile and improving the user experience.
• Refining Reports to display the Date and Time as per user preferences in addition to more reports now being available on the Dashboard as KPIs.
• Improving the Icertis Experience by:

• Introducing a new .JS version of the ICM Outlook Plugin to be able to upload the next version of the Agreement Document and Associated Document, or creating a new Association instance and the uploading the Associated Document received over Email to the Agreement, thus reducing the overall turnaround time for the author.
• Introducing a new field for Salesforce users named Field Set Name so that the Adapter reads the metadata and sends only the Attributes defined for the entity when the integration is triggered from Salesforce. It also allows using Attributes defined at the Template level to store critical data as part of the Agreement and sync with Salesforce, thus avoiding data duplication and redundancy in the process.
• Collaborating with Microsoft Team to provide a seamless user experience when authoring contracts, negotiations, or when discussing ideas and exchanging files, and in turn significantly improving the cycle time.
• Configuring the ICM Workday Adapter so that Executed Agreements can be attached as .PDF, instead of .docx.
• Providing the capability to upload a manually signed copy of an Agreement document using the Print, sign and upload capability of Adobe Sign, and supporting redlining in Associations tagged as a Table in a Template or Agreement document, in addition to allowing the user to send supporting documents along with the main Agreement for signature when using Adobe Sign.

</ul>

These Release Notes provide an overview of enhancements to ICM and the ICM Experience for Integrations. Refer to the detailed Wiki documentation for explanation and capabilities of these and all other ICM features and functionalities.

ICM Application Enhancements

420230 – Extend Contract Type definition to be able to describe the Application Type  
ICM offers the ability to determine the Application Type (Contracting, Sourcing, Proposal, Obligation Management, and Supplier Lifecycle Management) when creating a Contract Type. This is possible with the inclusion of two new Choice type Attributes, Business Application Type and Business Application Category at the Contract Type level. This feature helps effortlessly drive Business Application on the ICM platform. These Attributes are applicable for Agreements and Associated Document Contract Types, after the Business Application is enabled through a technical configuration. The access privileges for Business Applications such as Sourcing, are driven through Security Groups.
 

• 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 discussion is concluded.
• Send Email notification to participants when messages are posted in the topic

452265 – Ability to compare any 2 versions of the document
Previously, users could only see the comparison between the last and the current version of the Agreement. This functionality has now been enhanced so that the user can compare any two of the available versions of the Agreement as required.
 

408652 – Displaying an Announcement Banner
ICM has now improved user experience by providing the capability of displaying a scrolling banner message to inform users of a scheduled event or an announcement. For example, you can inform users that a maintenance activity is scheduled in 24 hours. A banner will scroll at the top of the ICM window alerting the users of the downtime, so that they can plan their work accordingly. This can be achieved through Application Settings by toggling the Show announcement banner field to Yes and entering the message to be displayed in the Announcement message box.
 

456074/439569/439668/467828  – Enhancements to Bulk Upload
ICM has now enhanced usability by making the following enhancements to the Bulk Upload functionality so that you can:

• Provision users (which was earlier available only for Legacy Upload)
• Add Team members when creating an Agreement or Amendment
• Add Team members when updating Agreement or Amendment 
• Create Assignment and initiate the Termination of Agreements
   

382235 – Power BI Integration with ICM 
With this release, in effort to improve Power BI usability, some changes have been made and some additional functionalities have been added.

• The following UX related changes have been made:
  • Last Updated On text is changed to Data Source updated successfully 
  • The Refresh icon (which shows the minimum time of refresh cycle among all datasets) is changed to the Refresh page button
• If the session is going to time out, the Advanced Analytics page will display the standard ICM time out alert to the user.
• The Save your report option is now available for global reports. Users can save a copy of the report. It is visible in the user’s My Reports section and can be modified as required. If special characters are added to the report name, an error message will be displayed.
• You can edit the saved global report using the Edit Report Name option. If special characters are added when renaming a report, an error message will be displayed.
• You can also delete this report using the Delete Report option if it is no longer relevant.
• Power BI Dashboard is now available in the Advanced Analytics section. The Advanced Analytics tile now displays the following 3 tabs:
  • Business Summary: displays the following based on the defined KPIs and the authorization of the user (for example, Finance Head):
    • Agreement Summary such as Top Agreements by Value, Top Expiring Agreements, etc. (based on the defined KPIs).
    • Deviations Summary such as Deviated Agreements and Contract Value (s) by Org Unit, Deviated Agreements by Contract Type, etc. 
    • Expiring Agreements such as Expiring Agreements by Month, Agreements marked for Auto-Renewal, etc. 
    • Cycle Time Report such as Cycle Time (in Days) by Contract Types, Trend of Cycle Time by Month, etc. 
    • Configuration Statistics such as Distribution of Templates by Contract Types, Clauses by Category, etc. 
  • Legal Summary: displays the following based on the defined KPIs and the authorization of the user (for example, Legal Head).
  • Legal Details: displays the legal details at a more granular level based on the defined KPIs and the authorization of the user (for example, Legal Head).
• When creating reports, you can configure Power BI such that you can select what data you want to view. For example, you can only view the Agreements and Templates, but hide the Clauses. The same applies when asking a question. 
   

Enhancements to Rules

288372 – Inclusion of Clauses and Clause properties in Search facets 
ICM has further enhanced the search capabilities by allowing searches on Agreements, Amendments, and Advanced Search based on Clause usage. This allows users to prioritize the Agreements they plan to work based on Clause usage, thus being able to tackle high-risk Agreements first and mitigating risks.
You can now search and filter Agreements using the following Clause categories: Clause Group, Clause Language, Clause Name, Is Alternate Clause, Is Dependent Clause, Is Deviated, Is Editable, Is Mandatory, Perform Deviation Analysis, Primary Clause, and Clause Code.
Note: Clause Description, Clause Text, Linked Primary Clauses, Clause Status, Linked Primary Template Clause, and search based on Clause text area are also not supported in Clause categories. 
 

397346 – Ability to create Rule with Has A Value condition 
With this release, the Has A Value condition has been enhanced to include all Data Types and system defined Attributes such that Rules can be set up for an Attribute having any value.
For example, you want to set up a Rule so that an Approver John Doe should approve the Contract if a discount is applicable to it, irrespective of the value of the discount. Then, user can add a Rule using the Has A Value condition, such that John Doe is added as an Approver, if the discount has a value of 5%, 10% or whatever value is desired. 
Earlier this condition supported only a limited set of user defined and system Attributes, but now it has been enhanced to support all Data Types and additional system Attributes. It is now also available for the following Contract Type Attributes and Data Types: Contract Type Lookup, Contract Type Multi-Select Lookup, Choice, Multi-Select Choice, Number, Currency, Percentage, Date, DateTime, and URL. In addition, it is also available for system Attributes such as Template Name and Type Of Paper. 
 

408653 – Enhancing Rules to support Power Set conditions for multi-select data 
Currently, ICM supports only the Contains/Does Not Contain conditions for multi-select data. The Contains operator does not check whether all selected values of the Attribute are a subset of expected values, but only checks for any one of them. Thus, when the Rules were evaluated, even the Templates, Approvers, Clauses, etc. that are not required get executed.
To avoid this confusion, Rules have been further augmented so that the user can configure conditions for power sets (i.e. cases where the user wants a Rule to be executed only if the entity field contains a subset of the configured values). This is achieved by introducing the new operator, Subset of, which is applicable to only multi-select lookup that supports evaluation of string, number, user, percentage and email data types only.
Let’s consider the example of a Template Selection Rule to select multiple products using the Subset of operator. Suppose, the Rule is defined such that Template 1 should be selected if the selection is a subset of Products A, B, C, then: 

• If the user selects any subset of products {A,B,C} like A,B or B,C or A,C or A,B,C, then Template 1 will be available for selection
• If the user selects any subset of products {A,B,C} & any other product like A,B,C,D or A,B,E, then Template 1 will NOT be available for selection

Enhancements to Templates

419834 –Localization of Masterdata Attributes to support bilingual Agreements/Templates  
Earlier, ICM did not directly support bilingual Agreements and Templates. As a result, users had to tag multiple Attributes in a Template for different languages thereby ending up duplicating multiple attributes in a Contract Type.
To simplify this process and facilitate bilingual templates, ICM has introduced the ability to tag the same Masterdata localized Attribute multiple times for different languages which can be tagged in a bilingual Template. This allows the user to manage the same Attribute with a different language in the same Template or Agreement. The support for bilingual templates allows the user to specify the second language for the Template and also be able to tag localized Attributes in the Template with the second language.
Note: 

• It only supports string Attributes.
• Localization of Masterdata Attributes is applicable for - Template level support for Primary/Secondary language, Word Add-in (.NET and Scribe), Agreement and Clause tags, Document Assembly, and Rule-based Assembly.
• Rules will be evaluated in English for the Masterdata localized Attributes.
• Advanced Search also supports the localization of Masterdata Attributes.
• It is not applicable for Associations, Template Variables, Reverse Sync, and support tags on the Parent Agreement Clause.
   

Enhancements to Artificial Intelligence Apps in ICM

386571 – Enhancements in AI Apps 
The Negotiate AI, Obligation AI and Visualize AI app have been merged to the ICM platform and these apps have been enhanced to improve their usability.

• The Negotiate AI app has been enhanced to provide the following functionality for an ICM user in context of a contract being viewed in MS Word:
  • Agreement Clause Similarity functionality
  • Agreement Similarity functionality
  • UX improvements
• The Obligation AI app has been enhanced to:
  • Incorporate user actions feedback in subsequent obligation discovery without extensive re-training of the model
  • Support Obligation discovery on Templates
• The Visualize AI app has been enhanced using hooks that have been provided to support custom visualization. These hooks will be present at the following stages:
  • Data Fetching
  • Data Transformation
  • Data Rendering

Note:These apps are available in ICM through a technical configuration. They work on Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows version 16.0.4390.1000 or later, and Office .JS installed.

• Discover the Associated Document data and the Association type if present in the uploaded Agreement document
• Update the table if needed
• Create a new Associated Document in ICM once the data is finalized

Enhancements to ICM Add-ins

334171 – Enhancements in Email Outlook Plugin (.JS version)  
With this release, a new .JS version of the ICM Outlook Plugin has been introduced. The overall turnaround time for the author is reduced as he no longer needs to download the documents received over email to the local machine, then switch applications and log in to ICM, search the Agreement and then upload the documents.
The provisioned user can now:

• Upload the next version of the Agreement document received over an Email to the Agreement
• Upload the next version of the Associated document (supporting Attachments) received over an Email to the Agreement
• Create a new Association instance and then upload the Associated Document received over an Email to the Agreement

The configuration of the Outlook Add-in is driven by the Masterdata, whereas the list of Agreements and their details are configured by the Saved Searches. You can configure multiple saved searches. This is available for MS Outlook online as well as the Desktop client. 

397327 – Ability to drive dependency of Template Variables on Agreement Attributes 
With this release, ICM has extended support to Template Variables being conditional to the value of the Attributes that are part of a Contract Type. The user can track the dependency between the Contract Type Attribute and Template Variable as well as eliminate the creation of duplicate Attributes between them. 
This can be achieved by any user with Manage access on Template Management tile by enabling the Is Conditional flag for each Template Variable when creating or editing a Template. When Is Conditional is On, a user is able to set a dependent condition on the Template Variable by using Depends on Contract Type Attribute flag On and its related Depends On Attribute drop-down and Depends On Value field. 
The following conditions decide the dependency between the Template Variable and Contract Type Attribute:  

• When Depends on Contract Type Attribute is On, then it displays the Contract Type Attribute in the Depends On Attribute drop-down list. 
• When Depends on Contract Type Attribute is Off, then it displays the Template Variable in theDepends On Attribute drop-down list. 

For each selected Attribute from Depends On Attribute drop-down list, the user can then enter the Depends On Value that will drive the dependency. 
 

384321 – Deviation Tracking when Association is tagged as a Table 
Previously, modifications made to Associations or Saved Search (such as adding or removing rows/columns or changing the values in individual cells) that were tagged as a table in a Template did not reflect in the new version of the Agreement document. 
With this release, redlining of these changes will be visible on the Versions tab of the Agreement Document, thus allowing the contract negotiator to make informed decisions accordingly. 
Note: Deviation tracking and reverse sync of the changed table data to the respective Association instances is not supported. ICM Scribe supports this capability unlike ICM .Net Add-in but provides limited information. Table comparison is only shown when cell values get changed not when empty cells get added or removed. 
 

Enhancements to Reports

275838 – All Reports should display Date and Time in Time Zone set by user in User Preferences  
With this release, all reports now display the Date and Time in the Time Zone set by the user in User Preferences. 
Previously, all date related columns and parameters in all ICM reports were displayed in the UTC Time Zone in the mm/dd/yyyy format. This led to a discrepancy with the dates displayed in ICM which were as per the locale settings in the user preferences. With this release, all reports will also display the Date and Time as per the Time Zone set by the user in the user preferences. 

However, the following points need to be noted:

• The UTC format disclaimer has been removed.
• When reports are exported to CSV format, the Date and Time format of the Date columns will be as per the user's local machine format, not as per the User Preferences set in ICM.
• In all the reports where dates are input parameters, the default value of parameter on first time load will be displayed as per UTC time zone (as SSRS report server has UTC time zone set). However, when the user inputs any date thereafter, the reports will be generated as per the user's local time zone.
• If the Date format selected is dd-mmm-yy, then there is technical limitation of displaying same format for dates in parameter section, as it converts the Date to Month and vice versa. Hence, as a workaround, the Date format in the report parameter is displayed as mmmm dd,yyyy. However, the Date format in report data will be shown as per the user preferences only.
• All other date formats remain unimpacted.

385409 – New Reports added to KPIs 
Earlier, only few reports were available on the Dashboard as KPI.  Now, the user can also add the following reports as KPI tiles (through Security Groups) for user accessibility:

• Cycle Time Report: Average cycle time of all Agreement of all Contract Types in Days
• Template Clause Report: Average number of Clauses per Template with Template and Clause Is Latest = Yes
• Expired Agreements Report: Count of Agreements expired in the last 30 days
• Approved Requests for Contract Initiation Report: Count of Requests pending for Contract initiation
• Signature Type Report: Percentage of Contracts with electronic signature with no decimal digits (% sign to be shown)
• User Login Report: Count of Users logged in last 30 days
• CLM Activity Report: Count of Contracts executed in last 30 days

For example, the Signature Type Report KPI depicts the percentage of electronic signature in ICM. If the number of electronic signatures is 6 and the number of manual signatures is 83, then the KPI is calculated as 6/83+6 = 6/89 (total number of agreements). Therefore, the percentage of electronic signatures is 6 (which is the number displayed on the KPI tile on the Dashboard).

The reports that were already present as KPIs on the Dashboard included the Agreement Deviation Report, Agreements Pending Approval Report, Agreements Pending Execution Report, Average Agreement Turn Around Time Report, Clauses Pending Approval Report, Expiring Agreements Report, and theTemplates Pending Approval Report.

Integrations

Integrations with Collaboration Tools

370460 – ICM Integration with MS Teams 
By integrating the ICM platform with MS Teams, users can collaborate for contract authoring, negotiations, etc. This not only provides a better, seamless user experience, but also helps to discuss ideas or exchange files, and in turn significantly improve the cycle time. You can ping, chat with members within or outside the Agreement Team. The chat will be saved in the MS Teams History. 
Through this integration, we support:

• Exposing ICM Bot through the Teams app
• Querying for a filtered list of Agreements using ICM Bot
• Querying My Pending Tasks using the ICM Bot 
• General ICM FAQ
   

Icertis Experience for Salesforce

348588 – Configuring Field Set from Salesforce to ICM using Rest API 
With this release, a new field called Field Set Name has been introduced that can be configured using the Configuration page which is accessible through the managed application available in Salesforce AppExchange. When the integration is triggered from Salesforce, the Adapter can read the metadata and send only the Attributes defined for the entity Field Set. If the Field Set is not defined, the Adapter sends all the Attributes for that entity.  
Note: It is necessary to create a new Field Set for every Salesforce entity. The field set determines the fields that the user can edit in a particular Salesforce entity instead of having to select each field individually. For example, a Field Set created for an Opportunity can have fields such as Opportunity Name, Opportunity ID, etc. 

397315 – Create mapping between Template Variable for Agreements and SFDC fields 
The ICM Salesforce Adapter allows mapping of Salesforce entities and their Attributes to be integrated with ICM for data flow from Salesforce to ICM (Forward Sync) as well as ICM to Salesforce (Reverse Sync). This was previously done using Client App Entity Mapping on the Masterdata Configuration page which allows mapping the ICM Attributes from Contract Types, but not from Agreement Templates.
With this release, Administrators can now use Attributes defined at Template level to store critical external data as part of the Agreement and sync with Salesforce, thus avoiding data duplication and redundancy in the process.
 

Icertis Experience for Workday

384529 – Executed PDF from ICM to Workday 
Customers using Workday ERP application to manage their procure-to-pay process want to have end-to-end integration to Icertis Contract Management (ICM) platform for managing their procurement process. 
Icertis platform already supports integration to Workday Financials and HCM via an Adapter. As part of this integration, contracts authored in the ICM platform can be sent to Workday via the Adapter and attached to Workday contracts in .docx format. 
Now, with the help of Event based configuration in the Adapter, it is possible to send the Agreement document in .PDF or .docx format to Workday for a specific event. 
 

Enhancements to Adobe Sign and DocuSign

344436 – Support for Print, sign and upload (Wet Signed Copy) and sync back in ICM 
Adobe Sign provides users the capability of signing documents manually using Print, sign and upload option. However, earlier when the Agreement Document was Wet signed and uploaded, it did not get synced back to ICM, and the Agreement would get blocked in that state. With this release, ICM supports syncing back the signed Agreement document and changed status, so that the user can proceed with the workflow as expected.
Note: 

• If the Wet Signatures Only option is checked, then system mandates all the users to sign the Agreement document using the Print, sign and upload option of Adobe Sign. 
• If the Wet Signatures Only option is not checked, then users can either sign it electronically or use the Print, sign and upload option to sign it manually. However, in this case if any user signs using the Print, sign and upload option, since all the Signature tags will be lost, Adobe Sign will add an additional page to the end of Agreement document that will have signature tags for subsequent signatories who are yet to sign. 
• Attribute sync back to ICM will only work for the first signatory. Once Adobe Sign’s Print-Sign-Upload option is used, Attribute tags are not available for subsequent signatories who are yet to sign the document.
• In case of parallel signatures, the Wet Signature option is not applicable. If the Wet Signature Only option is checked, then the Agreement will be stuck in the Approved state. 

Technical Requirements for Release 7.9

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