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Contract Workflow Statuses and Modes

Workflow Status

Use For

Draft

Contracts for which:

The author has not requested approval or has canceled his request

The author revised the contract after an approval has been given

The approver rejected the changes.

Pending Approval

Contracts for which the author has requested for approval, but were not approved or rejected yet.

Commit Ready

Contracts that were approved by the approver, but were not yet committed by the author.

Commit

Contract that was committed.

Changing a contract requires opening a new version (or a new contract), and applying the relevant changes. When changes are made to a contract, the workflow status is Draft. The Request Approval button is available for requesting approval for the change.

When sending this request, the contract version's new workflow status is Pending Approval. The author can add his/her remarks to the contract. An e-mail is sent to the address defined as the approver address.

Note: When creating a contract, if workflow is enabled, author and approver e-mail addresses must be defined. These definitions are defined per contract. The approver receives an e-mail request for approval with a short automated description of the contract, including the author's remarks and a link. That link opens to the Login page. Directly after login, the approver is directed to the Contract Details page. The Audit Trail feature is available, and the approver can view the changes that were made.

The approver can to approve or reject the changes. Approving this request sends an e-mail to the author and change the status to Commit Ready. Rejecting the changes sends a relevant e-mail and change the status to Draft.

If approval has been given, the next time the author logs in the Commit and Revise buttons are available. Clicking the Commit button commits the contract and the workflow status is Commit. Pressing the Revise button enables the author to insert more changes. The workflow status is Draft and the process is as described above.

Note: Contract workflows are dependant on system configuration and user permissions. The workflow modes are described in the following table:

Workflow Mode

Description

Enforce Contract Workflow

Updates/changes to any contract require approval.

Enable Contract Workflow

When modifying a contract the user can decide whether to initiate an approval flow or just commit changes.

Disable Contract Workflow

Approval flow is not available in the system.

Note: Contract workflow settings can be changed by directly accessing the database table or by defining Advanced User Preferences.

The following table summarizes the differences between the three modes while logging into the Contract Details page (either directly or through an e-mail link):

 

Author

Approver

Enforce

Commit is disabled

Request Approval and Done are available

Approve, Reject, Done are available

 

Disable

Commit and Done are available.

 

Enable

A workflow check box is available:

  • If cleared, only the current contract is enabled
  • If checked, the Enforce mode is in effect.