Managing Advanced Options in Contract Templates

Document Process Settings, under Advanced Options allow you to specify the number of Ad Hoc d-Forms and Savings Forms that can be added to a contract workspace.

Contract template administrators specify the type of form and how many can be added to a contract. The SAP Ariba solution displays pull-down menus for the ad hoc form templates. Select values from the following choices:

• No Limit: There is no limit on the of number documents of the form template type that can be created in projects.
• 0: No documents of the form template type can be created in projects.
• 1: If one or more documents of the selected form template type already exist in a project, users cannot create more documents of this type in projects.

Buyers can define supplier eligibility criteria in contract workspace project templates to validate supplier details at different stages of a contract's lifecycle.

Supplier eligibility criteria are set using supplier registration and qualification statuses maintained in SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance for a specific region and commodity combinations.

Buyers can use this data to ensure that the supplier they choose to include in a contract for a given commodity and region meets the specified eligibility criteria as defined in the project template.

The criteria can be validated during different stages, such as during contract creation, publication, or when transferring contract data and line items to integrated external systems like SAP ERP.

As a template administrator, you can set up supplier eligibility criteria in contract workspace project templates to ensure that contracts created using these templates validate supplier eligibility, allowing those who meet the specified criteria to be included.

Go to Advanced Options→Supplier Eligibility Criteria→Edit.

Determine the stage where you want to apply the supplier eligibility criteria:

• Eligible supplier statuses for contract creation
• Eligible supplier statuses for contract publish
• Eligible supplier statuses for contract integration with ERP

You can select the Show Warning checkbox for a chosen status. This will allow contract managers to include a supplier with that status but with a warning regarding their eligibility.

Once the template is published and used, if a supplier doesn't meet the required criteria, they are not added to the contract.

Template upgrades enable you to automatically update contract workspaces with the changes you made to the template when the contract workspace is amended. You can update the project with items from the latest published version of the template when you create an Amendment, Renewal, or Termination amendment. This feature is intended to be used for updating contracts that were loaded using the Import Legacy Contracts operation.

You can also perform a template upgrade to add or update tasks, documents, phases, or groups or members of the project teams in an updated template to the contract workspace. You can add new user groups or new members to existing user groups in a contract workspace template and do a template upgrade at the contract workspace-level to populate the newly-added user groups or users to the contract workspace.

The template update functionality is enabled on the site by a series of parameters:

• Application.ACM.EnableTemplateVersionUpgrade

  The parameter Application.ACM.EnableTemplateVersionUpgrade must be set to Yes to enable the template version upgrade feature. This feature enables you to apply the latest project template to a contract workspace if an Amendment, Renewal, or Termination amendment is created. The default value is No.

• Application.ACM.AskBeforeTemplateVersionUpgrade

  The parameter Application.ACM.AskBeforeTemplateVersionUpgrade specifies whether or not the SAP Ariba solution will ask the user before updating a project. The default value is Yes. When this parameter is set to Yes (and the template version upgrade feature is enabled) the Amend page includes an Upgrade Template Version option that enables users to choose to update the workspace being amended.

• Application.ACM.FullTemplateVersionUpgrade

  The parameter Application.ACM.FullTemplateVersionUpgrade specifies if document changes and additions to project teams in a project template are propagated when a template upgrade is applied for contract workspace amendments.

• Application.ACM.TemplateVersionUpgradeKeepPreviousAnswers

  The parameter Application.ACM.TemplateVersionUpgradeKeepPreviousAnswer specifies if responses to template questions are retained when a template upgrade is applied for contract workspace amendments.

Template upgrades may not occur in all associated projects at once because of the large number of projects and workspaces. However, they will occur at one of the following two times:

• Immediately when a project is opened with an updated template
  • Users will see projects that use latest template version.
  • History tab of project will display information about changes that were made to the project during template upgrade.
• When the scheduled task runs.
  • Runs automatically once a day.
  • Upgrades about 7000 projects per 24 hours.

• Add and remove template conditions from projects.
• Modify project content depending on updated conditions in the project.

• Set document limits in Advanced Options to control how many ad hoc and savings forms users can add to contracts.
• Define supplier eligibility criteria in templates using registration and qualification statuses from Supplier Lifecycle and Performance.
• Use template upgrades to automatically update existing contract workspaces when you modify and publish template changes.
• Template upgrades occur immediately when projects open or run automatically through scheduled daily tasks processing about 7000 projects.
• The Show Warning checkbox allows contract managers to include suppliers with eligibility concerns while flagging potential issues.