Describing Contract Workspace Elements

You can add documents to your contract workspace, such as non-disclosure agreements, instructions, or reference materials. Some documents are inherited from the project template created by administrators and appear automatically in the documents tab of the project. You can add additional documents to this tab as well. SAP Ariba supports the following types of documents in projects:

• Non-assembled documents, such as non-executable files, for example, documents in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, or PDF format.
• Assembled documents, such as the main agreement and the contract addendum. The content of these documents can be created dynamically through the use of sections and clauses stored in the application.
• Contract Line Items Documents (CLIDs) that allow contract owners to integrate pricing data from sourcing events and store line item and lot information in the contract workspace.
• Contract Terms documents that allow contract item terms to be integrated to the SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing solution.

A contract workspace’s lifecycle and workflow is handled though a pre-determined process consisting of tasks and phases set up by administrators to mirror the organization’s contract management rules.

A task is an action assigned to a user or group to be completed, such as reviewing or approving documents. Tasks can be associated to folders and documents that require stakeholders' action. You can create:

• To Do Tasks
• Approval Tasks
• Negotiation Tasks
• Review Tasks
• Signature Tasks
• Notification Tasks

Tasks are often organized in phases. They are typically placed within different phases in a way that matches your organization’s business process flow. This helps to move a contract through its lifecycle. As users work on a task, the task status changes. The current status of each task in a project is visible on the Tasks tab in the project, so all team members are aware of the project’s progress. When a user is assigned a task, SAP Ariba adds the task to the user’s My Tasks page, calendar, and To Do area if it includes a due date or end date. The system also sends an email notification to the user.

Most tasks are inherited from the template used to create the contract, but you can make modifications where allowed. You can also add additional tasks as needed.

SAP Ariba Contracts enable you to collect electronic signatures from internal and external signers for a document in a workspace through signature tasks. An electronically-signed contract can designate a specific version as the official, agreed-upon version, understood by all parties to be the version that is in effect.

SAP Ariba Contracts provide signature tasks using the following electronic signature providers:

• DocuSign
• Adobe Sign

After you complete and publish a contract workspace, you can only make edits by amending it. The amendment process of a contract enables the contract project owner to make changes to the contract documents. For example, they might need to add a new Statement of Work (SOW) to an agreement, or change the language or expiration date of the workspace. Amending a contract allows you to specify the types of changes you are making, as well as, restrict access as needed for different amendment types.

Amendments require users to specify the amendment type and reason for the change. Different amendment types support different types of changes in the workspace. Some changes may affect the actual terms of the contract, which can trigger additional approvals before it can be published again. Others may affect the upkeep of the contract workspace in the UI without affecting the terms of the contract, but require the workspace to be managed. An administrator is able to associate phases, tasks, and supporting documents to different amendment types to mirror the business process and contract management rules.

Amendment types allow you to specify why the published contract was changed. SAP Ariba allows for the following amendment types:

• Amendment: Allows you to change any part of the project.
• Renewal: Allows you to change the effective date, expiration date, team, and reminder settings.
• Termination: Allows you to change the expiration date and reminder settings. Use this amendment type to close a contract before its expiration date due to an adverse condition or disagreement.
• Price Update: Allows you to change existing items in the contract line items document.
• Administrative: Allows you to change non-contract details, such as adding a team member or uploading a supplemental document.