Learning All About Clause Library

The Clause Library is the central repository for clauses, designed for ease of use. The primary benefits of the Clause Library are streamlined clause management and reusability of clauses in different contract documents. It’s populated with clauses from an organization's contract documents.

Managed by the system as a project to:

• Control access
• Provide structure

Clauses are stored in the Clause Library to make them reusable and manageable. Ideally, clauses in the Clause Library have been preapproved by the organization for use in contract documents. When clauses are used in a Main Agreement or Contract Addendum, the system tracks which clauses are used "as is" from the library or if they came from another source. This allows approvers to focus on the non-standard language used in contracts rather than having to review all the text in contract documents. This streamlines the approval process and makes it easier to pass organization-wide standards down to the contract creators. In the system the Clause Library is managed as a contract library project, providing clause authors with access control and an organized folder structure for storing clauses.

The use of the Clause Library provides many benefits. It allows your organization to:

• Create consistent contracts, while using pre-approved clauses:
  • Preferred
  • Alternate
  • Fallback
• Create clause level approvals for clause usage and clause editing in the Clause Library, the contract project template, or a contract workspace.
• Report on clause level usage and editing.
• Allow Contract Authors to view "helper text / negotiation tactics" that cannot be seen by your counter party.

To access the Clause Library to add or edit content, navigate from the dashboard:

Manage → Clause Library.

The Clause Library is designed similarly to other contract workspaces/projects, except the Documents tab is replaced with a Clauses tab.

The Team tab lists the users who have the ability to add, delete or modify clauses within the Clause Library. The Project Owner group can also add or remove users from other project team groups, so it’s important to carefully choose who should be in this group. Users that should only be allowed to view and edit clauses can be added as team members in project groups other than the Project Owner group.

Users who are listed on the clause library team will see the Clause Library link displayed in the Manage section of their Common Actions panel. Clicking this link will open the Clause Library project. If you are not a member of the Clause Library project team, you can still view the Clause Library if the Access Control is unrestricted. From the Home dashboard click Search → Clause Library. On the resulting Search page you will see a link for the Clause Library. Click it and select Open to open the Clause Library for viewing. You will not be able to add anything to the library or make any edits. By default, there is no access control set on the library, so all users who have access to the SAP Ariba Contracts solution can view it. You don’t have to be a contract author. For example, those in your organization who have the system permissions to create Contract Requests but not Contract Workspaces can still view the Clause Library using the method described here.

• Only Team Members of the Clause Library can edit the Clause Library.
• Only members of the Project Owner group can edit the team.
• Unrestricted access allows all users to view it.
  • By default, there is no access control set on the Clause Library, so all users who have access to the SAP Ariba Contracts solution can view the library.

If you want to limit who has access to view the Clause Library, you could change the access control field in the Overview section. However, this would defeat the purpose of having the Clause Library, since you want all the contract authors to view it.

To view a clause in the library, open the folder in which the clause exists and click its link. From the resulting menu, select an option:

• Open Draft will be selectable if the clause has not yet been published. This will open the clause in Microsoft Word.
• Open Last Published will be selectable if the clause is published. This will open the clause in Microsoft Word.
• View Details will allow you to view the clause attributes, including its description and summary. The description describes the clause, while the summary is usually the clause itself. Sometimes it will be truncated if the clause is too long. In this case, choose to Open the clause in Microsoft Word if you need to see the whole clause.

• Do not exceed 50 children subfolders under any one parent
• Keep folder names brief

It’s recommended to have no more than 50 children subfolders under any one parent folder. And each child folder should have no more than 50 children subfolders. This limit is to prevent excessive delays in screen response time. The fewer subfolders you have, the faster the screen response. 50 is the recommended maximum, but fewer is better. Also note that the 50 is just a guide – it is not enforced, meaning the system will not prevent you from adding more.

There is a Microsoft Word software path length limit of 255 characters that effectively prevents you from using excessively long Clause Library folder/subfolder names with long file names. This means that if the complete file path address it too long, (such as "d:/folder1/subfolder2/subsubfolder3/subsubsubfolder4/etc./ClauseFileName") you will not be able to edit a clause in the Clause Library.