Publishing Contracts

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to publish contract workspaces.

Final Steps

Contract Workspace Publishing Process

  1. Team members will complete all phases and tasks, including final approval.
  2. The workspace owner selects Publish from the Contract Attributes section of the Overview tab of the workspace.
  3. The status of the contract workspace in SAP Ariba Contracts is updated accordingly.

Once all execution activities are completed, the contract manager can publish the contract, and no further changes can be made. A contract manager can amend the contract if there is a change in the agreement with the supplier at any point. Once published, your contract workspace status moves into:

  • Published status, if the effective date is before or on the day you publish the workspace
  • Pending status, if the effective date is after the day you publish the workspace

Note

All tasks in the contract workspace have to be completed or canceled. Having tasks that are in review or not started will prevent you from publishing the workspace.

Optional tasks do not have to be marked complete. Notification tasks are optional tasks often not completed when the contract is published. The purpose of a notification task is to notify a user to take a specific action. For example, a notification task can be designed so the system will send an e-mail reminder to the project owner one year into a two-year contract, reminding them to check the pricing of lumber. This will prompt the project owner to see if any adjustments to the contract are necessary.

Note

Documents do not need to be in Published status to publish the workspace. A workspace can be published even if it contains documents in Draft status. Publishing documents has no impact on the functionality of the workspace; it is just a way to communicate to your team members that you are done working on the document. The system automatically publishes documents if they are part of an approval task and the approvers choose to approve. In addition, you can manually publish a document by choosing the document’s link and selecting Publish. However, contract owners can configure a document to require publishing before the whole workspace can be published.

Play the video to view an example of a contract workspace timeline and the steps to publishing the workspace. Please note that CW timelines are likely to look different in real life.

Contract Workspace Amendments

After you complete and publish a contract workspace, you can only make edits by amending it. The contract amendment process enables the contract project owner to change the contract documents. For example, they may add a new Statement of Work 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 and restrict access as needed for different amendment types. An amendment unlocks the contract workspace for editing by creating a new version.

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.

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