Working with Contract Teams

When you create a contract workspace, you specify a team of users to work on the project.

A project team consists of project groups. Each project group has different roles, which specify the permissions for the users in that group for the CW in question. The permissions specify the objects (documents and tasks) the users can access and what actions the users can perform in that project. Creating groups with different roles enables you to assign users with different responsibilities to the project team. Group permissions determine:

• Ownership
• Visibility
• Editing capabilities
• Review and approval

Group members can be individual team members or groups. For example, Legal is a system group. System groups differ from project groups. Project groups are specific groups of people that are working on a project. System groups function for all SAP Ariba solutions, not just a single project. However, you can add a system group to a project group to associate all system group members with the project.

Generally, SAP Ariba Contracts templates will be set up with all the necessary project groups. Some project groups may have some members already assigned. Most of the time, contract workspace owners will not have to create new project groups but will need to assign members to the existing project groups.

Through the Active Team Member role membership, users can add tasks and documents to a project. Specifically, users in a group with the Active Team Member role can:

• View and create the following items in the project:
  • Tasks, including adding task reviewers or approvers and adding comments when they are an active reviewer, approver, or watcher in a task.
  • Documents, including subprojects, for which they have the appropriate access.
  • Message board entries and announcements.
• View project groups.
• Receive any project-related notifications, such as notifications for project status changes.
• Create follow-on projects.

In general terms, the Observer Team Member role can view information about a project but cannot create tasks or documents. Specifically, users in a group with the Observer Team Member role can:

• Create or edit project announcements.
• View project groups.
• View tasks.
• View documents, including subprojects, for which they have access.

Users in a group with the Team Member with Limited Access role can:

• View and create tasks.
• View and create documents, including subprojects, for which they have the appropriate access.
• View project groups.
• Create follow-on projects.
• View and create message board entries and announcements.

In addition to team membership, access controls can be set at the document or workspace level. These access controls enable a project or document owner to refine the control of project team member access to a project or document. Each project or document has associated access control settings. Users who satisfy the access control settings can view the project or document and potentially modify it. Users who do not satisfy the access control settings cannot view the project or document and are unaware that it exists.

The table below lists the options available for access control.

As discussed, membership in a project group allows users to perform certain tasks at a workspace level, not at a global level. If you want to give a large group of people access to a contract workspace, set the access control rather than adding them as team members. Add people as team members if you have a small group who need to receive notifications and participate in the contract creation and management.

For example, if you set the access control for a document to Owner Only, only the document owner (as opposed to the project owner) can view it in the workspace.

You can set access controls on a document in a contract workspace template so that all contracts created from that template contain that document with those access controls. Essentially, documents can be modified by an individual or a group who owns the document. Members of a non-owner group cannot own a document. To allow members of a non-owner group to edit a document, create a group, and add all the members who need access to make changes to the document. Then, make this new group the owner of the document.