🛠 Create Your Own - Contract Renewal Review Workflow

   Estimated Read Time: 12 minutes

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Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Demonstration
• Workflow Diagram
• 🛠 Mandatory Configuration Steps 🛠
  • Add the Template
  • Assign Phase Owners
  • Configure Hyperlink in ✉️ Renewal Notification ✉️
• 🛠 Additional Configuration Steps 🛠
  • Use the Clone Action for Extensions
  • Configure Approvals
  • Create Workflow Groups
  • Amend Email Notifications
  • Amend Triggers
  • Add Custom Metadata
  • Add Form Sections
  • Amend Section Visibility

• Additional Setup Outside the Workflow
  • Populate Key Contract Data
  • Set Team Owners
• ⚡️ Getting Started - Activate the Triggers⚡️
• Additional Reading
  
  

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Introduction

By automating your contract renewal process, you can save time and resources, reduce manual errors, enhance accuracy, and minimise compliance and operational risks.

This workflow automatically initiates reviews well in advance of key renewal periods, ensuring that all renewal tasks are completed on schedule and in compliance with your regulations and policies. It also gives stakeholders the lead time to negotiate more favourable terms, uncover cost savings, and optimise contract performance.

Like other Gatekeeper workflows, this also provides real-time visibility into the status of contracts, enabling you to make informed decisions about renewals, renegotiations, and terminations.

Walkthrough Demonstration

See the video below for a walkthrough of the Contract Renewal Review workflow:

 

Workflow Diagram

 

🛠 Mandatory Configuration 🛠 

This section outlines the essential setup required to make your workflow fully functional. Complete the steps below for a fully operational, end-to-end contract renewal workflow, ready to automate reviews and approvals around key contract dates:

• Add the Contract Renewal Review workflow template to your tenant as the starting point for the build
• Decide who's responsible for each key phase, from late response escalation through to termination or renewal actions
• Link stakeholders straight through to the New Contract Request form when a renewal needs full renegotiation rather than a simple extension

The Additional Configuration section below covers optional additions that expand the scope of your process or align the workflow with your organisation's policies and procedures.

Add the Template

To get started, you'll need to add the template workflow:

1. From the navigation menu, click Workflows.
2. Click Add, then select Workflow Template.
3. Click Create on the Contract Renewal Review template.
   
   
4. Amend the title if needed, then click Create.

Assign Phase Owners

The following phases don't have an owner configured, so you'll need to assign them to the relevant stakeholders in your organisation before the workflow can function:

• Approvals: Provide the approval for the contract renewal or termination decision.
• Terminate Current Agreement: Carry out termination tasks, such as updating contract statuses and dates in Gatekeeper, and real-world actions like serving written notice to the vendor.
• Finalise Renewal/Extension: Complete extension actions like updating statuses and dates, sending extension letters for eSign, or raising new POs.

The Late Response Escalation phase already defaults to the Team Manager. The purpose of this phase is to provide a renewal decision if the original contract owner misses their SLA deadline. You can amend this if you want a different owner for this phase, but this is optional.

To assign owners: 

1. Click on a phase where the owner needs configuring to edit it. 
2. From Form Access, select the relevant radio button to determine how ownership is assigned.

Repeat these steps until owners have been assigned for all the phases outlined above. For further details, see Configure Workflow Phase Access and Ownership.

Configure Hyperlink in Renewal Notification Phase

The Renewal Form includes two options for stakeholders:

• Renew: for contracts that require a full renegotiation and the signing of updated terms
• Extend: for minor changes only, such as sending an extension letter for signature, or updating key contract dates

While extensions are straightforward, renewals involving significant changes are better handled via a dedicated New Contract Request workflow, so the contract gets the appropriate level of due diligence, review, and approval. It's recommended to include a direct link to the New Contract Request form in the renewal notification email, so contracts requiring deeper review are routed through the correct workflow.

To do this:

1. Copy the URL for the separate Contract Request workflow form.
   
2. Navigate to the Contract Renewal workflow.
3. Click the ✉️ RENEWAL NOTIFICATION ✉️ phase to edit it.
4. From Notifications, click the pencil icon for the email template of the Card Owner notification.
5. Replace LINK HERE with the relevant URL.
   
   
6. Click Update.

 

🛠 Additional Configuration 🛠

This section covers optional steps to adjust the workflow's scope or default settings, helping you tailor it to your organisation's needs.

Use the Clone Action for Extensions

By default, when the stakeholder chooses to extend the contract, the existing record is updated to reflect the new term.

However, you may prefer to clone the existing contract. This creates a new, linked version in your repository, making it easier to track changes over time and monitor historical spend with the vendor. To configure this:

1. Add a new Clone Contract phase to the workflow and re-order it to be positioned before the Finalise Renewal/Extension phase.
2. Click the new phase to edit it and from Actions, select the AutoAction | Clone Contract checkbox. 
3. Select the Submit Card on Action and Update Form on Action checkboxes.
4. Click Edit AutoAction Values, and for each field, decide how it should be cloned:
   • Leave the checkbox selected to copy the value from the original contract. If you also enter a value, this is used as a fallback whenever the original contract's field is blank.
   • Deselect the checkbox to stop the value being copied from the original contract. Enter a value here to always use that on the clone instead, or leave it blank to leave the field empty.
     
5. Scroll to the bottom to select the relationship type for the new contract.
6. Select one of the AutoArchive Original Contract checkboxes, if required:
   • Instant archives the original as soon as the new contract is created.
   • On Contract End Date archives the original automatically once it reaches its end date.
     
7. Click Save.
8. From Transitions, select the Finalise Renewal/Extension phase.
   
9. Navigate to the earlier Approvals phase in the workflow, and edit the Approved | Extend transition to route cards to your new Clone Contract phase.

Configure Approvals

If required, you can configure the Approvals phase to assign multiple approvers, or conditional approvers. If your process only requires a single approval and you've already assigned the appropriate user or group in the Assign Phase Owners step, you can skip this section.

There are multiple ways to configure approvals, depending on your requirements:

• Parallel Approvals: multiple users or groups all need to approve
• Conditional Approvals: different users need to approve depending on the scope of the request. You can configure either conditional simple, or conditional parallel approvals.

Follow the instructions in the articles linked above to assign approvers to this phase of the workflow. 

Create Workflow Groups

Workflow groups are custom groups of users used across workflow configuration, ideal for when ownership doesn’t align with a team but you want to avoid assigning users individually. For example, a contract renewal workflow may require groups such as:

• Procurement/Vendor Management Team: to provide insights and approvals related to budgeting and alignment with strategic goals.
• Legal/Contract Management Team: to oversee legal reviews and facilitate any required legal actions.

If you haven't already created workflow groups in your tenant, see Manage Workflow Groups for step-by-step instructions on creating groups and adding users.

Amend Email Notifications

It's recommended to update the notification email content to reflect any specific context or actions required by your organisation's renewal procedures. To do this:

1. Click to edit the phase where you want to amend notifications.
2. From Notifications, enable the relevant toggles to determine who should receive email notifications.
3. Click the pencil icon to amend the associated email templates.

4. Add any additional context needed for your review process.

5. Click Update and repeat for each email template.

Amend Triggers

There are three triggers created by default for this workflow. You can amend or remove these as needed to better align with your organisation’s review procedures and timelines.

• Notice Date Approaching: Triggers 90 days in advance of a Notice Period. This provides approximately 30 days to decide on renewal, renegotiation, or termination, and take the necessary action.
• End Date Approaching: Triggers 90 days in advance of a contract's End Date. This provides an additional buffer to conduct internal reviews and prepare for renewal, renegotiation, or termination before the contract auto-renews.
• Evergreen Annual Review: For indefinite contracts where the End Date is set to Evergreen, initiates an annual review 30 days before each anniversary of the contract’s Start Date.

You can keep all three triggers active simultaneously, however each trigger operates independently. This means a contract record could be picked up by more than one, resulting in duplicate cards. If your process does not require the Notice Period trigger, you could delete it to avoid this scenario.

Alternatively, use a custom field as a flag, and update it with an AutoAction when the first card is created. Then, add a condition to all other triggers to exclude records where that field has been set.

To configure triggers:

1. From the navigation menu, click Workflows.
   
2. Expand the 3 dots on the relevant workflow, then select Workflow Triggers.
   1. Click ➕ ADD TRIGGER to create additional triggers. For example, you may want to review contracts with a high value further in advance than the standard triggers.
   2. If any default triggers aren’t relevant to your process, click the Delete icon to remove them.
3. To amend the existing triggers, click the name of the trigger you want to edit, then configure any necessary amendments:
   1. Click the pencil icon to amend a condition's parameters.
   2. Click the   delete icon to remove a condition
   3. Click ➕ ADD to create additional conditions

Add Custom Data Sections

If you have created custom contract data, you can add it to the workflow form so that:

• Users can view all relevant contract information and make fully informed decisions
• Key data can be updated directly through the workflow

To add custom data to the workflow form, click the start phase to edit it, then add a new form section, selecting Contract from the Predefined dropdown, and the relevant group from the Custom Data Group dropdown.

See Add Sections to a Form for the full steps, including how to reorder sections.

Add Form Sections

You may want to add further sections to the form. For example, if users need to provide additional input or upload attachments during the process, you can add a dedicated section for them to complete. 

To do this, click the start phase to edit it, then add a new form section, leaving the Predefined dropdown blank. You can then add fields as required. See Add Sections to a Form for the full steps, including how to reorder sections.

Amend Section Visibility

The default fields on this template already have visibility set for each phase. You can adjust these if needed, for example to make additional fields mandatory, or to hide them in certain phases.

For any new fields or sections you've added, you'll need to set up visibility yourself. To do this:

1. Click the settings icon to access the Configuration View.
   
2. To set the section visibility, hover over the relevant section box and select from the dropdown list.
   
3. To set the field visibility:
   1. Hover over the section box and select the appropriate checkbox to apply the visibility to all fields within the section.
   2. Hover over an individual field box and select from the dropdown list to apply the visibility to fields one-by-one
4. To copy a section/field visibility settings to other phases, click the copy icon. Then, select the checkboxes to determine which phases you want to copy the settings to, and click Copy.
   

 

Additional Setup Outside the Workflow

If you’ve followed all of the steps above, your workflow is nearly ready to launch. However, to help the process run as smoothly and reliably as possible, there are a few additional areas of your Gatekeeper tenant worth reviewing.

Populate Key Contract Data

Before launching your workflow, make sure the following fields are completed on your existing contracts:

• Internal Owners: used by Gatekeeper to assign the appropriate stakeholders and decision makers throughout the workflow.
• Contract Dates: if dates such as the End Date or Notice Period Date are missing, key expiration and auto-renewal milestones will be missed.

To populate fields manually:

1. From the navigation menu, expand the Vault and click Contracts.
2. Expand the 3 dots on the relevant contract, then select Edit.
3. From the Contract Dates section, populate the key dates, then click Save & Next.
4. From the Owners section, select the relevant user as the internal owner, then click Save & Exit.

To save time, this could be done en masse via bulk import or Lumin Enrich.

Set Team Owners

If no team owners are assigned, the Late Response Escalation and Approvals phase may not function as intended. To assign team owners:

1. From the navigation menu, click Teams.
2. Expand the 3 dots on the relevant team, then select Edit.
3. From the Owners section, select the relevant user from the Manager dropdown list, then click Save & Exit.

Repeat these steps until all teams have an owner.

⚡️ Getting Started - Activate the Triggers⚡️

Once your workflow is fully configured, activate the triggers to make it live:

1. From the navigation menu, click Workflows.
   
2. Expand the 3 dots on the relevant workflow, then select Workflow Triggers.
3. For any trigger with a Pipeline status, click on the trigger's name.
4. Click the pencil icon on Trigger Status.
5. Select Live from the dropdown list, then click Update.
6. Click < Back  to return to the list of triggers.
7. Repeat steps 3-5 until all triggers are live.

Your renewal workflow is now active. Contract records that match your triggers will automatically enter the review process.

Additional Reading 📚

• 🛠 Create your Own - Internal Contract Request Workflow - Learn how to configure a workflow for the request, approval, negotiation and signature of new contracts.
• Bulk Import/Export Contract Data - Learn how to bulk export and re-import contract metadata to populate necessary values for workflows to function
• ⚡️Testing Triggered Workflows - Learn how to manually trigger test cards for this workflow, so you can test the process before enabling triggers for your active contracts.