🛠 Create Your Own - Internal Contract Request Workflow

  Estimated Read Time: 10 Minutes

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Sections in this article:

• Introduction
  • Workflow Diagram
• 🛠 Mandatory Configuration 🛠
  • Add the Template
  • Configure AutoAction Values
  • Configure Contract Templates
  • Assign Contract Negotiation Owners
  • Assign Approver/s
  • Configure Vendor Selection Options 
• 🛠 Additional Configuration 🛠
  • Leverage LuminIQ in Workflow Forms
  • Add Custom Data
  • Set Visibility Rules
  • Alternative Document Management Options
  • Amend SLAs
  • Add Extra Phases
• ⚡️ Getting Started ⚡️
• 📚 Additional Reading 📚

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Introduction

This Internal Contract Request workflow allows you to fully digitise your request intake, negotiation, approval, and signing processes for new contracts. It ensures that every contract added to Gatekeeper is reviewed and approved by the right people, contains complete metadata, and includes a full version history of the executed contract. 

 

Walkthrough Demonstration

See the video below for a walkthrough of the Internal Contract Request workflow:

 

Workflow Diagram

 

🛠 Mandatory Configuration 🛠

This section outlines the essential setup required to make your workflow fully functional:

• Add the Internal Contract Request workflow template to your tenant as the starting point for the build
• Decide which metadata is pulled from the request form into the new contract record, and which fields get a default or placeholder value
• Set up the eNegotiate templates Gatekeeper can use to auto-generate the first draft
• Decide who's responsible for each key phase, from approvals, to negotiation, and signature
• Decide whether requestors can name a brand new vendor, or must pick from vendors already onboarded in Gatekeeper

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, add the template workflow:

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

Configure AutoAction Values

Near the start of the workflow, an automatic action takes the values submitted in the request form and converts them into a record in your contract repository. Configure this action to define which metadata values are taken from the form, and which are set as default or placeholder values:

1. Click the AutoCreate Contract phase to edit it.
2. From Actions, click Edit AutoAction Values for the enabled AutoAction.
3.  At the top, select the Take Value from Form checkbox.
4. Where needed, select a backup value from the dropdown list for a field. If a field isn't mandatory on the form, requestors may leave it blank, so you might want a fallback value. This matters even more for fields that are mandatory for the contract record to be created, since the AutoAction will fail without a value.

5. Deselect Take Value from Form for the Status and Approval fields, and set their values to Pipeline and Awaiting Approval. This ensures that, if users view the contract in the repository, they see it isn't yet approved or executed.

6. Click Save.

Configure Contract Templates

This workflow can use eNegotiate contract templates to automatically create the first draft of a contract. 

Part 1: Create the Templates

1. From the navigation menu, expand Settings, then click Configuration.
2. Click eNegotiate Contract Templates.
3. Click Add MS Word Template.
   
4. Use the Handlebar Instructions document to set up dynamic fields in your Microsoft Word template. For detailed guidance, see Configure Contract Templates.
5. Once finished, upload your MS Word template as the Document file.
6. Complete the mandatory fields, then select Live from the Status dropdown list to make the template available for use in your workflow.
7. Once finished, click Save.
8. Repeat steps 3 - 7 until all required contract templates have been added.

Part 2: Apply the Templates to the Workflow 

1. Click the AutoCreate Draft phase to edit it.
2. From Actions, click Edit AutoAction Values on AutoAction | Generate Draft from Contract.
3. Select the templates you want Gatekeeper to use for this action, then click Save.
   

Assign Contract Negotiation Owners

Several phases cover contract setup and negotiations within this workflow. The following don't have an owner configured, so you'll need to assign one for each, based on how responsibility is normally assigned in your organisation:

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.

Assign Approver/s

The Final Approvals phase is the last opportunity for internal stakeholders to review the agreement before signing. Consider who should be included here, for example:

• Which budget holder needs to review the commitment?
• Which teams need to verify compliance and risk-mitigating clauses?
• Which executives may want to approve, particularly for high-value contracts?

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

• Simple Approval: only one user or group needs to approve the contract
• 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. 

Configure Vendor Selection Options 

You need to decide whether users can select new vendors when requesting contracts, or if they must choose from vendors already added and onboarded in Gatekeeper. This will likely depend on whether your organisation has a formal vendor onboarding process, and whether a Gatekeeper workflow is in place to support it.

There are three ways to configure this; expand the relevant option to learn more:

🛠 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.

Enable Lumin Intake

With Lumin Intake, requestors can upload contract documents that are used to automatically populate the form fields. This can be used for contract requests submitted via the Submit Requests dashboard. To enable this:

1. Click to edit the start phase.
2. From Form Access, select the Create Card from Contract checkbox under Lumin Intake.

 

Add Custom Data

By default, this workflow includes the contract and vendor core data fields. If you have created custom metadata, you can add it to the workflow form to capture additional data that will be stored on the final contract record, or to pull data into a contract document when generating from a contract template.

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.

Set AutoAction Values

For any additional custom metadata sections, ensure the contract record is updated with the values from these fields in the relevant AutoAction phases. In the template, you can configure these values on the following phases:

• AutoCreate Contract: This phase exists near the start of the workflow to create the contract record before the draft document is created and eNegotiate begins.

• Contract Executed: This is the Done phase of the workflow. It captures any updates made after the previous AutoAction and publishes them to your finalised contract records, as well as updating it to Live and Approved.
  

To configure this:

1. Click a phase of the workflow where vendors are created/updated.
2. From Actions, click Edit AutoAction Values for the enabled AutoAction.
   
3. For any new fields, select the corresponding Take Value from Form checkbox.
4. If required, select an optional backup value in case the field is left blank.
5. Click Save.

Set Visibility Rules

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.
   

Alternative Document Management Options

If your organisation uses Office for the Web, OneDrive, or Google Drive, you can enable this in your workflow to streamline the draft revision cycle:

1. Click the internal phase (i.e. Internal eNegotiate or Draft Finalisations) you want to edit.
2. From Actions, select the relevant checkbox alongside the Submit Draft action.

Amend SLAs

Workflow SLA Timers are used to set deadlines, automate escalations via conditional transitions, and identify bottlenecks. These have already been set for certain phases of the workflow:

 

To edit SLAs to match your organisation's timelines:

1. Click the phase where you want to edit the SLA.
2. From SLA, enter a value, then select the unit (hours or days) from the dropdown list.
   

 

Add Extra Phases

This template is designed with minimal phases, with flexibility to expand within these. For example, the single Final Approval phase can accommodate multiple reviews and approvals, depending on your team structure. However, you can also add phases to your workflow to support additional processes, such as:

• Finance e.g Raise PO: If your finance team uses Gatekeeper for information on new vendors or contracts, you can include them in the process so they're aware of agreements requiring payment and can confirm when payments are completed.
• Additional Approval e.g. CEO Approval: Although the template workflow can run multiple approvals in parallel through the Final Approvals phase, if you need a specific user or team to complete a standalone review, you can add a dedicated phase to the workflow. This can be configured with conditional transitions, e.g. if contract value is greater than £100,000, transition to CEO Approval.
  
• Fast Track e.g. Fast Track Completed [Done]: This workflow is primarily for contract requests that require negotiation, approval, and signing in Gatekeeper. For requests that don't follow this standard process, such as simple, or low-risk contracts, this phase lets forms be completed with no further tasks after Initial Review.
  

To add a phase:

1. Navigate to the right hand side of the workflow board.
2. Next to New Phase, click ADD.
   
3. Enter a phase title and description if needed, then click Save & Next.
4. Click  Reorder to move the phase to the appropriate point in your workflow.
5. Complete the configuration for the phase depending on its purpose, and reconfigure transitions from other phases to ensure your new phase is included in the end-to-end form workflow.

See Add Phases to a Workflow for more guidance.

⚡️ Getting Started ⚡️

Once your workflow is fully configured, follow the guidance below to start using it:

If Using the Employee Portal

Once your workflow is configured, users can initiate a new contract request via the Submit Requests dashboard. To share the form URL, right-click the Request button to copy the link. 

If Using a Public Form

You will need to copy and distribute the form URL. To do this:

1. Click the start phase of the workflow to edit it.
2. From Form Access, copy the URL to share with users.
   

Additional Reading 📚

• ⚡️ Gatekeeper Expert - Only Onboarded Vendors - Learn how to mandate that users onboard a vendor before a contract can be requested.
• ⚡️ Gatekeeper Expert - Parallel Workflows 1 - Learn how to automatically run a new vendor onboarding workflow in tandem with this contract approval to shorten the delivery time for new relationships.
• Create a Contract Template - Learn how to set up contract draft template documents.