How to grant users insight into contracts coming through the pipeline for THEIR TEAM!
Sections in this Article:
Gatekeeper Workflows are far and above the most useful way to add new agreements to your repository.
They can ensure proper procedures are adhered to, metadata is fully captured/reviewed, and can even facilitate most of the key contracting actions along the way by embedding functionality like approvals, draft redlining & signatures.
However, due to the fact that Contracts can be confidential in nature, access to active workflow processes is designed to be kept on a need-to-know basis for your users.
See Workflow Authorisation Overview for all the ways a user can be given access to a workflow
The TL;DR of the above article is that you can gain access to a workflow form if you are:
(a) A user who has initiated a request (and can therefore maintain visibility of your requests)
(b) A user involved in a specific action on the workflow (e.g. you are an Approver)
(c) Some type of admin and can therefore see all workflow cards
If you have some users who do not fall into these 3 buckets but still want to be aware of contracts in the pipeline for their team*, you can leverage a small amount of data/workflow config to give them the ability to stay in the loop!
The Configuration Steps
The Metadata
Create a new custom metadata field of type Dropdown List named in accordance with your workflow process which needs monitoring
e.g.
Where Workflow Name is "Contract Approval Workflow"
Set your Field Name to "Contract Approval Workflow Status"
Then create a dropdown value in this list for each stage of the workflow
See below example translation from Workflow Phases to the corresponding Dropdown Option:
Configuring the field for your workflow's phases:
See Configuring Custom Data Fields
Also see the Editable Locations Update to view how this new field can be locked so it may only be edited via the following Workflow AutoAction config
The Workflow
Once you have created your new status field, you can leverage Gatekeeper's AutoActions to set this field whenever a card is moved on the kanban board
This will involve adding an AutoAction Phase ahead of all pre-existing Phases to "flip the switch", setting the status field to be a reflection of what is currently underway on the workflow
Example Workflow Before
Example Workflow After
The Steps for you, as a Workflow Admin
Step 1) Add in a new phase ahead of every one of the original workflow phases
This can be named something like "🛠 AutoUpdate [x] 🛠"
Step 2) Re-point any transitions from the pre-existing phase to the new phase which precedes it
💡 Pro Tip: If you want to find all transitions pointing to a phase, simply try to archive it.
Gatekeeper does not let you archive a phase if there are active transitions pointing to it (this is to prevent workflow cards transitioning into a black hole!)
When attempting to archive a phase, you will be presented with a list of transitions blocking the archive action; this list will contain hyperlinks to navigate directly to those transitions where you can simply change the destination of that rule!
Step 3) Ensure the new metadata dropdown field has been added to the workflow form (but set to Hidden on all phases to avoid confusing users)
Step 4) Configure the Actions for the new phases
Enable the Action: AutoAction Update Contract
(NB. If a contract had not been created yet, the first of these actions needs to be the AutoAction Create Contract)
- Enable "Submit Card On Action" & "Update Form on Action"
- Tick the master "take value from form" option for all fields except the new dropdown field, which should be manually set to indicate the status of the card at the current point on the workflow
Step 5) Point the Submission transition from each of the AutoAction phases to the next original phase in the workflow
Step 6) Minimise all of the new AutoAction phases
The Steps for your Users
Once this field is created and you have configured your workflow to automatically update the value, your users can create a new Saved View selecting the fields they wish to see and workflow statuses important to them:
The Result
Non-Admin users can now view all new contracts and be aware of their status in the pipeline with no risk of seeing confidential information or superfluous information from other departments on the workflow!