Contracts
1 minute video showing the Contracts repository in action in Outlook and SharePoint
(You might also be interested in reading my article about Repositories. It lays the groundwork of what an ideal repository looks like and all the issues that should be considered when designing one.)
Work Right Where You Work
The Contracts repository module by Automate Office Work is accessible in two places: In Outlook and SharePoint. Members of your department install a button in Outlook which opens a side panel where they can do their work. People outside your department work on SharePoint.
Outlook
Once installed, the Contracts Outlook app button is available when an email is selected.
Contracts button in Outlook
In a browser and on the mobile phone Outlook app, emails have an app icon at the top. Clicking this opens the app menu where you can click the Contracts button to open the side panel.
No matter your environment, the same panel opens. On the phone, the side panel fills the entire screen.
The panel knows the Outlook context. It knows the user that is logged in and can read the contents of the opened email, including the body of the email and attachments. This will come in handy later.
NOTE: The scenario below matches how my organization has chosen to work. We can customize the module to fit how your organization wants to work. For example, you may choose to do all work on files somewhere else and then only use the repository features. My scenario shows the possibility of extra features.
So let's say you've just received an email with an attachment asking you to review a contract. You know this is a new contract with no record in the repository. We want to make a record of this new contract as quickly as possible. You can now do it from Outlook. Click on "+New matter".
NOTE: By the way, the "back" button is almost always the gray box at the top of the panel with the left arrow and screen title. Clicking it takes you to the previous screen without making any changes.
New matter
You see the below new matter screen.
New matter screen
These are the basic meta data fields that my organization determined are the most common fields we want all contract tagged with. We might know all of them already at this stage, but we also might not. Or some of them might change during negotiation of the contract. You can fill out as much as you know already. But at a minimum we need the first three filled in. We need to know the status of this contract, who in the business owns the contract and who in legal will or has reviewed the contract. These three things are crucial for our workflow process. We need to know which people will be brought in at the right stages.
Access
This brings us to an important issue. Who has access to this contract? My organization decided that some contracts might have confidential contents that we don't want everyone to see. Everyone in the company can see the meta data tags. The fact that a global contract with ABC Corporation that started in 2024 and is still active and the business people who own it and the legal people who are responsible for it. This information is visible to everyone in the company. But only the following people can see the contents of files because some contracts have confidential information.
- Members of the legal department. My organization trusts members of the legal department to keep confidences. Plus people in the department change and we may need someone to step in and assist when someone leaves. We have an automation that automatically maintains our list of department members.
- People listed as business leads. Of course they can open and read a contract they own
- My organization decided to maintain a list of business super users with limited scope. For example, the country manager for Germany can view the contents of all contracts in Germany. Or the VP for IT can view all contracts tagged as being owned by the IT department. These rely on contracts being tagged properly and also we need to maintain the list of these super users as people change roles.
This is the balance my company has struck for visibility of contracts, but also to maintain confidential information. So anyone can see that a contract exists. They see the meta data, but perhaps they want to know if an existing contract covers their needs and they can use it instead of creating yet another contract just for their situation. How can they know if the contents of the contract fits their needs? Well, they can reach out to the people listed and ask or ask to see a copy of the contract. These people can then answer or give the requester access to read the contract at their discretion. More about this later.
New matter status
Back to the fields we can fill in for our new matter. I have a default status already selected, but clicking on the field shows the New matter status screen.
Here the user sees the possible statuses that my organization has chosen to offer. Basically, these are the different stages we identified when a new matter is possibly added. Later once the matter is created there will be additional statuses like "under legal review", "out for signing", "signed and active", "cancelled", "expired", "terminated".
Clicking the back button goes back to the previous screen without making any changes. Clicking "Apply" makes the change and takes the user back to the previous screen and the field is updated to show the user the new value.
New matter business lead
When you first come to this screen you should only see a search box and a search button. My organization decided to connect this to our Outlook address book. Type in a couple letters and clicking "Search" shows matches below with plus buttons. Clicking a plus button adds a person above with a minus button. You can do additional searches and add more people. Or click the minus and remove a person. Adding and removing people changes the meta data so click back when you're done. The field is now updated on the New matter screen.
The Legal lead field is similar.
Coutnry(ies) involved
The next four fields are all basically the same. We have lists on SharePoint of all the possible choices. The user is presented with checkboxes and can select multiple values. At the bottom, we also give the user the option to add a custom value because maybe the company has recently created a new division. In this way my organization chose to balance consistency and flexibility. My organization also chose for the countries field to use parent regions and child countries.
Clicking the Europe+ box checks that box and it expands to show the countries in Europe which can then also be individually checked. This ensures that any contract tagged with a European country is also tagged with "Europe". So in the future users can search for all contracts by individual countries, but can also search for any contract tagged as "Europe". You might choose to do something similar with your departments and divisions. You could have parent categories and sub-category children.
New matter other party
Tagging a contract with the other party requires you to search a list of existing parties (people and companies). We want absolute consistency with naming so we maintain a list of these on SharePoint and you select one. This other list actually has a unique ID number and we use this unique ID number when tagging our contracts. Because of this there is a search box and search button on the New matter other party screen.
If you find the other party you need just click the plus button like we did for the people fields. But now there is an extra button to add a New other party. This button takes you to a screen where you can type in a new name and address. Names must be unique since this is how we do a search.
You can also click on the name of the company itself when doing a search and you can then edit its name and address since these do change from time to time.
New matter document type
A matter can only have one document type. You cannot select multiple values. My organization keeps a list of our common document types and the user can select from them. Notice the user cannot directly create an amendment. My organization decided that we want a link established immediately to the parent document. So we force users to go to the parent contract and from there create the record for the amendment.
What do you do if your contract is a set of contracts? Like a master agreement and a child statement of work that are signed at the same time? You'll need to create separate records for them. They may have different meta data. Like different start dates and end dates. Even if they are the same now, they could be amended in the future to be different. My organization chose to make separate records for each contract document to better be able to manage them.
New matter start date
Dates are funny. Different cultures format them differently. Like in America 5/3 means May 3rd. While everywhere else in the world reads this as March 5th. My organization chose to give the user a text box to type the date and all dates must be in the format yyyy-mm-dd. Your organization might choose to give a popup calendar date picker, but often these are awkward for users to use. It's really up to you.
Once applied the date is stored in the SharePoint database as 20250503 but is shown unambiguously to the user as 3 May 2025. Again, we can customize this to the needs of your users.
Customization of languages
A quick note about interface languages. My organization decided to leave everything in English. You may have noticed there was a settings button on the home screen and we'll go over that later. If your organization needs it, we could allow users to choose their preferred language and then show the interface to them in their language as much as possible. So Spanish speakers would see the above date as 3 mayo 2025 and all field labels would be in Spanish.
Time to create the matter
Once you have filled in the form with everything you know so far, at least the minimum fields, you can click the "Create matter" button. You'll see chasing dots for a few seconds while the record is created on SharePoint and the meta data fields added.
Matter screen
Once created, the user is taken to the Matter screen.
The title of the matter is automatically generated and updated from meta data. It's made up of the contract type, name of the other party, and the start year. In my case I didn't indicate the contract type or name of the other party. So we see only Unknown type 2025. That will change as we update the meta data on the "Details" screen.
We have two sections we can expand: Files and Details. Your organization may choose to add another section: Actions. Actions would allow the user to "Send to legal for review". Or "Give legal approval". Or "Send out for signature". My organization decided that this is too complex for us at this time. We are fine with doing these things outside the system or with manual emails and we will update the files and meta data ourselves. We can customize this to your organization's needs.
Unique ID and SharePoint URL
There is a unique ID shown at the bottom of the Matter screen. This uniquely identifies the matter. Your organization may choose instead to use a more complex string of letters and numbers that can't be guessed so easily. My organization was fine with simply using a sequential number. At any rate, clicking this number copies a URL to the user's clipboard.
For my organization, this URL looks like: https://automateofficework.sharepoint.com/sites/test/SitePages/contracts.aspx?page=matter&mid=45. This is a URL to the SharePoint interface that you can share with people outside your department. For example, I could reply to the email from the person asking me to review this contract. I can give them the link and they can follow along as I do my work with all files in the cloud where they can see them. I can also ask them to include this link in all future emails about the contract.
Remember I said that the panel can read the contents of the panel that is open? When I open an email that contains a link like that, my home screen in the panel will show a button with the brief details of the matter. Clicking on that button takes me straight to its Matter screen.
The business person outside my department can click on the same link and go to the SharePoint interface. More about that later.
Matter files
Back to the Matter screen. Clicking on the Files button expands to show a tree of folders and files for the matter. And a Plus button that expands to allow you to add a new file or a new folder. But remember that by default, people cannot even view the files. You must have access to the contents of the files to even be able to expand the Files section. Now let's add the file that was attached to the email.
Matter new file
There are multiple ways to add files to a matter.
Whether in the Outlook interface or SharePoint interface, a user can add a file from the local drive, from the department's template library (if your organization chooses to integrate this), or create a new blank file in a few formats like docx, xlsx, and txt.
Notice that in the Outlook interface we have added context from the email message that's open.
Matter new file from email
The From email screen provides a button to upload the open email as a PDF and also lists all file attachments. This makes it so you can easily record background information like the email to share with others who didn't receive the email.
Uploading a file from here brings the user back to the Matter page with Files expanded.
Clicking the PDF opens the file in SharePoint in a browser.
Clicking the Word file opens the file in Word.
Note that neither of these files is on the user's local computer. These files are both on SharePoint in the cloud. If I make changes to the Word document and save and close, the file is updated on SharePoint. When I open the file again, my changes are there for everyone to see.
This is a much better way to work because now everyone working on the file is working on a single file. We are not working on 20 different copies that will need to be aligned by someone in the future. Instead of emailing someone a copy of an attached file, I can email them the SharePoint URL and they can see the live version of the document (if they have access), even if I make changes to the document between the time of emailing them and them opening it.
File details screen
Clicking on a file by default opens it. But what if we want to do other things with the file? Our interface does not have the possibility of right-clicking. If someone is on a phone, all they can do is a basic click. So we have the three dots to the right of the file. Open these to see the File details screen.
For a Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) we have the option of opening them in the appropriate desktop/phone app and so this is the first option. The next option is to open the file either in the online browser version of these apps or for other files (images, movies, PDF, etc) we will open a browser to the URL of the file on SharePoint and SharePoint will try to open it.
Next the user can download a copy of the file to their local computer.
SharePoint has the feature of showing a thumbnail of Office documents and PDF's. This displays a thumbnail of only the first page. It might be handy if all you want to see is the first page.
Next you can rename the file or move the file (possible when you have a tree of folders created).
Next you can copy a sharing link. SharePoint has a feature that you can get a URL to a file so that even if the file is access restricted, you can share a link with a trusted person and even though they don't normally have access to the file, they can still open a file in view-only mode. Like if you need quick advice from the tax department. You don't want them to make changes to the file, but you just want them to be able to read a paragraph and give you an answer. The person you give the link to can also share the link further with other colleagues if needed.
Version history
Version history can be handy. Yes, you can find details about the versions of a file directly in Word. But you can also do it here. Plus there are extra actions you can do if you click on a version and expand it to see the action buttons under it.
Clicking on the eye icon opens that specific version in Word in the cloud. The download button downloads a copy of that specific version to the local computer. Clicking restore makes a copy of the version and moves it to the top of the chain, essentially undoing any changes that were made after that version. And once you see you have too many versions of a file, you can click Delete to remove versions you don't need anymore in the history.
New folder
A new folder requires a name that is not the same as any other folder at the location.
The folder is created at the location you were when you created it.
Clicking on the background folder navigates to the contents of the folder and we see at the top our location (background/..). Clicking on the "up folder" takes us back one level in the folder tree. If we add files or folders in the background folder, they will be added at this location.
Clicking on the three dots to the right of a folder allows you to rename or delete the folder.
Details screen
The Details screen shows the matter's meta data. Anyone can view the meta data. Only those with ownership and those in the legal department can edit the meta data. Meta data is the same fields as when we created the matter plus some more.
Common extra fields are alerts upon expiration, tagging of renewal properties, termination properties, a list of amendment.
Your organization might choose to have even more fields to track things like data privacy properties or even the language of the contract.
Your organization can add whatever fields are important for you. We can even add fields that are specific for certain contract types. Like a distribution agreement will need a field for territory, a list of products, or an annual quota. Whatever you need, we can customize it.
I also include a Sharing Link for the entire matter. Only matter owners have access to this, but it creates a link that can be shared and then anyone with the link can view the contents of all files for the matter. This is helpful if you don't want to share a single document with someone, but all of them.
Search matters
Okay. So we are all done with creating and managing matters. What about searching? From the home screen, if you don't have the URL we will have to search. You can search off of all the tagged meta data.
I did a search where the Other party is "Demo Company" and got two hits. You might have a really complex search that you want to do regularly. Like show me all the matters where the status is "under legal review" and I am the responsible lawyer. You can click the "Save search" button and save this filter to your list of saved searches. Then on the Search screen there is a button to your list of saved searches. Just click one and it will bring you to your Search results screen. Clicking on a matter takes you to the Matter screen.
Other resources
Your organization might want to include other resources. Here I have a link to see all the parties in the Other parties list. Or you can see all our distributors and their distribution agreements. This can be customized to your organization's needs. Some of these resources might be viewed as giant spreadsheets that you can't really view comfortably on a phone in Outlook. Instead what we can do is have the button open a link to a page on SharePoint in a browser to show the user a full-sized screen. Whatever you need, we can customize it. You might even show custom resources to the user based off of who they are or their role or preference.
Settings
The Settings screen currently shows diagnostics about the version of Outlook being used and the subject of the email that's open. You can also put a link to Help resources for your people. We could also put here settings so your people can change their preferences language and the types of resources they want visible on the Home screen.
SharePoint
The SharePoint interface looks almost identical. But now there is no email message open with files attached. Users can create matters and search matters. Go to a matter's page and you see the URL is the exact same format as the URL we got out of Outlook.
Conclusion
No matter your work, this is a powerful approach to streamlining your work. You can organize your work in a central database and then give your people interfaces where they do their work to take their work to the next level.
Feel free to connect with Justin and we can build whatever type of system you need.
