Product Area: Approvals

 Impact of Change: New Functionalities

 Roles Impacted: Admins, Approvers

Details

We’re excited to launch of our new approvals system, designed to streamline and improve your contract workflows. This update brings greater flexibility, control, and efficiency to how approvals are managed. Below, we outline what’s new and what are the other changes for you in the new approvals system.

What's New in the Approvals System:

• Automatic Recollection of Approvals: Now, when changes are made to a contract—like uploading a new version or making edits in the document—the system automatically recollects approvals. This ensures that any updates are fully reviewed without needing manual follow-ups, perfect for contracts going through multiple revisions.
• Redlining Approvals: When template-generated contracts are edited (redlined), they lose their pre-approved legal structure. This situation might require additional approvals, ensuring that any unapproved changes are caught. Redlining Approvals are ideal for making sure no crucial modifications are overlooked when a template contract is altered.
• Granular Approval Control : You can now control who can skip approvals and block actions like sending or downloading a contract while approvals are in progress. Unlike before, these restrictions can be set at an individual approval level, offering more precision and security in managing the approval process.
• Ad-Hoc Approvals at Any Stage: Previously, ad-hoc approvals were only possible after all ongoing approvals were completed. Now, you can add ad-hoc approvals at any point in the negotiation process, providing more flexibility to incorporate additional input when needed.
• Pausing Approvals Collection: You can now pause the approval process to wait for external actions, such as counterparty reviews. This ensures that internal approvals don’t move forward prematurely, giving you more control over the contracting process.

Other changes:

• Contracts in Progress vs. New Contracts : Contracts that are currently in progress will not be affected by the migration to the new approvals system. Only contracts created after the workflow is migrated will use the new approvals process, ensuring ongoing contracts remain stable while new ones benefit from the enhanced features.
• Changes to Approval Preferences : Previously, changes to approval preferences were applied retrospectively to all existing contracts, which was the only setting in the workflow manager with this behavior. Now, approval preferences will apply only to new contracts, making the behavior consistent with other workflow settings.
• Approval Preferences on Ad-hoc Approvals : Previously, approval preferences were applied uniformly across all approvals, including ad-hoc ones. In the new system, these preferences are set at the approval level in the workflow manager. Since ad-hoc approvals are not at the workflow level therefore the approval preferences are not applicable to them, so it can be skipped, & the contract can be downloaded, or sent to the counterparty while in progress. We plan to reintroduce preferences for ad-hoc approvals in future updates.
• Uploading an Executed Version of the Contract : Previously, if a user couldn’t mark a contract for execution while approvals were pending, they also couldn’t upload the executed version. With the new approvals system, users can upload the executed version anytime, and pending approvals will be skipped, with notifications sent to approvers.
• Merging of Approval Lists : Pre-send and pre-sign approvals, as well as entity-specific approvals, will now be merged into a single list. Entity-specific approvals will be converted into conditional approvals based on entity variables, maintaining consistent approval behavior while simplifying the setup.
• Approvals in Upload-Sign Workflow:Previously only pre-sign approvals set in the TPP workflow would be collected for upload-sign contracts. Now all approvals in the TPP workflow will also apply to upload-sign contracts, ensuring that no approvals are missed during any part of the process.
• Collect Approvals Modal: The previous form of the modal used for adding notes and requesting approvals has been removed but will reintroduced with improvements later.

Deprecation of Certain Features

• Suggesting Changes: The option to suggest changes to approvals has been merged with the reject action to simplify the process.
• Bulk Skipping: The ability to skip approvals in bulk is being deprecated to ensure each approval is given individual attention.
• Blocking Version Uploads: The feature that blocked version uploads during approvals has been deprecated. Now, users can configure approvals to reset when a new version is uploaded, making the need for blocking unnecessary.
• Blocking Mark for Execution: Explicitly blocking 'Mark for execution' action is now deprecated. In the new approvals system, this action will remain disabled by default until all required approvals are collected, ensuring full compliance before execution.

How to Enable: We will be rolling out this feature to all customers over the coming weeks. If you would like to have it enabled sooner, please contact your CSM.

Relevant Resources: Help Center Documentation 

 Product Area: SpotDraft Email Plugins (Gmail + Outlook)

 Impact of Change: Streamlines contract management by allowing seamless uploads of executed contracts directly from email.

 Roles Impacted: Sales & Legal users using the Email plugins

Details

We have introduced support for the Upload Executed Contracts workflow in both Gmail and Outlook email plugins. This feature enables users to easily upload upto 5 executed contracts at a time, directly from their email interface. It simplifies the process of organizing older contracts, providing a more streamlined and integrated contract management experience within the email ecosystem. This enhancement minimizes the need to switch between platforms, ensuring that contract workflows are more efficient and centralized.

How to Enable: Enabled by default for all users using SpotDraft email plugins in Gmail and Outlook.

Relevant Resources:

•        Gmail Plugin Guide 
•    Outlook Addin Guide 

 Product Area: VerifAI

 Impact of Change: Reliability, Accuracy

 Roles Impacted:All users of VerifAI

Details

In contracts, the name of the party and how they will be referred to is defined at the top (preamble). And in all subsequent sections, the parties are referred to by these references and roles. Playbooks could also have any of these references or party name.

VerifAI used to be agnostic of this and didn't know who is reviewing the contract. So the responses were sometimes unfavourable or just wrong.

Now, users will be able to select their party and get suggestions which are favourable for them.

This party information has improved overall accuracy by ~5% in our evaluation dataset.

How to Enable:This is available to all VerifAI users.

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time

 Product Area: Contract Analytics

 Impact of Change:Feature enhancement

 Roles Impacted: All contract analytics users

Details

It’s been a few months since we’ve rolled out Analytics to everyone. While we’re receiving a steady stream of feedback and working towards better and better experiences and metrics, one of the biggest things we heard from a lot of customers is that they wanted to do additional analysis on top of the data available. In order to enable customers to do this, we’ve now added the ability for users to download the data they see directly from the UI!

This downloaded data will be available in the form of a CSV.

Users can download two forms of this data:

• Download (as it is): If there are any global filters appleid on the dashboard, the resulting csv will contain a filtered list
• Download without filters: Regardless of any global filters applied, the resulting csv will contain all the data visible in the absence of filters

Note:

• Anyone who has access to contract analytics via access control can download the data
• The data is WYSIWYG, meaning only the data that is visible in the dashboards can be downloaded, and all visible data can be downloaded.

Proposed use cases

Following are a couple of use-cases we’ve heard, where downloading the data is a potential solution (workaround or otherwise)

• “I want to create more charts based on this data”: download, and create using excel
• “I want to see this in the context of contract metadata”: download, and join with the contract report from the repository using the contract link in excel.

How to Enable:Enabled for all workspaces. 

Relevant Resources:  Relevant article updated. See screenshot below on how to download, and sample CSV.

 Product Area: Native E-Sign, Summary Page, Get Link

 Impact of Change:Simplifies the sharing of signing links across various channels due to shorter URLs.

 Roles Impacted:BU, Editors and Admins

Details

When a contract is sent out for signature, users can also share a signing link via Get Link feature through the summary page to share across other channels such as Whatsapp, SMS, etc. Previously, this link was long and cumbersome, making it difficult for users to share via channels like email, SMS, or WhatsApp.

What's New:

We've shortened the shareable signing link from a lengthy URL like:

 https://app.spotdraft.com/auth/contract-invite-v2?source=dashboard_view&action... 

to a concise format like:

 sdraft.io/hXbY 

This streamlined link makes it easier to share signing links across different platforms

How to Enable:Enabled for all all workspaces where Get Link feature is enabled

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time

 Product Area: Contract Metadata

 Impact of Change:Usability improvements

 Roles Impacted:All contract metadata users

Details

The problem: To view contract metadata, users usually either go to the summary page, or click on “View Contract” and go to the “Metadata” section.

Often, we’d heard a lot of complaints from users about the experience in this sidepanel. We heard the following pain points:

1. “The Extraction header takes up too much space. I can’t see many fields”
2. “I don’t know where the data has come from. Why does AI say this is the answer?”
3. “Why does this Unverified section reorder all my fields? I arranged them for a reason!”

This led us to rethink how we’re showcasing this information.

The solution : We worked on an entirely new design with the sole purpose of minimizing the clunkiness and maximizing the amount of available information.

Here’s a few highlights

1. The “Extract” button has been moved to the top. It’s got a fancy animation now. Also all information like credits has been moved inside a hover card--the Popover. You’ll see the Popover being used in a lot of different places in the product to give more contextual information going forward.
2. The “Create new field” button has been moved to the top right.
3. The search bar has it’s own focussed state,
4. The fields now explicitly tell you where a value has come from: whether it is AI extracted, overridden by a user, manually entered, computed, etc. This information also show up in the new popover component.
5. The “Unverified” section has gone away. Metadata now always stays inside it’s own section, as defined by the admins.

Note that there is no functional change! The product behaves the exact same way--we’ve just made some of that behaviour more evident.

To see the experience yourself, open the metadata section for yourself and try it out.

What’s next

This isn’t the end! We’re continuing to make more updates. Our next milestone is improving the input fields so it’s much easier to consume the information in a read-only state. We’ve heard how hard it is to reach paragraph fields, and we’re listening! More improvements coming soon.

Further, we also know there are times when the AI extracts an empty value. In such times also, it’s valuable to know the reasoning behind the empty extraction. We’re working to expose that as well, which will significantly improve the SDC experience. Stay tuned.

How to Enable:Enabled for all workspaces. 

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time

 Product Area: Legal Hub and Clickthrough

 Impact of Change:Publish and manage your online terms

 Roles Impacted:Users who have access to Legal Hub and Clickthrough

Details

Introducing Terms Manager: A central place to publish and manage your online terms

Legal teams often depend on other departments like Marketing and Engineering to publish online terms and make necessary updates, leading to delays and dependencies. With Terms Manager, legal teams can now seamlessly create and publish updates to online terms without relying on other teams, all in a few simple steps:

+ Creating an Agreement via Terms Manager

1. Navigate to Terms Manager via the Legal Hub or Clickthrough side navigation.
2. Create a New Agreement using Create Agreement CTA
3. Publish the Agreement either as major or minor version
4. Copy the agreement url to see the agreement live.

Viewing All Agreements via Terms Manager

Users gain a centralized view of all published terms, along with details such as the latest version, last published date, Linked Clickthrough and Linked Legal Hub.

How to Enable:Enabled for all Clickthrough and Legal Hub Users

Relevant Resources: Help Documentation 

 Product Area: Prepare for sign

 Impact of Change:Reduced number of clicks in sending the contract for signing or while adding recipients

 Roles Impacted:Creators, BUs, Editors and Admins who can prepare the contract for signing

Details

We’ve observed that in 99% of cases, when a party is updated, any new recipients added afterward are automatically assigned to the same updated party. Previously, the system would default to the creator's party when adding new recipients.

Now, as an improvement, once a party is updated for a recipient, the system will automatically select that updated party from the dropdown when adding new recipients. This will stay in effect until the party is changed again, saving users an extra click by not requiring them to select a party each time they add a recipient.

How to Enable:Enabled for all workspaces. 

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time

 Product Area: Contract Preview

 Impact of Change:Quality of Life

 Roles Impacted:All users

Details

Previously, Track Changes were not automatically enabled in the preview, leading to confusion among teams. Some users saw their changes accepted, while others did not see their changes entirely after making edits through the editor. To view the changes, users had to manually enable the setting by following the steps here, which was an extra step that many overlooked.

Now, we've simplified the process by enabling Track Changes by default for all users, new and existing.

Bonus:For an even cleaner preview experience, we have removed the ability to download the contract from the print/download button in the viewer (as shown in the screenshot below) to ensure the tight access restrictions.

How to Enable:No action required. Track Changes are now enabled by default for all users.

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time

 Product Area:Native E-Sign

 Impact of Change:Quality of life

Details

We have addressed an issue where there was a mismatch between the signature blocks displayed during the preview(during signing) and those in the executed copy of contracts. Previously, this discrepancy led to formatting and alignment issues within the contract wherever signature fields were present.

As part of our improvements, for signature blocks now, the preview and executed copies now closely resemble each other. This enhancement ensures consistency and proper formatting of signature fields throughout the signing process, providing a more reliable experience for users.

How to Enable:Enabled for all workspaces using native eSign. 

Relevant Resources: No resources at this time