Custom Relationships, Contract Family Tree & Metadata Roll-Up

Product Area: Contract Management

Impact of the Change: Link contracts using your own relationship names, see every linked contract in one tree, and have key metadata from the latest contract flow up to the agreement it changes.

Roles Impacted: Legal Ops & Admins, Legal teams, Contract owners

Description:

An MSA rarely stands alone. Amendments, SOWs, and NDAs build up around it, and the terms in force end up spread across all of them. Relationships used fixed labels; there was no single view of the hierarchy, and someone had to update the MSA by hand whenever an amendment changed a date or value.

• Custom Relationships: Admins create relationships with the names their team uses (Order Form, DPA, SOW) under Manage > Contract relationships. Each one is either Child (changes another contract’s terms) or Related (sits alongside it).
• Contract Family Tree: Every contract now has a tree. Open it from the tree icon next to the contract title or View family on the summary page. You always see the full tree from any contract within the tree, with the current contract highlighted.
• Metadata Roll-Up: Admins choose which metadata fields roll up for each relationship, and whether it runs Automated or Manual (a user confirms first). Once a child and its parent are both executed, those values copy up to the parent and every contract above it. The original value is kept, and the Activity Log records each change.

How they work together

Acme’s Amendment 1 extends their MSA to Dec 31, 2026, and raises the Contract Value to $750K. Link it to the MSA as an Amendment, and once both are executed, the MSA shows the new Expiry Date and Contract Value. Renewal reminders and reports pick them up, and anyone opening Acme’s SOW sees the same tree with the MSA’s current terms.

Resources: Help center link