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CLM for Salesforce

Managing Templates

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Configuring Template Versioning

Template Versioning provides a solution framework of document versioning at the Template level to track template versions against generated documents. Your organization's policies, requirements, legal and business practices may change over time, requiring templates to be updated. Rather than manually keeping track of template iterations, you can use template versioning to track and manage every version of your template throughout its lifecycle. Template versioning maintains those different versions as the template changes, giving template admins the ability to activate specific template versions based on their needs, and to observe how the template looked at every stage in the authoring process. Template versioning applies to both agreement and clause templates in your library.

In short, template versioning allows template admins to:

  • Survey older contracts by viewing their associate template version to understand what was in the template at generation.
  • Revert to previous template versions.
  • Clone template versions to begin a new template lifecycle.
  • Publish updated clauses and nested clauses across specific template versions.
  • Understand the growth and evolution of a given template.

How Template Versioning Works

Each agreement or clause template in your org (with or without template versioning enabled) always consists of one template, and multiple child references to clauses and sections contained in that template. For every instance of that template, there is always only one template which can be considered active (the version selected by the user to generate the contract or the version of the clause inserted into an agreement template).

More specifically, whenever a new template is created by any means, one instance of the template is created, stored in the Template object in Salesforce, and any clauses or dynamic sections nested in the template are stored in the Template Clause Reference and Template Dynamic Section objects respectively. The Template object has a master-detail relationship to both child objects, as shown in the following figure.



What Template Versioning does is preserve the same template, we'll call it the "Header Template," which has a one-to-one relationship with the Active Version of the template and its child objects, and a one-to-many relationship with other versions of the template, which also have versioned clause and section references, but are considered inactive.



Template Versioning introduces three new objects:

  • Template Version – a detail object of the master Template object
  • Template Clause Reference Version – a child object of Template Version that stores nested clause references
  • Template Dynamic Section Version – a child object of Temple Version that stores dynamic section references

When a user creates a new version of a template, the version information is incremented (e.g. from "1.0" to 2.0") but stored in the Template Version object and its child objects, NOT the Template object, creating a separate record of that template version. After creation, when and if a template version becomes the active version, data from the Template Version objects are copied to the Header Template objects and that template version becomes the new active version of the Header Template.

Enabling Template Versioning

Template Versioning is disabled by default in all orgs. If you want to enable it to allow template administrators to create and manage multiple versions of agreement and clause templates, you must make changes to your org.

The following steps are required:

  • Enable Template Versioning in Comply System Properties
  • Add the Versions Related List to the Template Layout.

The following steps are optional:

  • Add "Activate Version" and "Active Version" Fields to the Template Layout.

Enabling Template Versioning

  1. Go to Setup > Develop > Custom Settings.
  2. Click Manage next to Comply System Properties.
  3. Click Edit next to System Properties. The System Properties form is displayed.


  4. Check Enable Template Versioning.
  5. Click Save. Template Versioning is now enabled in your org.

Adding the Version Related List to the Templates Layout

  1. Follow standard Salesforce instructions for editing the Template object layout (e.g., click "Edit Layout" from the Template details page).
  2. From the Template layout console, click on Related Lists.


  3. Drag the Versions Related List into your Template layout.


  4. Click Save.

Adding Optional Activate fields to the Template layout

  1. Follow standard Salesforce instructions for editing the Template object layout (e.g., click "Edit Layout" from the Template details page).
  2. From the Template layout console, click on Fields.


  3. Drag the Activate Version and Active Version fields into your Template layout.


  4. Click Save.

Template Details should now display the active version of the current template record and provide an "Activate Version" button for activating templates from within Contract Management.



Managing Template Versions in X-Author Contracts

Template administrators primarily use X-Author for Contracts to create, check-out, check-in and make changes to agreement and clause templates. With Template Versioning, this practice should not change, and it is recommended that most template-related tasks be completed using the X-Author contracts add-in for Microsoft Word. Using X-Author for Contracts, you can:

  • Create new templates
  • Check-in new template versions
  • Check-out template versions
  • Clone template versions
  • Activate template versions
  • Publish template versions which contain nested clauses

For full step-by-step instruction on managing template versions using X-Author for Contracts, see X-Author Contracts documentation.

Activating Template Versions

When you want to change the active version of an agreement or clause template, you can activate it from the template record in Conga CLM.

Warning: It is highly recommended that template versions be activated strictly from X-Author for Contracts.

To activate a template version

Before you can activate a template version from the Template record:

  1. Navigate to the Templates tab. View the current active template version in the "Active Version" field under Template Detail.


  2. Click Activate Version. The Activate page is displayed.


  3. Search for a template version using any of the following filters:
    • Version number
    • Modified by (User)
    • Last modified after Date
    • Last modified before Date
  4. Click Activate next to the version you want to activate. The following page is displayed on successful activation.


    Tip:

    When a template version is successfully activated, every template above it will be flagged as "Needs Publishing." For example, if you change the active version of a Payment Terms clause which is used in three templates, all three templates will be flagged. For information on publishing template versions, refer to Publishing Template Versions.

Cloning Template Versions

Tip: Hint: Click on an image to enlarge the view.

You can clone a template when the need arises to have a template with similar language or elements. When you clone a template version, a new template record is created as version 1.0. Remember the following when cloning a template version:

  • You can only clone the active version of a template.
  • Cloning a template record is just like creating a new one except a copy of the document you are cloning is attached to the new record as the first version.

To clone a template version

  1. Go to the Templates tab to view the Template record.
  2. From the Template record details, click the Clone button.


  3. On the next screen, click Continue.
  4. Make changes as needed to Template header information.


  5. Click Save. The Template record is cloned.


    The Active Version is set to 1.0 and the active version of the template document from the record that was cloned is attached to the cloned record in the Notes & Attachments section.



To View Parent Template Version

You can clone a template from another template version and can track the version of the parent template from which the current template was cloned. To view the parent version of the current template:

  1. Go to Templates tab to view the template record.
  2. Go to Versions related list.
  3. In the versions related list you can see the parent version of the current template in the Parent Version column. You can also see the active version from the Active Version field in the Publish Templates related list. The parent version of the new template created is blank because it does not have a parent template.


    Tip: To view parent version, make sure to add the Parent Version column to the Versions related list using Edit Layout option from Salesforce.

Publishing Template Versions

Publishing templates improves document generation performance by taking referenced clauses in a template and "publishing" them before the template is used to generate a document. In Pre-FX2, this takes the content of the clause and enters it into the template body as static text, as if it was another part of the main template. In FX-2 format, updated clauses are inserted into the template.

Template Versioning allows you to be more selective when publishing templates. You can choose which versions to publish, updating nested clauses in some versions while preserving older versions of your clauses in other templates. In template versioning, publishing adopts a "bottom-up" approach. You publish the main template with nested clauses, but the process actually travels up from the updated clause to the main template itself. For example, consider a template with a nested clause that contains an updated clause. First, the clause is updated, next its parent clause is updated, and finally the main template is updated. For every update, each template version is incremented by 1.

The process for both manually and automatically publishing templates in Contract Management is unchanged. Refer to Publishing for step-by-step instructions to publish your templates.

Warning: If a template has note yet been versioned and is published, the template is published with two versions: a pre-published version and the published version.

Consider the following scenario for publishing templates when a clause has been updated:

Sam Sales works for Tier One Systems, and is managing two different master templates, and MSA and MCA. Both templates contain the same Net Payment Terms clause (version 1.0). The figure below represents the template and clause hierarchy for both templates. Note the Net Payment Terms clause is nested under both.



Sam is given instructions to update the Net Payment Terms clause to a Net 45 from Net 30 for MSA contracts only. Sam updates the clause to version 2.0 and activates it. This flags both parent clauses and master templates as "needs publishing." Because only the MSA contracts need to reflect the updated Net Payment Terms clause, Sam elects to publish just the MSA master template to a new version.

When the template is published, the Net Payment Terms nested in the MSA template, the Net Payment Terms clause, the MSA Payment Terms clause above it, and the MSA master template are all updated to version 2.0. MSA template 2.0 is now the active template version. The MCA template is not published and still contains version 1.0 of the Net Payment Terms clause.



All MSA contracts using this template will now use the updated clause version.

Administrator Guide
CLM

March 3, 2025