This stage is designed for you to manage the agreement negotiation process. You can manage redlined versions of agreements in various formats side-by-side, Lock/ Send a document, insert clauses, respond, chat, and compare versions. This also allows you to quickly observe any discrepancies and reduce negotiation time.

Typically, this part of the process is handled by the following key roles (Agreement Negotiators):

  • Agreement Facilitator
  • Legal admin, counsel
  • Financial analyst, controller
  • VP/Director/Sales manager, sales operations, procurement, partners

Key Tasks Associated With the Negotiation Phase

The following key tasks are involved to complete the negotiation:

  • Timely internal collaboration in the negotiation process
  • Maintenance of persistent repository of predefined agreement clauses
  • Reconcile redline / compare negotiated changes to terms, clauses, lines
  • Retention of artifacts throughout the negotiation

You can secure documents during the negotiation cycle.

As an Agreement Negotiator, you coordinate changes to the agreement that might occur over the course of agreement negotiation. They are generally involved in finalizing the process in accordance with company policies and legal requirements. Agreement Negotiators can perform the following:

  • Amend and save agreements/proposals in Salesforce
  • Highlight reconcilable data
  • Reconcile agreement/proposal records
  • View chatter feeds from within Microsoft Word
  • Share content and document to Salesforce Chatter
  • Translate agreement/proposal documents from one language to another
  • Create reminder tasks or schedule appointment events in relation to the opened agreement/proposal document
  • Redline and store versions of the document during negotiations
  • Compare different versions of agreements/proposals side by side

To create and negotiate an agreement, the X-Author Contracts Word add-in is designed for agreement administrators and legal users to help streamline the process of maintaining agreements and associated agreement and clause templates. Using the X-Author for Contracts, agreement administrators can manage complex negotiation cycles, clause and agreement template easily. 

The add-in provides support for versioning of agreements, and agreement administrators can save redlined, clean and final versions of non-standard language in a Word document opened either from Salesforce or locally. When saving final versions, the add-in also helps the user to reconcile any terms that might have changed during the approval process. Agreement and Clause templates can also be managed, including the ability to insert, save as, and replace them to and from Conga CLM. Finally, users can compare versions of an agreement document.

For details on the X-Author for Contracts functions, see X-Author for Contracts documentation.

To negotiate an agreement

  1. Next, to the Agreement Document in the Notes & Attachments area, click View. Save the document to any location on your computer.
  2. Open the document using Microsoft Word.
  3. On the toolbar, click X-Author for Contracts.

  4. Login with your credentials.

    To use X-Author Contracts, you do not need to login directly via Salesforce. You only need to connect from the X-Author ribbon in Word. For details, see Connecting to Contracts section in X-Author for Contracts documentation.

    Using Alternate and Fallback Provisions During the negotiation process, you may wish to incorporate existing alternate and fallback provisions that have been stored in your clause library. To perform this function, click X-Author Contracts, and then click the Playbook option. At the top of the new search window which opens on the right, you will be able to select from various filters to locate desired clauses that you may want to insert. You may insert the selected clauses as a reference or as inline text in your template When querying the Clause Library, you can elect to query the full language that will be included in your agreement or only the guidance. You can control this option by selecting X-Author, and then clicking Options > Template tab. Select or clear Store Template / Clause Content as Text. Add new text and delete a clause anywhere in the document. The X-Author plug-in provides the following options:

    Save as Internal Version

    Save to Conga CLM and preserve redlines. You can use the default name that comes up or overrides and enters one of your own.

    Save as External Version

    Save to Conga CLM and remove redlines. All changes are automatically accepted and the redlines are removed. You can use the default name provided by the plug-in when you enter this option or override and enter one of your own.

    Save as Final Version

    Save to Conga CLM, remove redlines, and prepare for obtaining signatures. The Save as Final Version initiates the process of finalizing an Agreement by accepting all changes and changing the Status Category to In Signatures.

    By using consistent naming conventions in your organization, you can simplify the process of keeping everyone on the same page in terms of what is happening in a negotiation and provide an easy-to-follow historical record of activities.

  5. When the agreement document is open and ready to be edited, go to X-Author for Contracts X-Author and choose Save as Final Version.
  6. If you are prompted to Reconcile, click No.


    If the variables (for example, start date, end date) were modified, ensure the same change has been made on the agreement detail page.

  7. Click View Refresh in browser. This action updates the agreement version in the repository and activity history.

Go to X-Author for Contracts in Microsoft Word and click Compare, and select two versions of the agreement that you need to compare. The two versions of the agreement are presented side by side and you can quickly see any differences.