You can make clauses in your X-Author templates, read-only. When you enable the Read-Only attribute for a clause in a template, that clause becomes uneditable in the generated document. You can edit and take action on a read-only clause in a generated document only if you have enabled 'XA_UnlockReadOnlyClause' custom permission in Contract Management. For more information on how to unlock a read-only clause, see Unlocking Read-only Clauses. 

Read-only clauses are only considered read-only in the context of the generated document. In Contract Management, the read-only clause is listed in the Agreement Clauses related list, with clause status as Original. The Original status only applies to the read-only clauses that are part of the template and does not include clauses that you have inserted from the Playbook after generating the agreement. 

Read-Only clauses have the following characteristics:

  • Any clause can be made Read-Only clause.
  • A Read-Only clause cannot be made Smart.
  • A Read-Only clause can only be defined in a template.
  • A Read-Only clause shows a content control boundary in the generated agreement documents. 
  • The value of the Read-Only clause cannot be edited in the generated agreement document.
  • When you make a clause read-only, the smart fields or read-only fields inside that clause lose their smartness or read-only property and become plain-text fields.
  • You cannot mark a clause as read-only in the header or footer of a template.

To make a clause read-only in a template

  1. From the X-Author Templates ribbon, select Control Panel.
  2. Search for and click the clause in the Navigation Pane to highlight it in the document. Or, select and click on the clause content in the template to highlight it.
  3. From the Properties pane, under Control Panel, set the Attribute of Mark as Read-Only to True. By default, this attribute is False. Simultaneously, the value of Mark as Smart? is updated to False.