Business Context

During contract negotiation, contracts teams frequently develop and refine clause language that has not yet been captured in the organization's Clause Library. A clause marked in an individual agreement document provides that document with smart, structured behavior—but it exists only for that agreement instance. If the document is regenerated, the marked clause is lost. More critically, the refined language cannot be discovered or reused by other contracts professionals working on similar agreements.

The Promote Clause feature bridges the gap between clause authoring in a live agreement and the organization's reusable clause repository. By promoting a marked clause to the Clause Library, legal and contracts teams can capture negotiated or newly drafted language once and make it immediately available for insertion into any future agreement or template, eliminating redundant drafting effort and ensuring consistent, approved clause language across the contract portfolio.

Overview

This use case demonstrates how a contracts manager at a healthcare company promotes a custom data processing addendum (DPA) clause, drafted and marked during negotiation of a vendor agreement, to the organization's Clause Library. Once promoted, the clause becomes part of the shared clause repository and can be searched and inserted into other agreements and templates by any authorized user, without re-drafting the language from scratch.

When a clause is marked in an agreement document in X-Author for Contracts Advanced, the highlighted text acquires structured behavior and is treated as a clause for that specific agreement instance. Promoting the clause to the Clause Library converts it into a formal, reusable clause template. If Template Versioning is enabled in the organization, the system automatically creates an active version (v1.00) of the promoted clause template at the time of promotion.

Actors

• Contracts manager at a healthcare company — Identifies the marked DPA clause in the vendor agreement document and promotes it to the Clause Library using the Promote Clause feature in X-Author for Contracts Advanced.
• X-Author for Contracts Advanced — Facilitates the promotion process, inherits field values from the marked clause, and saves the new clause to the Clause Library in Conga CLM.
• Conga CLM — Stores the promoted clause in the Clause Library, making it searchable and available for insertion into other agreements and templates by authorized users.

Prerequisites

• X-Author for Contracts Advanced is installed and the contracts manager has access to Microsoft Word with the X-Author add-in loaded.
• The vendor agreement document containing the DPA clause is open and checked out in X-Author for Contracts Advanced.
• The DPA clause has already been marked in the agreement document. A marked clause must exist either in the template or in the open agreement document before Promote Clause can be used.
• The contracts manager has the permissions required to promote clauses to the Clause Library in Conga CLM.
• The Clause Library Category and Subcategory values applicable to the DPA clause have been defined by the administrator in Conga CLM. If the Category and Subcategory values in the Agreement object and the Agreement Clauses object do not match the Template object, the contracts manager must manually select the correct values during the promotion.

Scenario

A contracts manager at a healthcare company has been negotiating a vendor agreement that requires a custom data processing addendum clause to address HIPAA compliance obligations specific to the vendor relationship. The clause language has been finalized and marked in the agreement document during the negotiation process. The legal team has confirmed that the clause language is approved for broader reuse across vendor agreements of the same type. The contracts manager promotes the marked DPA clause to the Clause Library so that other members of the contracts team can find and insert it into future vendor agreements without re-drafting the language.

Trigger

The legal team confirms that the DPA clause language negotiated in the current vendor agreement is approved for reuse in future vendor agreements of the same type. The contracts manager opens the agreement document in X-Author for Contracts Advanced to promote the marked clause to the Clause Library before the document is finalized and checked in.

Tasks

Task 1: Open the agreement document and navigate to Promote Clauses

1. Open Microsoft Word and launch the X-Author for Contracts Advanced add-in.
2. Log in to X-Author for Contracts Advanced and open the vendor agreement document containing the marked DPA clause.
3. In the Contracts pane, navigate to Work and select Promote Clauses. If Promote Clauses is not visible under the Work tab, click the More icon and select Promote Clauses from the menu.

Task 2: Select the clause and open the Promote Clause form

1. From the list of marked clauses displayed in the Promote Clauses pane, locate and select the DPA clause.
2. Click Promote Clause. The Promote Clause form opens, with field values pre-populated from the marked clause metadata.

Task 3: Review and complete the Promote Clause form

1. Review and update the following fields in the Promote Clause form as needed:
   • Clause Name: Enter a descriptive name that clearly identifies the clause in the Clause Library, such as HIPAA Data Processing Addendum – Vendor. A clear, specific name improves discoverability when other users search the library.
   • Category: Select the appropriate category from the picklist. Category values are defined by the administrator and are drawn from the Agreement Clause object. For this clause, select Data Privacy.
   • Subcategory: Select the appropriate subcategory. Options change based on the selected Category. Select Data Processing. If the Category and Subcategory values do not match the Template object, manually select the correct values to ensure the clause is properly classified in the library.
   • Language: Select English as the default clause language.
   • Description: Enter or modify the description to explain the clause's purpose and applicable scope. For example: Approved HIPAA data processing addendum clause for use in vendor agreements where the vendor processes protected health information on behalf of the company. The description is limited to 255 characters. An error is thrown if the limit is exceeded.
   • Guidance: Enter guidance text to help other contracts team members understand when to use this clause. For example: Use this clause in vendor agreements where the vendor processes, stores, or transmits protected health information. Confirm with the legal team if the vendor's activities are outside standard PHI processing scope.
   • Keywords: Enter comma-separated keywords to improve clause searchability in the library. For example: HIPAA, data processing, DPA, PHI, vendor, privacy.
2. Click Save.

Result

The DPA clause is promoted to the Clause Library in Conga CLM. It is now available as a reusable clause template that any authorized contracts team member can search by name, category, subcategory, or keyword and insert into future vendor agreements and templates directly from the Clause Library—without re-drafting the language.

If Template Versioning is enabled in the organization, the system automatically creates an active version (v1.00) of the promoted clause template at the time of promotion. The version is visible in the Template Versioning history for the clause.

The contracts manager can verify the promotion by opening the Clause Library in X-Author for Contracts Advanced, searching for the clause by name or keyword, and confirming that the clause appears in the search results with the correct category, subcategory, and metadata.

Next Steps

• Notify the contracts team that the DPA clause is now available in the Clause Library so that team members can begin using it in future vendor agreements immediately.
• If the organization uses Template Versioning, review the automatically created v1.00 version of the promoted clause to confirm it reflects the intended language before the clause is used in production agreements.
• If the promoted clause requires periodic legal review, set a reminder to revisit and update the clause language in the Clause Library at the next contract governance review cycle.
• Consider creating an alternate clause based on the promoted DPA clause for scenarios where a vendor proposes modified data processing terms, so that contracts managers have a pre-approved fallback available during negotiation.

Tips and Best Practices

• Promote a clause to the Clause Library before finalizing and checking in the agreement document. Once a document is regenerated, any marked clauses that have not been promoted are lost and must be re-marked from scratch.
• Write the Guidance field from the perspective of the contracts team member who will encounter the clause in a search result. Clear, scenario-based guidance—specifying the type of vendor, the nature of the data processing, or the risk threshold—helps users make the right clause selection without requiring legal consultation for routine decisions.
• Use specific, searchable Keywords that reflect how contracts team members are likely to describe the clause when searching the library. Include both formal terms (for example, HIPAA) and informal equivalents (for example, health data) to maximize discoverability.
• Keep the Description field within the 255-character limit. Draft the description before entering it into the form to avoid hitting the limit and losing partial content.
• Confirm with the administrator that the Category and Subcategory values in the Agreement object and the Agreement Clauses object match the Template object before promoting. A mismatch requires manual category and subcategory selection during every future marking of the clause, which increases the risk of misclassification in the library.
• After promoting a clause, verify its presence in the Clause Library by searching for it in X-Author for Contracts Advanced. Confirm that the clause name, category, subcategory, and guidance appear correctly before communicating its availability to the contracts team.