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Oracle Sales Contracts Implementation and Administration Guide
Release 12.1
Part Number E13459-04
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Contract Expert Administration

This chapter covers the following topics:

Overview

The Contract Expert feature enables organizations to define rules for creating contracts and reporting policy deviations.

The sections in this chapter include:

Managing Questions

In Oracle Contracts, you can define questions that drive both clause selection and policy deviation rules. You can also define the response type that is appropriate for different questions.

When you author a business document, Contract Expert displays the list of questions for which responses are required and the appropriate set of responses for you to select from.

This section covers the following topics:

Creating User Questions

You can create three types of questions, which are distinguished by the type of response: Yes/No, Numeric, or List of Values.

You must provide the intent for the question, that is, Buy or Sell. A question name must be unique for a given intent.

After you define these question types, questions are available across all operating units that use the Contract Terms Library.

Prerequisites

If the response type to a question is Numeric, you must set up constants.

If the response type to a question is List of Values, you must set up value sets with the following properties:

For more information, see the Oracle Applications Flexfields Guide.

Steps

To create user questions:

  1. Navigate to the Create Questions page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Questions tab > Create Question button

  2. In the Name field, enter a short name for the question. The name must be unique for a given intent and across all operating units.

  3. In the Description field, describe the purpose of the question.

  4. In the Intent field, select the intent for the question: Buy or Sell.

  5. In the Question Prompt field, enter the question that you want to appear at run time for the users to respond to.

  6. Use the Disable check box to disable the question to prevent it from being used in a rule. The Disable check box is available only in Update mode.

  7. Select a response type from the list of values. The system supports the following response types:

  8. If in the Response Type field you selected the List of Values option, the system displays the Value Set field.

    Enter a value set or use the Search for Value Set icon to search for and select a value set.

    Note: You must set up value sets as described in the prerequisites section.

    For example, if your question checked that a contract type should include the values Fixed Price, Cost Plus Pricing, and Services only Pricing, you would first need to define these three values in a value set. Then, when creating the question, you would need to select Response Type = List of Values, and Value Set = the name of your defined value set.

  9. Click Apply to activate and save the question.

Note: Contract Expert does not currently support default responses on user questions. An exception, however, is a question with response type Numeric that always defaults to 0 in the business document. You must change this default value when answering numeric questions.

Searching for Questions

Use these steps to search for questions.

Steps

To search for questions:

  1. Navigate to the Questions page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Questions tab

  2. Enter your search criteria for the question.

    The following fields are available as search criteria:

  3. Click Go.

    The system displays the questions that match your search criteria.

Updating Questions

You can make changes to the existing questions. However, you cannot update Name, Intent, Response Type, and Value Set if the question is used in a rule. You can update Description and Question Prompt even if the question is used in a rule. For the prompt changes to take effect on a business document, you must run the Contract Expert: Synchronize Templates concurrent program.

Steps

To update questions:

  1. Navigate to the Questions page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Questions tab

  2. Search for the question that you want to update.

    For more information, see the Searching for Questions section. The system displays the questions that match your search criteria. From this page, you can select one of the following options:

Managing Constants

You can define numeric constants in Oracle Contracts. Numeric constants can be used in Contract Expert rules that use numeric conditions.

For instance, you may want to define a rule as follows:

Define a constant called Contract Amount Threshold. In the constant, provide a value of $1,000,000.

Then, when you create the rule, you simply use the Contract Amount Threshold constant instead of entering the amount $1,000,000 on the rule. This way, if the threshold is increased later to $2,000,000, you need to update only the constant definition instead of every rule that uses this condition.

This section covers the following topics:

Creating Constants

You must provide the intent for the constant, that is, Buy or Sell. A constant name must be unique for a given intent.

After they are defined, constants are available across all operating units that use the Contract Terms Library.

Steps

To create constants:

  1. Navigate to the Create Constant page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Constants tab > Create Constant button

  2. In the Name field, enter a short name for the constant.

  3. In the Description field, describe the purpose of the constant.

  4. Select the intent for the constant: Buy or Sell.

  5. In the Value field, enter a numeric value for the constant.

  6. Click Apply to save the constant.

Searching for Constants

Use these steps to search for constants.

Steps

To search for constants:

  1. Navigate to the Constants page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Constants tab

  2. Optionally, enter your search criteria:

    Note: You can perform a blind search. You can also enter the single wildcard character % as your search parameter.

  3. Click Go.

    The system displays the constants that match your search criteria.

Updating Constants

The name and intent of a constant cannot be changed if the constant is used in a rule. Use the following steps to update a constant.

Steps

To update constants:

  1. Navigate to the Constants page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Questions tab

  2. Search for the constant that you want to update.

    For more information, see the Searching for the Constants section. The system displays the constants that match your search criteria. From this page, you can select one of the following options:

Managing Rules

Contract Expert rules are created based on Buy or Sell intent for a specific organization. These rules can be applicable to all templates of one organization or can be associated with specific templates.

This section covers the following topics:

Creating Rules

To define a rule, you can enter multiple values for a single condition. The system displays a search page so that you can select multiple values and add to the rule. Use the following steps to create a rule.

Steps

To create rules:

  1. Navigate to the Create Rule page.

    Navigation: Contract Terms Library > Contract Expert > Rule tab > Create Rule button

  2. Select the operating unit for the rule.

  3. Select one of the following rule types:

    For more information about the rule types, see the Contract Expert - Overview section.

  4. Enter a unique name for the rule to identify the rule.

  5. Enter a description explaining the nature and purpose of the rule.

  6. Select the intent for the rule: Buy or Sell.

  7. Review the Status field, which is a read-only field.

    Contract Expert supports the following statuses for a rule:

  8. To add a condition, click the Add Another Row button.

  9. Select the Match All or Match Any condition option.

    If the conditions must all be true to select the results, select the Match All radio button. Select the Match Any radio button if any condition can be true to select the results.

  10. In the Type field, select one of the following condition types:

    Note: You can use both system and user-defined variables to define Contract Expert rules.

    For more information about Variables, see Managing Variables.

  11. Select a name in the Name field: the available options are based on the condition type that you selected in the Type field:

  12. Select an operator in the Operator field. Operators provide the logic in defining a condition, for instance, Payment terms IS Net 30.

    To create a rule, Oracle Contracts supports the following operators:

  13. Depending on the Type and other options, you must select one or more values in either the Value or Update Values field. For example:

    Note: If you select multiple values in a condition, the system displays "Multiple values" in the Value field. Click the Show/Hide icon in the Details field to view all the value selections.

  14. Click the Remove icon if you want to delete a condition from a rule.

  15. Use the Results region to define the results if the defined conditions are met. The Results region is available only for Clause Creation rules.

    In the Results region, you can select clauses that must be brought in and ask the user additional questions on a business document.

  16. In the Results - Clauses region, click the Add Clauses button to add another Result row to the rule.

    The Results - Clauses Table displays the Clause Title and Description for the clauses that you have chosen.

  17. In the Results - Clauses Table, you can access the following:

  18. Use the Question Table of the Results region to select one or more additional questions that should be asked at run time if the conditions are met.

    Note: This is one of the steps that is required to set up dependencies between questions. For more details, see Creating Dependencies Between Questions.

    The Question table includes:

  19. Use the Contract Template Assignments region to assign the rule to one, many, or all contract templates. You can assign contract templates in Draft or Approved status to a rule. Only contract templates that are Contract Expert-enabled and belong to the same intent as the rule will be available to be assigned to the rule.

    Note: Even though you can assign templates in any status to a rule, because only approved templates can be used to author business documents, the rules are effective only when applied to approved templates.

  20. Select one of the following options:

Searching for Rules

Use these steps to search for existing rules.

Steps

To search for rules:

  1. Navigate to the Rule page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Rules tab

  2. In the Search region, search for rules by:

  3. Click Go.

    The system displays the rules that match your search criteria.

Activating Rules

You can activate draft rules and make them available for use in Contract Expert.

Prerequisites

You must assign at least one contract template to the rule, but the contract template need not be in the Approved status.

Steps

To activate rules:

  1. Navigate to the Rules page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Questions tab

  2. Search for the rule that you want to activate.

    For more information, see Searching for Rules. The system displays the rules that match your search criteria.

  3. Click Activate.

    The Active Rules: Confirmation page appears. This page provides validation information on rules that are eligible to be published and those rules that cannot be published due to validation problems.

    The validations include the following:

  4. If validation errors occur, you cannot complete rule activation. You must first correct the errors, and then restart the Rule Activation process.

  5. When the Activate Rules: Confirmation page shows only rules that are ready to be activated, click Finish.

    This generates the following processes:

Note: To improve database performance, run the following Configurator concurrent programs periodically:

For more information, see the Oracle Configurator Implementation Guide. For additional information about improving database performance, see the Oracle Configurator Performance Guide.

Disabling Rules

You can disable active rules and make them unavailable for use in Contract Expert.

Steps

To disable rules:

  1. Navigate to the Rules page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Rules tab

  2. Search for the rule that you want to disable or activate.

    For more information, see the Searching for Rules section. The system displays the rules that match your search criteria.

  3. Click Disable.

    When you choose to disable a rule:

Updating Rules

The steps for updating active rules are:

Steps

To update rules:

  1. Navigate to the Rules page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Rules tab

  2. Search for the rule that you want to update.

    For more information, see the Searching for Rules section. The system displays the rules that match your search criteria. From this page, you can update, duplicate, or delete rules.

  3. Update Rules: If you click the Update icon, the system changes the status of the active rule to Revision; if you update a draft rule, the status remains Draft. The system allows updates to the conditions, results, and template assignments. However, you cannot update the following fields:

  4. Delete Rules: You can delete only rules in the Draft status.

  5. Duplicate Rules: You can duplicate rules within your organization. The system creates a new rule. You must provide a new name and description for the rule. The system validates the rule when you click the Save, Apply, or Apply and Add Another button. The contract template assignments are also copied during the duplicate process

Managing Question Sequence

You can view the default sequence of questions that are used in a contract template and update the ordering sequence. The sequence controls the order in which the questions are displayed during document authoring. Use the following steps to view and reorder the sequence of questions.

Steps

To manage question sequence:

  1. Navigate to the Rules page.

    Navigation: Contract Expert > Rules tab

  2. To view or reorder the question sequence, select a contract template to use to view or update the sequence and then click the View Question Sequence button to open the View Question Sequence page.

  3. Use the Contract Template field to search for and select a template. The system displays the default sequence of questions for the selected template.

    In the Questions area of the View Question Sequence page, the column Displayed During Authoring, when selected, indicates the availability of questions during document authoring. The questions that are not selected belong to inactive rules. To enable these questions, you must activate the rules.

  4. To change the question sequence, click the Reorder button. The system displays the Reorder Question page. To indicate a dependant question, the system shows a character (-) next to the question. Organize the dependent questions in the desired order within the main question.

  5. Use the Up and Down arrows to change the question sequence.

    Note: During authoring, a dependent, lower-level question appears only if a higher-level question is answered. If the dependent question is not properly organized under the higher-level question, the dependent question appears out of sequence in the questionnaire during document authoring. For more information about question dependencies, see Creating Dependencies Between Questions.

  6. Click Apply to save and close the page.

  7. Run the Contract Expert: Synchronize Templates concurrent program to publish the updates to question sequence. You must run this concurrent program manually to enable the changes at run time for document authoring. The concurrent program can finish with either of two statuses:

Creating Dependencies Between Questions

This section describes how to set up independent and dependent questions for a Contract Expert session.

Overview

When you use Contract Expert, in the process of authoring a business document, you typically are asked a series of questions.

Your answers to the first-level questions may cause further questions to appear in the Contract Expert session. These extra questions are dependent questions. In turn, answering these dependent questions can cause lower-level dependent questions to appear, up to a maximum of five levels.

Ultimately, the objective of the questions is to specify which clauses are to be added to the business document.

Setting Up Independent Questions

The following describes the general principle of defining a first-level, or independent, question in a rule:

When you answer the question in a Contract Expert session during contract authoring, Contract Expert may add the clauses that are specified in the rule results, but no further questions will appear.

Setting Up Dependent Questions

You can set up to five levels of dependency for questions.

The method of setting up dependent questions is illustrated in the following diagram that shows the simplest case of dependent question setup.

the picture is described in the document text

The following are the general principles that are involved in the setup of all the elements to produce a dependent question:

Using Contract Expert on Business Documents

You can use the Contract Expert functionality to author contract terms and conditions based on the corporate standards and policies. Observe the following guidelines when using Contract Expert:

For more information about using Contract Expert on business documents, see the online help topics in Oracle Contracts, Oracle Procurement Contracts, and Oracle Sales Contracts.

Considerations for Creating Contract Expert Rules

When setting up Contract Expert for authoring contracts, consider the following:

Special considerations regarding using Contract Expert for reporting the deviations are: