How Alternate and Incompatible Clause Relationships Work

While creating or editing a clause you can specify its relationship to other clauses in the Contract Terms Library.

There are two clause relationships to choose from:

• Alternate

  Use the alternate relationship to indicate clauses that authors can substitute for a standard clause in a contract.

• Incompatible

  Use the incompatible relationship to highlight clauses that cannot be present in the contract at the same time.

Both of the relationships you establish are bidirectional but not transitive as shown in the following figure.:

Other relationship properties include:

• Relationships you create are valid for all future clause versions.

• You can only establish relationships between clauses of the same intent and within the same business unit.

• Provision clauses used in procurement applications can only have relationships with other provision clauses.

• For clause adoption, the relationships are copied from the global business unit to the local business unit automatically only if you are adopting clauses as is.

Setting Up the Alternate Relationship

Set up alternate clauses if you want to let contract authors decide when to substitute an alternate clause for a standard clause in a contract.

The following figure illustrates alternate clause setup:Create the standard clause and include it in a contract terms template.Create the alternate clause or clauses.By using variables to represent differences between clauses, you can reduce the number of alternate clauses you must create.Specify the alternate relationships between the standard clause and the alternate clauses.During contract authoring, the contract terms template applies the standard clause in the contract terms, but the contract author can replace it with either one of the alternate clauses.The following figure illustrates the setup of an alternate relationship between clauses in the Contract Terms Library.

During contract terms authoring, contract authors are alerted to the presence of alternate clauses by a special clause icon. If they choose to substitute one of the alternate clauses for a standard clause, the substitution is recorded as a clause deviation in the contract deviations report.

In addition, by selecting the Analyze Clause Usage action, you can determine which contracts are using alternate clauses.

Setting Up the Incompatible Relationship

When you specify a group of clauses to be incompatible, the presence of more than one incompatible clause in a contract results in a warning during contract terms validation.

The following figure uses an example to illustrate the setup of incompatible clauses. During setup, you specify Clause 2 and Clause 3 as incompatible to Clause 1 and associate Clause 1 to a contract terms template.The contract author or a Contract Expert rule applies the contract terms template (including Clause 1) to a contract.The contract author or a Contract Expert rule adds Clause 3 to the contract terms.The application displays a warning during validation.The following figure illustrates an incompatible clause relationship.