Empower Your Team with Sales Contract Automation for Teams

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hi I'm Sharon Sumner community leader speaker blogger and consultant for all things power platform and business applications within office 365 this series of videos is all about business productivity and in this series I'm going to look at getting you to value faster how we can use the tools to bring you a little bit of business value that you can follow along with and create in your business immediately so let's get started so today we're going to talk about contract automation so it's a really big problem in businesses that we have many templates that we want to use for contracts and we have to fill in the blanks on these very long and complex documents with information from various different sources so what we're looking at is a way to make that easier so let's define the challenge we need to easily and quickly produce a standard but long and complex document so there needs to be personalized for each client supplier or every time we want to use it we must use the correct and most up-to-date template so typical uses for this are going to be for contracts for supplier contracts customer contracts NDA's even an employment contract you could use this with statements of work you could use this with purchase requisitions purchase orders even invoices if you wanted to the technology that we're going to use today is we are going to use the populate a word document or actually a populate a word template premium connector within power auto eight so we'll be creating a flow today and we're going to deploy that via teams with SharePoint in the backend there's a really good reason for using teams I see it as the key productivity tool with 20 million plus active users a day team's really has become the single pane of glass that we use for our daily lives with all levels of collaboration so having a solution that surfaces within teams is really fundamental ok let's hit the technology so jumping straight into Microsoft teams you can see I've already created a contract team and we're going to jump straight into the files area in SharePoint associated with that team we can't create document libraries here so we've got to go up to the root of the team to be able to do that so what the root first going to create a document library to hold our templates so templates are whatever it is we're going to use to be filled in for this demo I'll pop in a couple of templates which I'll upload from disk a simple demo template and the word out-of-the-box statement of work template which is actually really good and if I just show you these so the simple document has just got a few fields in it and is really just to demonstrate the fact that anybody can start a document and can pop in values very very easily to be completed the way to manipulate these documents is to use the developer toolbar if we pop the document in design mode you'll see the text fields that I have on here and you can easily add other text fields now this is perhaps a longer tasks that you need to go away and do with your documents or maybe one you've already done but this is the model that we need to use for the connector to be able to fill in the spaces so we have to create those spaces a very clever part about this solution is that flow will pick up automatically the fields that we have to be able to be populated with in this document template it's very cool so as you can see this is the out-of-the-box Word template and there's loads of fields to populate within here as you saw there you just right-click on any grey space and add in that developer toolbar if you don't already have it added so we've got two documents to choose from now we need to create a list and another document library so the document library will be for the final creation so let's call that contracts because that's what we'll go in there of various types and these will be our completed contracts if I can spell at all once we've created this document library we can then create the list that the team will put the details into that are going to be the information that is populated into the document so let's create a list called contract details and we're going to need to add least a couple of fields to be able to demonstrate that it's actually doing what we want it to do so let's go for a single line of text for company name and another one for contract or contact let's give a contacts name I'm pretty sure I saw both of those fields in those documents but we can put in wherever we like okay so we have a list that users can use to add in new details perfect so let's jump into power automate and get cracking with creating our flow we're going to create a flow and we're going to make it an automated one we'll skip this step and we will pick our own trigger so we're looking for the SharePoint trigger that allows us to know when an item has been created or modified because we may use the flow later to add in the ability to pause when the contract is created so that it's not necessarily created immediately if we don't have all the information that we want we're going to pick the contract team and the contract details list so we're watching the contract details list for a creation or a change event so we are going to pick the populate a Microsoft Word template premium connector and we're going to point that out of our contract team and the document library where we put our template so this is going to pick up the template that we pick now here is where the magic happens so if we point at either of our documents it automatically goes off and gets all of the values for that document from the developer pain that we've already seen if I switch to the simple document you'll see well it's much more simple so let's use the simple one just a nice example to create the document for you so let's bring in a couple of the attributes that we went and defined it doesn't really matter where and we do need a type so that's throw in title because I think we only had a couple of fields so then we're going to add this step to actually create the document so while we have populated a template that's effectively still in memory so we need to create the word document and I always forget what this one's called I think it's called create file and we're looking specifically for the SharePoint one not the onedrive one so let's pick the SharePoint one and point it to our contract team and the folder path that we not to go into so because it's a teams we want to go directly into contracts and we now have the ability to name the file so ideally we're going to put an attribute in of the file and I'll show you a little tip and trick here so no matter what I put here after this attribute it seems that this bit is going to get deleted so it's really something to watch out for I just matter what I do I always seem to get that part deleted I'll show you in a second first of all let's just add the file content which is from the values that we've got in our hand if we rename this item here to some things spoke to us we'll be able to recognize in the dynamic content that is definitely ours so we're going to bring that in and then we're going to save the fly we're gonna save it in a couple of places we're gonna rename it just to make sure that it's something a little bit more obvious for us so we're creating a contract from a template we can save it again and yet still when we go back to the main menu not only is it gonna say we're going to throw your thing in the bin which we've already saved but when we come back in and we look at the company name part here you can see it's disappeared so I'm having to put that back in again so the amount of times I've done this where you create a file that has no file extension second time around if we come back in you'll notice that it's still there I don't know why it happens I guess it's a little bug but knowing that it happens might save you some time by any head-on war we have when an item is created or modified create the document from the template and then create as a file specifically called by the company name and deploy that into our environment for us let's go and test this out so we're going to jump back to the list we're gonna put some contract details in let's put in my test or uniquely let's have Sharon's flowers I can see some flowers and we'll put myself myself and we'll put me in as the contact name there we are those are our details so now when we jump back to the flow we should see the flow begin to run we did an on create or edit so this should automatically trigger the flow here it is and when we go into there we can see we have lots of green ticks so that we know that the process ran without hitch there's all our values and the file was created with an extension which is awesome so let's just go back and confirm that that did happen in the contracts library there's our document let's have a look to make sure that our document has in fact taken our values through well open that in the word app and there we are perfect so we now have the solution where we can put the details in one list and from a template that we've pointed to we can create the document using the details that we've put in that list so now we want to add a little bit more to the solution let's go back to our contract details and add in a couple more columns first of all let's put in a choice field to say which kind of document that we want to create now in in our templates we have two but let's work with that obviously you can make this as complex as you want to make this so we have the simple document and we have the statement of work so we just kind of have that as a simple choice field and the other thing that we're going to add is the ability to say don't create this right now or do create this right now just in case you don't want to create right off the bat so we're going to default that to no and assume that you don't have enough details to create the document unless you specifically take that to yes for us okay so now we need to go and make some changes to the flow so if we jump back in and edit now what we need to do is add this in a in a condition we're going to do this here above these two actions because we're actually going to reuse them so what we need to do is pull in the condition statement here in the control and what we're going to say is the first thing to test for is whether or not we are supposed to be generating the document so we've got create now if create now is true which is will be the s value then we will be in this yes block over this side okay so what we're going to do in here is we are going to put in yet another condition because now we're going to say okay we're going to create the document but what type is it so looking at the document type column and specifically the value in the document type we want to know if the value is equal to one of the option so if we say is it equal to simple because those are the the statements we have down the bottom here so we'll move these into the yes if it's equal to simple then we're going to do what we were doing already if it's no then we can assume that it's a statement of work now one of the nice things about flow of late is that we can copy to clipboard so we can copy these two to the clipboard and then we can simply paste them on the other side from my clipboard which is under choose an action under the clipboard we do need to do a little bit of fix up on these where we need to make sure that we're picking the right document so here you can see I've created the the word template I've renamed to create statement of work so that I can see that I'm definitely picking the right one for this create file to instance okay so that's ours with everything in place we're going to save this flow and jump back to the list item and in here we're going to make some changes so if we edit this item and we say it's going to be a statement of work but we've now clicked it to yes so this will be an unchanged event and we can jump straight back to flow to be able to see this or sorry power automate to be able to see this flow run now don't forget it can take up to 60 seconds for the flow to actually initiate and then probably a further 60 seconds to run so here it is suddenly appeared and if we click through to that we'll be able to see that the branch that that condition has gone down so yes we are allowed to create the document and here we have takes down the create statement of work side of things so if we now look we can see that we have a contract we need to refresh this list and we have a statement of work so let's have a quick peek to make sure that we actually got the values we were expecting and that statement of work now bear in mind this one had an awful lot of places where it could put values so let's see if we can find it by using search so we'll search for Sharon there I am okay this is where we inserted the name and I think I was sharon's flowers so nice on here perfect and you can see that it's populated in a couple of places I don't know what those what the naming convention of that document was but that's what we intended to do happy days okay if we want to do a couple more tests on this what we can do is we can jump back in and put in another test item this one is going to be not ready and still leaving completion so even though we're going to pick the simple document type we're gonna leave create now to know and we're going to hit save and this is just to demonstrate that the flow will in fact behave so again we've got a sixty seconds out before that's going to appear but here it is by the magic of video and we can see that it was false and therefore it didn't go and execute any further within the flow so we weren't allowed to generate a document we go back to the contracts list and you'll see that no document was created if we were to change this as an edit and move that to yes then you're gonna see that the workflow will kick in there it is running and we can see the condition was passed as true and we've gone this time down the simple document rate so if we jump back into the contracts list we should now see a not ready contract perfect this is exactly what we wanted if we open this up we can have a look at the simple format just to check that everything is where it should be I'm not really complete this perfect okay so if we jump back to the team's environment we can bring this back into the single pane of glass for the contracts team to be able to use so what we're going to do is we're going to bring in the document library that has in it the contracts which I believe was called contract and on reflection I'm probably doing this backwards because ideally first you would have the contract details and then the computer contracts but hate this you know it works so have completed contracts available as a top tab and let's also add in the dock the list to be able to add those contracting tails in now we don't need the templates library to be here unless we're a very open structure and we're all editing the templates but the templates document library could be in that SharePoint environment you could restrict the permissions if you wanted to so the only certain people can edit those templates just to manage the template legality and and version control so within the team's environment we are now acting as a contract team member or on the contract details tab and we're adding a new item from Sharon's new code in again with me as the details we're gonna pick a document type of statement of work and we're gonna say yes crack on give us that document see who it is as a request in a contract details list and we can see that that's been requested to be created now if we jump back to completed contracts as a window so there's no looking under the hood for these users this is just the end-user being able to use the functionality we're looking for a document called Sharon's new company to magically arrive here now because we are devs we can nip back into the flow and just make sure that that has run and that it's going to behave exactly as we'd expect it to if we just hit refresh here again we're just experiencing that small delay it looks like it already has run so let's refresh you can see if that document appears nope there it is like I say small delay and you can see in here we've caught the running conditions so it's currently executing those conditions and we can watch that happen live if we just give it a moment we can see then it executes conditions successfully took us down the statement of work route so as the user back to teams all they had to do was go make a coffee and there it is Sharon's new contract company contract all created for them within those beautiful tabs again we can change the order of these just by drag-and-drop and now we have some beautiful functionality for those teams to be able to very easily create complex documents with lots of fields that can be replaced and the can be as big or a smaller solution as you want it to be but basically we just saved many hours of find the right template insurance the right template fill in all the contract details that we have on file somewhere make sure those details are correct and get that document published hopefully this has been really helpful this is part one really of a two-faced scenario we're going to come back to the contracts team because we've got more development work we can do there for them in my experience once a contract is created getting it to actually sign off can mean that it changes entirely so having got to a word document the next video we'll have a look at what happens when the PDF comes back fully signed by both parties and we then want to create the ability to track the expiry of those documents so I will see you in part 2 and thanks for watching [Music]