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Batch renew signatory

hello everyone and welcome to this month's cities digital consulting webinar my name is Jessica Welsh and I'm the consulting director here at city's digital and today joining me will be Mitch Gardner our business process consultant and today's topic is going to be another laserfiche workflow build along and this month we're going to talk about contract renewal contracts are a really hot topic with laserfiche there's a lot of different things that you can do with contracts and laserfiche they're big document-centric workflow that a lot of our organizations work with so today we're going to tackle how to monitor for renewals we're going to go through a brief presentation through this screen here and then after that we're going to go into a live demo and build along together a workflow that will allow you to search for upcoming expiring contracts and then get them in a process to review them after the webinar we will have a brief survey that pops up if you could please take time to fill that out that would be super helpful and it will also give you a chance to win an amazing really fun t-shirt so with that let's go ahead and get started all right so if you haven't attended one of these before let's talk about what is a build alone today we're going to have a visual and audio guided building of a process so we're gonna go through and go step by step on all the different components that you'll need in order to build this contract renewal process as we go along feel free to follow along on your system and build along with us the idea is that if you follow along at the end of this hour you'll have a ready to deploy process we will have Mitch standing by for Responsive help through the Q&A in the GoToWebinar so here's a couple of tips to help you along the way if you need help you can look at your GoToWebinar panel and you'll be able to see the question-and-answer section of that panel if you tell a question in which will be watching throughout the webinar and he'll be able to respond to help you keep on up with the webinar as we go along here's a couple of tips for success first we're going to go through and make some assumptions because this is a large group audience about what we can build and how how we'll approach the project if you have any advanced customizations or things you would like to notate and build out just make a note of that and come back to it after the webinar so that you can keep up as we move along if you have a question try to ask it right away when it comes up or if you get stuck that way you can keep up and move along and get on to the next step with the webinar and then lastly this is kind of a new format for us so please provide feedback in the survey so that we can continue to get better each time we do one of these if in the end you end up getting too lost and can't follow along know that the webinar is recorded so you'll be able to go back and watch it and pause it as you go along if you'd like to try again later or you can always set up an individualized session with one of our consultants to help you finish up your configuration all right so let's talk a little bit about what we're gonna be using today so today's build along is going to use the Laserfiche client the laserfiche admin console and the workflow designer we're going to be building in what's going to look most familiar if you're in version 10.3 or sorry 10.2 of Laserfiche or later alright so the process we're going to tackle today is a contract renewal workflow this assumes that you have some contract processes set up in workflow or that you're interested in setting up some contracts we're going to search for documents that are expiring and then put them into a process so even though we're focusing on contracts for this month this process and kind of the foundational pieces that we're going to be using here could easily apply to additional types of processes that you might be tracking in your Laserfiche system things like insurance documents and making sure that their current or licensing if you are tracking if you're an organization that tracks laserfiche or sorry tracks licensing and you need a track when people's licenses are expiring and send them notifications to get to start the renewal process that would be a great way to use some of these same workflows and templates that we're going to be building today if you do periodic inspections or if you have policies either internal or that you're you need to adhere to for a government agency that needs to be reviewed on a periodic basis or any other kind of annual reviews that you might be doing or even more frequently if it's not annual so there's a lot of different ways that you can use some of the pieces that we are building in this workflow and apply them to similar processes in your organization so it's not just for contracts but so today what we're going to go through is the first thing that this is kind of the process from the end-user perspective so we're going to assume that staff files and indexes their contracts in Laserfiche for our purposes today we're going to use contracts in a folder so our main tracking is going to be on a folder level and inside of that folder we'll have contract documents but for the purposes of renewal and reviewing contracts we're going to be routing around folders second contracts and a contracts admin will review and decide which contracts to renew or not to renew so as contracts come up they're about to expire somebody will review them see if there's something that will be renewed or not to be renewed renewal contracts are placed in working folders for review and renewal and then when everyone finished a contract will be filled in the vendor folder as an active contract just like the initial one was filed as well alright so that's the very high-level process that we're gonna build let's talk about the steps we're gonna take during the configuration so our build along is going to go through these steps in this order to try to make this process happen so the first thing we're going to do is create a laser pH template this will be in the administration console and this is going to be the data that's going to track our active contracts but also contracts as they come up for renewal we'll be using the fields in this template in our workflow next we're going to go to the Laserfiche client and create the folders so we'll have a folder structure that's easy to understand for our users to be able to track contracts throughout this process then because our workflow is going to search for contracts that are about to expire we're going to create a renewal search so these is this is what laserfiche workflow is going to use to find those contracts that are about to expire and then we're going to create the workflow so this is a fairly large workflow if you've been following along with any of these workflow builder loans this is going to be our most ambitious workflow of the set but we'll walk you through each step of the way and at the end well test it out and see what it looks like all right so we're ready we'll go ahead and start building I'm going to jump over to my VM here where I have Laserfiche pulled up so for any of you who have attended our previous build alongs we have changed our format a little bit and we're going to use a configuration that's already in place just to save a little time as we go through but I'll talk you through each step of the way still all right so we're signed into the laserfiche administration console and I'm going to build a template so I just expand my metadata management go into templates and if I didn't already have one I would be creating a new template I do have one so I'm just going to open this and we'll talk through all the fields they were going to include in our template alright so if you have something similar already in place then you can certainly use that as well but if you don't here's some this is a good general contract template that you can start with for anybody who maybe has explored some of the business process library in Laserfiche forms this template actually did come from their contracts process that being said we're not showing that today because that that process is a level three configuration meaning that it has multiple work clothes and multiple forms involved and it's a little bit more than we can cover in an hour but if you've seen that this should look familiar all right so we're gonna have a field for contract ID this is just going to be a text field in case you have some leading letter characters that you might put into a contract ID then we're going to have the company or entity that the contract is with we are using text for this but you could also use a drop-down list or a dynamic field then we have our contract title that's also a text field it's a little bit longer too just in case it needs to be more descriptive and these top three are required so we absolutely always need a contract ID a company that we're contracting with as well as a title then if you also track contract type you could have that here as well this could be text or drop-down we're having it be text for this template and then we have a series of date fields so we're tracking effective date that's the date that the contract terms actually start our expiration date that we'll be using later in our renewal process that's just the date that the contract expires and the terms are up and then the next shishun date is just the date that it was signed this is optional for this process if it's not important to you your agency to track exactly when as a metadata field exactly when the contract is executed you could leave this off then we are also tracking contract status which is a list field and this is also required I'm going to pop up this list so you can see what's in it this may be something again that will be tailored to individual what your individual organization's needs are as far as contract statuses but what we have in this one is draft in progress that's the initial status then we have several different review steps preliminary internal so our internal staff review in the contract external meeting maybe the company or entity is reviewing the contract it's in review in our committee revisions are in progress it's pending signatures and then it's executed and then we have terminated if it ends early or expired next we have a description if we want to track some notes or a little further description beyond just the title and then renewal status it's the next one this is also a list and this we're going to use during our workflow later as well so renewal status I will pop this list up as well so that you can see it first one is na that's just the initial default value so na is just means that it hasn't been renewed or it's not in in review it's not pending review it's not in any part of the renewal process but we also have to be determined that will be our initial status once something comes up for you to be renewed which means that we're going to renew it undergoing renewal process that means it's in the process of being renewed and then do not review if we don't want to renew it or renewed once it's done and then we have some additional fields which we won't be using today but you might use for your actual other processes within your contract management process so we have termination date and reason requested by it that's something that's important to note in your contract management process previous contracts that might be related and internal and external signatories if you want to be able to search on who might have signed particular contracts you could enter those as metadata and then if you need to track evidence of insurance and when that insurance expires as part of your contract management process you could have those as fields as well remember we're tracking this template on the folder level so it applies to the entire contract and can be kind of generalized to cover the whole contract not just a single document the actual contract itself or any supporting documentation or an amendment its the contract as a whole okay so I'm just going to click OK and if you're following along that creates that template and so then I'm going to do something else that's going to be kind of a neat feature in our workflow later what I did was actually just copy this contract template which is just right click copy and then you can paste that template and create the same template just another copy of it and so what I did to create this large one here is I just open it up and I renamed it show you on this one I renamed it contract and renewal you can see it has all the same fields and then I just made it a different color and so you can just click on the drop down over here in color and then choose the color that you want it to be for anybody who hasn't used templates colors what it does is it changes the color of any image files image documents or folders that have that template on that so what I'm going to do with my workflow is once a contract enters the renewal process I'm going to make that folder Orange so that it's a quick visual indicator to anybody who looked is looking at contracts to see that this one in a renewal process right now all right and we're not going to use this today but I will show you in case you're just implementing a contracts process here's our quick and easy contract document template so it's just three fields contract document type effective date and expiration date so it's real quick for people who maybe don't have a lot of time or not super familiar with indexing to get those three fields in just kind of move this extra template so these are the three templates mostly just these top two that we're going to be working with today all right so we got our templates now we're going to need to go over to the Laserfiche client and we're going to create our folder structure let's start at the top here so what we have here is just essentially a legal department folder we have working folders that's where all of our things that are in review anything that's actively being worked on will be in our working folders we have active contracts and expired contracts I'll kind of go through one by one so you can see each of the folder levels so under working folders you can see I name my working folders with an underscore beforehand so that anything where it's an active folder I'll be going into it a lot it always sorts to the top alphabetically of my list it even sorts above numeric folders as well if I use an underscore so I have underscore working folders and then I have another subfolder called underscore contact contract review and then under contract review I have several folders one is draft in progress this is more for contracts as they're being drafted I'm not going to use today then we have pending renewal review so this is that when a contract comes up for review that initial administrative review saying yes we want to renew this contract or no we don't those are going to land in this folder then we have a pending signatures folder for when a document goes out to be signed revision in progress that's for as contracts get drafted we're not really using that today but then we have undergoing renewal process so once a contract has been approved for renewal it's going to be in this undergoing renewal process while it's being worked on and before it's done being renewed all right then our next folder is active contracts and this is where once a contract is executed or renewed it's going to be filed into active contracts and you can kind of see we have them separated out by the first letter of the company or entity name and then we have a folder for the name of the entity and then we have each contract that we have with them will have its own folder with its contracts documents inside this process is going to assume that you have a basic auto file work flow that will standardize the filing of your contracts you can see its first letter company name and then your contract folder for our example is named contract ID the title of the contract and then the effective date through the expiration date that's the naming formula we used but you can use any naming formula that makes sense to your users it doesn't matter too much expired contracts will basically mimic that but the status will be slightly different because it will just be expired or cancelled or terminated all right so since we are working with contracts as folders the metadata or that template that we just created is actually assigned at the folder level so I just want to show you one of them before we go over and do the search all right so this is our contract template that we just built here's our three our top three required fields we have our contract ID our company entity field and then we have our title of our contract type isn't filled in but we could have effective date and expiration date are here and then we have our contract status this is executed that just means is active and here's our renewal status that we were looking at it's n/a right now and then the rest of them we're not using for today so they are empty all right so we have our template created to track contracts we have some sample contracts that we can work with in the laserfiche repository we have a folder structure that we can work with to route contracts that are up for renewal as well as contracts that are in the process of being renewed so we are ready to start thinking about building that workflow so the first thing we want to do just for ease of use is to create that search that workflow is going to use to find document error sorry contracts that are up for renewal so for from here what we're going to do is switch from the folder pane to the search pane and I actually have my search pulled up but I will show you how we created that under customized search because we did such a good job of creating a relevant template and we do fill out those fields we're gonna go customize search and then our search criteria that we want our field and search syntax if you haven't created a workflow before that uses search you want this search syntax to always be displayed so that you're able to get the information that workflow will need into its search activity so we need those two criteria and we just click close and they are filled search you're just going to have no fields by default you're going to choose your fields so click Choose fields really you just need whatever template fields make sense in your system or if you copied this contract template you will need contract status so we only want to search active contracts we don't want anything expired terminated because we can't renew something that's already expired so we want contract status so we can narrow it down to only executed expiration date so we want to be able to search that date range of you know we're gonna search the next two months so we want to search expiration date and then renewal status so we don't want to get anything that's already in our Nilla process we only want things that haven't started a renewal process so I'll click OK for those three and then we just under contract status click the drop-down and choose executed and then we choose our date range we're going to actually change this in the workflow so that exact dates are not too important it's just important to put in two dates now chose today's date through to the 20th of December next year but again we're going to change that and then for renewal status we want those contracts that have not started any renewal processing so they should have the status of n/a and then click search and then we get our any contracts that are expiring and we can see we have four that are expiring so that should be what we also see in our workflow so using this creating the search in the laser pH client and then also duplicating that in the workflow designer having both of those side-by-side can give us some real good validation as far as making sure that our search syntax is what we hoped it would be so before I leave this screen all I need to do is copy this search syntax at the bottom if you haven't seen this before it is a lot of characters in a long text string so basically it's just the computer speak for what's represented a little easier to view up here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just select all this text right click and copy it all right so that will be on my clipboard for when I need it later in my workflow all right so the next thing I'm going to do is from the client I can jump over to the workflow designer and start designing that workflow that will search for these contracts and walk me through the renewal process so I'm going to open up the workflow designer and then we're going to go through every activity we do have this already configured just for time savings but walk through each activity and what's configured in it as we go through so just like anything in workflow we start at the top so just start at the top you should have everything the entire pane yours well it would be empty at this point selected and then we just name our workflow so select it over here in the in the designer pane then go top to bottom over here on the right so we name our workflows typically with some sort of either department or some sort of process that will kind of keep them together before a - and then a little bit more description so for my purposes I'm going to use contract management - automated renewal notification in production I'm going to have this run on a monthly or bimonthly basis so that it happens automatically and I don't have to worry about it and then the description is just a list of contracts that are going to be renewed and populated through the business process and then you have to choose your connection profile if you haven't done that before this is just the username and password that workflow uses in order to be able to access the repository and metadata and move documents around so it needs to be a user with full access to move documents read write and access all the folders that you need it to be able to work in alright so from there we're going to go top down and add the different activities so our first activity is going to be a date so if you if you haven't used that activity before this is going to go through this is my this is my tip on how to find the right activities in work flow if you're new to designing workflows or if you're like me and you can't remember every single activities name I usually use the search button at the top of my tool box over here on the left so if I were going to type in a date calculator what I would do is just type in the word date and then see date token calculator that's the activity that I'm looking for now I can just bring this over and drag it onto my designer pane and then what I would do is once it's here and selected just go top to bottom over here on the right so I'm going to rename my my activity calculate two months out for the date range to check so this is what tells work flow I want to find all the contracts that are going to expire from today through two months from today so that I get a little notification ahead of time and then what I do is create a new token I'll just open this one and then again just top to bottom so we're gonna name our token the cutoff and the date is going to be custom date date and then we're going to start with the token for today's date and then Laserfiche today's date which is a system-generated just the current date can be found under the token dialog button and it's a global token you just choose date and we don't need time for this one it just needs to be date and then for our token we're going to modify it by adding so just make sure the little variable here says add and then we'll add two and then you choose months for the duration this could be absolutely different for you if you want to do this on a more frequent basis if you do this weekly if you do this by annually can make it whatever makes sense to you because in our search we're going to use the date token again and whatever we determine as the cutoff all right so we click OK and now we have a Chokin that we can use in our next activity which is that laser research activity so again you can find that by searching in your toolbox it's called search for posit or E just bring that over into your pain right below the last activity and then we'll rename this one search for contracts expiring in the next two months here is the search query that's the next field we're going to fill out that's that information that we copied and pasted that big long text string from the Laserfiche client search syntax you just paste that right into the search query area in this activity and then we're just going to do two things to make this search what we want it to be which is search everything from today through two months from today first thing we're going to do is find that date that we had plugged in as the first date of our search string we're just going to select everything between the two parentheses and for yours it's going to be a hard-coded date so you just select that hard-coded date leave oh sorry not the parentheses the quote marks leave the quote marks and then delete the date but leave your cursor where it is and replace it with a token which can be found under this greater than button remember our date token for today's date is under global date the first date should look like this in between the two quote quotation marks you should have parentheses per side percent parentheses date and parentheses all right then we have one more date which is the second date so just select that second date for yours it will be a hard-coded date so just select that and then backspace and then you're gonna choose the token under the token button and this one we're going to choose that custom token that we just created for cutoff so go to that activity calculate two months out for a date range to check and then expand that and then you'll have the cutoff and the cutoff will be that date two months from today okay and then this is a neat feature if you haven't used the search before or this I always do this anyway do test your search query just to make sure you hadn't accidentally removed some quotation marks that you need do do the test and for the test you're gonna have to give it some dates that it can work with so today's date I know and two months from today I can guess what workflow will put which is January 15th 2019 so I can click OK and then what it will do is basically go search the laserfiche repository and see how many contracts will fulfill that criteria in our case it was 4 which is how many we found when we did a similar search in the Laserfiche client so I'm happy with that and I I know that my search is working we don't need any of these other criteria because we're not doing text search but one thing I do want to point out if this is something that you're testing I do a lot of times work with just using results to return first results or first two results if I'm testing a new workflow and I haven't worked with it before if you're comfortable with how it works and you run through it and you want to deploy it to production then you move to all results all right so any time you're working with search activity or find entries activity and Laserfiche something where it's going to return multiple lines or multiple entries you always have to have as your next activity in your workflow a for each so for each row if it's a data source etc in our case it's going to be for each contract so again we would find that over here you can see there's a lot of options so you kind of have to read through for our purposes we're using for each entry which essentially means for each file or folder in the Laserfiche client that's returned we want to do some actions on it so we just drag this for each over here and again we have it selected we just go top to bottom so I'm going to rename it for each contract and then I need to select what I'm going to be working with which is in this case output entries from my search so I click OK on that and then if you want you can also check this box so that when you're looking at your workflow instance details in case you have to troubleshoot it you'll be able to see which entries were found by your search or in some cases not found then you won't see them listed you'll kind of know you have to fine-tune your search a little bit so I usually check this box if I'm using the search and it's not too terribly long alright so now we have our for each so the rest of these activities will go in between the arm here for the for each as we add them so the first thing we're going to do is assign that orange template that we had selected to that folder so I'm going to assign metadata I'm going to add that work that activity so I can't remember what that's called I would just type in a sign and I will assign field values I just drag that over here and then start at the top I would rename this assigned a renewal in process template because I know that anything that this workflow finds I want to evaluate as part of this and then I'm going to have it assign the following template and then I will choose my contract in renewal process and then I'm also going to set this renewal status to be real status to be determined that means it's ready for administrative review the last thing I have to do is select other entry I'm working on this current entry I don't want to work all my workflows on the first result or anything else I want to work on the current entry and everything in here in between the prep the little arm for for each contract needs to be working on the current entry all right so I've assigned that orange template which means my folder in the original active contracts directory will be orange and then what I want to do is create a shortcut into my working folders so it's easy for me as the contract admin to go through and review them all in the same spot so what I want to do is do the move entry activity that looks like this and I just drag that over here move entry is a nice activity because it allows you to move documents right so it's super common in Auto filing workflows but it also allows you to create quick and easy shortcuts into these working directories and that's what we're going to do here so I'm going to rename this create a shortcut in the renewal directory and instead of little or copy I'm going to choose create shortcut and then I'm going to choose I'll show you which folder on my token dialog so I chose the legal area there's my working folder so that's the next thing I'm going into my contract review subfolder and then that subfolder I have made for pending renewal review so they're just all the shortcuts will be going there and then I want to make sure I'm working on the current entry or my entry to create the shortcut and that's it so then once I have my shortcut in that directory for pending review I want to wait so if you haven't worked with a workflow that that has multiple steps that need user interaction you do need to get really familiar with the wait condition so wait condition means before you go on to the next move or the next step in a work oh you just have to wait for a user to come in and do so so I'm going to choose my wait for entry change activity and drag that over here and then I'm going to go through and configure the properties so I'm going to rename it to wait for renewal status to be decided so this is yes we want to renew it or no we don't want to anyway and then I'm again acting on and watching my current entry in the for each contract arm here and then we just set the conditions so this is the same as a starting rule same as our conditional decisions we just tell workflow what we want it to wait for and our wait condition is if the field renewal status does not equal to be determined so once somebody goes in and changes it from to be determined to something else and then the workflow can move to the next step we click OK and since we know we're waiting for somebody to review it and decide yes we want to renew it or no we don't want to renew it the next activity is going to be a kinship conditional decision so you can type in a lot of different things to find this activity you can type in decision and you can choose routing decision or conditional decision they do the same thing just drag that over here that will give you two branches before you configure the branches we'll rename this to renew or not to renew all right so then we just go branch by branch and configure it in this case if they're just a one way or the other so we'll do contracts for renewal as our as our first branch so we choose the first branch rename this contracts for renewal and then again just click here to edit the conditions so for this one we want documents or sorry folders that have the renewal status for the current entry equals to be renewed so anything where they've marked that folder to be renewed will go down this branch our second branch is going to be do not renew so this will be everything else and we'll just rename it do not renew and in our case we want this to be a catch-all so we'll just leave the condition empty you can't leave all conditions empty in a conditional decision but you can leave the last one empty all right so let's go back to our first branch and configure the activities or the contracts that are going to be renewed our first one is another assigned metadata so we'll add that to our pane here we'll rename that set status to undergoing renewal process so because these have been chosen for renewal they're now in undergoing renewal process status and we'll just choose that as our field that we're going to set and then we'll select again make sure we're acting on the current entry then what we're going to do is we're actually going to rename that folder so that in addition to being orange the folder is actually going to add we're going to add the text to the end of the folder name so we're going to add a rename activity we're going to rename it to rename entry to undergoing renewal process and then we're going to choose the token dialog and we're just going to rename it to the same thing that it has so current entry name which is under the for each contract current entry name that's where that token is then we're just going to hard-code that it's undergoing renewal process so that it's a real easy visual indicator that it's under review alright so that's it for that activity the next one is another move activity so we're going to move that shortcut from the initial review for renewal process to an undergoing renewal folder we're going to add another move entry activity we're gonna rename it move the shortcut to undergoing renewal process working folder in our case we're moving because we're moving something that's already a shortcut so we're gonna move and then I'll show you where we're moving it to in case you don't remember that folder structures so there's legal that's our departmental folder we're going under working folders contractor new and then undergoing renewal process so now all of our contracts that are currently being renewed will be in the same spot for easy access and then we're just making sure that we're acting on in this case it's that shortcut so it's still under the for each contract and it's that shortcut that we need and then I have chosen under this branch after that activity so after it's moved to notify somebody it could be anybody in the organization that's relevant that the contract is it is ready for renewal process you could structure this a little differently if you don't want people to get an email or if you want people to get it a summary email instead you could do this a little differently in our case I'm assuming a lower volume so I'm going to email somebody just as part of this branch so every time something gets eligible for renewal just notifying the person who needs to be notified that it's up for renewal so an email activity is over here go back to our tool box and there's email you can drag it onto this contracts for renewal branch and then you can just configure who you want to send it to the subject right so contract renewals for and then you can use tokens so you could use that date time stamp that are the dates they calculate the cutoff date and then today's date so if you wanted to put the date range in the subject of the email you could do that and then you can just type any instructional text that you wanted to and you could also if you wanted attach a shortcut into that contracts for renewal folder for ease of access all right so that's that first branch and a jump over to our do not renew branch just have a couple of things so we're going to change the template back to the non orange contract template so I'm going to assign metadata activity and I'm just going to name that activity change the template back to contract and I'll sign the contract template and we'll check it we'll bring over all the fields and I'm going to just make sure I do that on the for each contract current entry so back to the original contracts folder and then I want to delete the shortcut in the working folder so I don't need that shortcut anymore because there's no work to be done because this this document is not earth sorry this contract is not being renamed so I want to add a delete which we haven't looked up so let's just look up that activity well delete entry and then bring that over here we want to be really careful every time we work with a delete entry activity but in our case we're going to make sure the actor we rename it delete shortcut in the working folder that we make sure we're choosing that create a shortcut as opposed to the original current entry when choosing output entry from the create a shortcut activity this is why it's really helpful as you're designing workflows to name those activities what you're doing so that you can always choose the right entries as you go through all right and because this could be part of a bigger process or several integrated workflows possibly forms processes because contracts can be so involved if you're working with a lot of different workflows or different document types I always put this track tokens activity in the workflow typically it's added to the end let's just see where to find it and tract tokens you can kind of see here in the description it's just allows you to track a lot more information about your workflow than maybe an instance normally would so it's going to give you a lot more information about the values that you might see in a decision tree or different entries that are identified at different parts of your workflow so this can be super helpful if you ever have a workflow that requires a lot of troubleshooting or if you have a workflow that's not doing what you expect it to do and you're not sure why track tokens can give you that information that might not be visible otherwise alright so that's the end of our workflow let's kind of just go back through and see again what we're doing so we're first thing doing is calculating two months from today then we're doing a search in the repository to find all the contracts that are expiring between today and two months from today then we're assigning that orange template for easy easy visual cues of what's in renewal we're creating a shortcut in our working folders and we're waiting for somebody to review that to see if that contract should be reviewed or not or renewed or not then for those that are renewing we're setting the status we're renaming so that we have another visual cue of what's being renewed and then we're moving it to another working folder saying that these are being renewed and emailing somebody that this is ready to be worked on and otherwise we have this do not renew branch which will show us or which will set everything back to the way it was before and then track tokens at the end so if you're building along go ahead and publish this workflow and we're going to not set a starting condition at this point because we can run this workflow directly from the Laserfiche repository or sorry from the laser huge workflow designer if you want to later you can always come back in and set this would typically run as a timed event so your starting condition would be a timer not a starting condition you're starting rule would be a timer sorry about that alright for our purposes though we can go ahead and run the current workflow from the workflow designer so I'm go ahead and do that if you've ever done this before where you start a workflow from within the Laserfiche workflow designer what you can do is start it using this green run work current workflow button and then it will go ahead and immediately pop up this workflow instance window if this isn't something that you've seen before this gives you all of the information about every time a workflow has run so which activities it's running or has run there's a little color code down here at the bottom just like your regular workflow designer pane you can click on any activity and see the properties but it's read-only because this is showing you what what the workflow has done versus designing and setting up the workflow if you hit refresh you can see real time what the current status of the workflow is so it started out with the search that took a couple seconds and now it's going through the contracts and it's waiting for the status to be decided so it's doing what I had hoped it would and to continue our test we can go back over to the laserfiche client in order to set the status of which contracts we want to renew versus which ones we don't so let's go see what that looks like I jump back over to the laserfiche client and I want to go to the folder pane and where I was going to see these is pending renewal review so I can go through and here's my first contract and you can see that the shortcut is orange because I had changed the template name so I can select my template here and I can see my renewal status is to be determined in my template here so if I change this to be renewed then it enters my full renewal process and it's going to move my shortcut from pending renewal review to undergoing renewal process and here we'll sit until the renewal is complete which will actually be a separate workflow because this could take some time to get cleated and I don't want my workflow my single workflow to stay open for possibly months while this completes or weeks while this completes its review and approval and renewal so this will stay here and another workflow will pick it up to complete the renewal once it's done if I go back I should one-by-one see the rest of my four contracts that are up for renewal show up here so I could set these all to to be renewed or not to be renewed and each one should disappear as it goes through maybe I don't want to renew this one and here's my last one so I changed to be renewed click ok and that's everybody so now the three that I chose to be renewed will be in my undergoing renewal process and down in my vendor or company folders anything that's under renewal will be orange anything that's not being renewed should be back to yellow alright and actually also we had changed the name so anything that's undergoing renewal will have that as part of the contract folder name as well alright so the workflow is working as we anticipated we're able to do a search in the work in the laserfiche client pull up almost expiring or about to expire contracts and start that renewal process we also have some neat visual cues including color coding the folders and adding information to the name of the document automatically if we were going to continue this process we would build in more workflows to handle once a renewal is complete as well but for today we have accomplished our initiation of the renewal process and learn some new fun skills in the outside so what I'm gonna do now is open it up for questions and see if we have any questions that pertain to the overall process or activities or anything before we go ahead and wrap up at the engine so if you have any questions feel free to enter them in the Q&A portion of the webinar at the GoToWebinar interface and we'll go through and answer those as they come up now one question that I see in here is can you get a the template a link to the template and to the webinar and the webinar is being recorded so it will be available online and it will show up in your follow-up email from GoToWebinar that you'll receive from us I can also put a briefcase that contains the folder structure if you'd like as well as the template that we used for this part in our laser sorry in our city's digital client portal so that you can easily import that into your laserfiche environment the next question is can we use this for a folder for preview prior to destruction you could certainly do that you could create so what we're doing is basically searching the laserfiche repository and creating shortcuts in a working folder and you could absolutely do the same thing for documents that are eligible for destruction if you don't want to use any of the other methods this would be a good way for people to just see all the documents that they need to review and approve in a single place where they could then go ahead and set a folder or sorry set a template field saying approved for destruction and they could set that template field and then the shortcuts could be removed from that folder so be really easy if you don't see there's another question about seeing search syntax in your search window in Laserfiche if you can't see them then go to customize search and click on this last criteria here which is search syntax if you click on that you shouldn't be able to see search syntax Oh what other methods another of the other question is what other methods for approving documents that are eligible for destruction so some of the other methods that we've displayed in previous webinars include emails that go out with a list of all eligible documents for approval or a link to a set of search results that works similar where it's just providing people a list of all the documents that they need to be they need to approve or folders that they need to approve for destruction so those are just a couple of the other ways that you could provide the documents and an easy to see interface and easy to access way so that they could approve them this kind of methodology of either using shortcuts or search results just in the client just wait as a URL or great ways to assemble really anything that people need to review in a batch so if you haven't really harnessed the power of laser research yet it can really be a tool that's great for being able to collect information and distribute it to people who need it what do they need and with workflow you can provide it on a timed basis so that you can do this without even having anybody have to think about it or worry about it you can do the search and send out the results or put them in a folder for somebody waiting for them to to review and you can email even email notify people that it's ready to go all right so what I'm gonna do is just kind of switch back really quick to the rest of our presentation here so as usual our resources that we used for this presentation as well as great resources for next steps include the answers site on the Laserfiche website so answers Laserfiche comm as well as if you're looking for other contract solutions Laserfiche of solutions exchange is a great place to go look for how other people are using laserfiche for contract management or contract renewals our other really anything else that you're looking for ideas and when you get ready to maybe review this slide again or you want the briefcase with the information that went through in our configuration today do sign into our civvies digital portal so that you can see all of the documents they'll be under the webinar downloads will be where you can find all the documents related to this webinar shameless plug for next month's webinar December we're going to go we're going to host a webinar called my workflows falling falling in a can't get up this is for we're gonna go through our most common issues and workflows and how to fix them so anybody who's designed a workflow as how to workflow fail including myself many many times and we get this is our most common request for the consulting department is help with the workflow that's not doing what it's supposed to do so we're gonna go through our top issues will make the workflows with the issues available so that if you do want to click along with us that you can and we'll show you how to get everything back working the way it's supposed to in those common scenarios it's Thursday December 13th same second Tuesday of the month or sorry second Thursday from 1 to 2 p.m. Central and then as you exit please fill out that little survey that pops up it's really valuable we we use those for ideas for our next webinars as well as feedback to improve our process and our delivery pull us you get a chance to win this amazing awesome really funny t-shirt so definitely fill those out and last but not least thank you for your time today thanks for attending and hope to see you next month