in this video we will discuss how to request a contract in contracts plus this request would take place at the beginning of the contract lifecycle process before we start i just want to mention required permissions in order to request a contract users do need the contract requestor permission found under the contract's permissions why use contract requests contract requests are intended to solve the problem of users who know there is a need for a contract but who may not be aware of all of the content that should go into a contract for example maybe they know that they need a contract for a particular speaker or catering company but maybe they don't know how to complete all of the fields on the contract like the risk level or the budget information or the second party contact information etc you also may have users in an organization without the permission to create contracts it's likely that you probably don't want just anyone creating contracts so this is an efficient way to get the information from your users who don't have permission to create contracts in these scenarios we can streamline the request process and have the content from the request populate on the contract header once the contract is created so it saves some time and effort for our contract managers requesting a contract is a very simple process for the end user for example sake let's say we have a guy in our organization named regan requester regan knows that he needs to get the process going for a contract with a caterer but he doesn't have permission to create contracts to start what he'll do is just simply name the request and select a request template that's been pre-configured by an administrator that takes him to the request form where he can complete all of the required fields and questions mandatory fields will be marked with an asterisk and again that's determined by the administrator who created the request form once regan is done filling out the form he can submit it there may be some approval workflow configured with advanced dynamic workflow then once the request is approved it will be accessible to users with the necessary permissions in an area called requests ready for contract creation in our example this is the point in which we will say one of our contract managers named colton contracts will pick up the process the request has already been approved by legal or management or whoever needed to approve it and now colton has gotten the green light to turn this request into an actual contract once colton views the request he can just go to the request actions drop down and select create contract it's super easy when colton creates the contract the information that regan filled out on the request such as standard field values are copied over to the contract so this helps colton save some time and also maintains consistency between what's being requested and what's actually being created now of course colton can edit those values if he needs to maybe he knows more information than regan requester did but it definitely streamlines the process of creating a contract from a request instead of colton having to take a bunch of handwritten notes from regan on sticky pads or gathering information across multiple emails and then inputting them into contracts plus the request and subsequent contract will always be linked too a user can toggle between the contract and the request by clicking the hyperlink in the sticker found at the top left now i mentioned how a user can quickly and easily select create contract from an approved request but if an organization would like to make the process even more efficient there is a configuration option to add a robot to the form request workflow this configuration allows a contract to be created automatically upon the approval of a request so instead of manually selecting create contract from an approved request like colton did in our example the robot would do that for him at the end of the contract request workflow and the contract would be created and just remain in draft status for whenever colton was able to pick it up and work on it the addition of this workflow robot is something that only jagger representatives or partners can enable so customers please contact us if you'd like this change made to your existing workflow now i'm going to go into contracts plus and practice creating a request in my demonstration i'm going to use the template called www generic contract request i'll complete the required fields and then submit for approval then we'll take a look at it in my contract request this demonstration will just show the perspective from the requester to avoid confusion for more information about what happens next in the process see the videos called approving a contract request and creating a contract from an approved request now let's take a look at how to request a contract i'm logged in as a buyer user at the organization worldwide widgets this is our world market shopping site and my user's name is kate cuthbert so kate needs to request a contract so to do that we're going to go to contracts requests request contract and what i'm going to do here is say that i need to initiate contract creation maybe kate doesn't have permission to create contracts or maybe kate does have permission but she just doesn't know exactly what she needs in that contract so let's request one here now one common thing that you'll see throughout the jagger solution suite is anytime you see an asterisk next to a field that means it is required so you can see that we need both a name and a template to kick off this process i'm going to call this kate's contract request and for the template i am going to choose this worldwide widgets generic contract request and let's submit that takes me to the instructions page so whoever created this request form can put any information in here that might be helpful to requesters and this form is basically a wizard so let's just click next to proceed here we see the details about the request form and next is the questions and an administrator created this form and determined what they need to know in order to create a contract the example that we're working with today happens to have two sections the general information section and the detailed contract information section and again any required field will have an asterisk next to it so let's fill these out and something you might notice is that we can have some conditional fields on this form so if i say no we haven't worked with this vendor before i don't have any additional fields to complete but if i were to say yes it's going to ask me in what capacity so our end users can see what fields are relevant to them and not have to navigate fields that are not so here's another example if your manager is aware of this request great if not then we would have to acknowledge that they are going to contact our manager when this request is submitted so in my case i'll just complete this as yes my manager's aware and the way that this form that i'm working with here has been configured these are all standard or custom contract fields that we find on the contracts themselves so there's a note here under this section that says the information from these fields will be copied to the contract now that description was added by an administrator but it just goes to show that this is where as the requester if i can fill out as much information as i can this is going to copy over to the contract and make it really easy for the contract manager to create the resulting contract so i'll go ahead and fill these out some fields might have a default value set by an administrator like our time zone here and some might have a read-only default value like this risk level low this is a field that i'm not able to change as the requester but that's helpful because all of these responses are going to carry over to the contract so if most of our risk levels low we don't want our requesters to touch that we can leave it on here make it read only and it'll still copy over the contract without being changed here's another example of some conditional visibility depending on what we choose here there might be additional fields complete or maybe not and if there's any information that i don't know as long as it's not required i don't have to input that let's click next when we're done that takes us to the review and complete area of the request and i do want to point out that you also may see an attachments area on these forms so if your organization requires requesters to download attachments or upload attachments they could be included in this form it would be its own little page here on the left hand side of the wizard but in my instance the administrator who created this form felt that there were no attachments that needed to be included and so they chose just to hide the entire attachments area so just be aware that that's an option now since we have all the required fields completed and all of my sections have a green check here we can go ahead and complete the request and that's going to submit it for approval now that takes us automatically to the my contact request area where we can click into the request and view the status of it just to show you how we would get here we would go to contracts requests my contract requests and at this point we can see the request status the workflow stuff that it's in we can take a look at it there's a discussion area where you may need to communicate with stakeholders who are involved like the approvers and you can see the contract request workflow to see who the approvers might be or where your request is in the workflow or approval process and that's basically how the request process goes let's take a moment to think about contract requests before we wrap up this lesson what do you think does every user need to use a contract request probably not but in what scenario might you find contract requests useful in your organization