This post will move on to creating the Sales Contracts document library for the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system. It will be a condensed version of the Office 365 and SharePoint – Sales Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) – Creating the Customers List and Much More post. If you don’t understand one of the steps covered in this post, refer to the that post for reference. One major differentiator in this post is seen in how you will leverage a calculated date field that is going to be key piece of metadata on every Sales Contract.

Creating the Sales Contracts Content Type with a Calculated Date Field

First, set the “Title” field to hidden on the Sales Contract content type. This is explained in the ‘Customers List‘ post.

Now, unique to Sales Contracts, the Sales team going to add a new field to the Sales Contract content type named “Contract Title”. This is going to be a calculated field that is generated automatically based on the date the contract is created…down to the second.

The formula they’re going to use is:

=CONCATENATE("WMC-",TEXT(Created,"yyyymmddss"))

Semantically, this reads as: concatenate the text “WMC-” with the date that the document was created as four-digit-year, two-digit-month, two-digit-day, and two-digit-second.

NOTE: THIS FORMULA IS NOT SPECIFIC ENOUGH – WE WILL UPDATE IT LATER.

The update is at the very end of the post and will show you how updated calculated columns automatically cascade into existing list items.

• Control gear > Site Settings > Site Content Types
• Select the Sales Contract content type (if you’re following along, you are already here from updating “Title” to be hidden)
• Choose “Add from new site column”
• 
• Specify the following parameters
  • Column name: Sales Contract Title
  • Type: Calculated (calculation based on other columns)
  • Existing group: WMC Business Management
  • Description: Calculated title for the Sales Contract WMC- plus created date.
  • Formula: =CONCATENATE(“WMC-“,TEXT([Created],”yyyymmddss”)).
  • The data type returned…: Single line of text
  • Column Formatting: blank
  • Update all content types inheriting…: Yes
• 
• Press OK

*Note: you cannot change the Status value for calculated columns. The new “Sales Contract Title” field will remain ‘Optional’.

Reordering the Sales Contracts Field Order

Finally, as detailed in the ‘Customers List‘ post, change the order of the fields to look as follows:

Creating the Sales Contracts Document Library

Now, we’ll create the Sales Contracts document library. Do this in the CLM site by first navigating to the Sales Division Site, and then go to ‘Site Contents’. From there, select “Subsites” and click on the “Contract Lifecycle Management” link.

Later, we will improve the overall navigation experience, but that’ll wait until after the core site IA is setup.

Once in the CLM site, Control Gear > Site contents > New App:

Yes, New > Document library is also a valid choice. I’m trying to give you coverage of the many different ways to work in SharePoint and encourage you to explore.  The exact methods you follow for your business management solution implementations will change based on many factors.

Choose the “Advanced Options” option that appears on the dialog:

Specify:

• Name: Sales Contracts
• Description: Westmorr Consulting sales team contracts.
• Create a version…: Yes
• Document Template: Microsoft Word document

As covered in the ‘Customers List‘ post:

• Advanced Settings > Allow management of content types > Yes
• Add from existing site content types > WMC Business Management > Sales Contract

• Make Sales Contract the only available Content Type and configure New Button Order

• Modify the default view “All Documents”. Sales wants to see: Type, Edit (link to edit item), Customer Name, Sales Contract Title , Sales Contract Stage, Sales Contract Status,  Effective Date, and Expire Date in the default view…in that order

• After setting the above, the view will look as follows:

Validating the Calculated Date Field

Now…to test the Sales Contract Title calculated field on the Contract Lifecycle Management library. New > Sales Contract:

This will bring you to the Microsoft Word Online Viewer. Go ahead and add some basic text (later we’ll bring in a pre-canned template for this). Then choose “FILE” from the Word Online Viewer. Then Save As > Rename this document:

Give it a useful name in the modal dialog that appears  (note that the real useful/important field, Sales Contract Title, is going to be auto-populated because of the formula/calculated field added earlier).

After naming the file, use the breadcrumbs to navigate back to the Sale Contracts library:

Updating the Calculated Date Field

There’s a lot of missing metadata – some of that is going to be filled out manually, and other data will be populated by workflow. First though, note that the formula used for Contract Title is not specific enough. It needs to capture YYYYMMDD and the HHMMSS (hour, minute, and second) that the file was created. Otherwise, there could easily be duplicate names.

The great thing about calculated fields is that the formula can be updated and it will automatically cascade into existing items in the list.

Intranet Site > Site Settings > Site Columns > Sales Contract Title.

Change the formula to:

=CONCATENATE("WMC-",TEXT(Created,"yyyymmddhhmmss"))

Press OK on the dialog:

There we go:

Like the last post, you created a document library, but much more was done:

• Worked with calculated fields.
• Created the Sales Contracts document library and specified a default view.
• Used the online Microsoft Word web viewer in SharePoint Online.

These are all critical steps in learning how to effectively implement business management processes in O365 and SharePoint. Coming up next is workflow with SharePoint Designer.

Categories: Business, Business Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Office 365 and O365, SharePoint

Tags: Business Management, Management, Office 365 and O365, SharePoint