Lifecycle Preset Overview – Ironclad

We highly recommend taking the Manage Data Academy course and then walking through the Restructure Your Data article. These resources will help you understand the big picture of how the Lifecycle Preset is used within Ironclad, and how to use Data Manger and properties to support this new model.

The Lifecycle Preset is a collection of properties, conditions, and launch form questions to help you easily track key contract lifecycle data in your workflows, such as agreement date, expiration date, and auto-renewal information. The library of properties, conditions, and launch form questions in the Lifecycle Preset is added to newly created workflow configurations by default, and can be added to any existing workflow configuration with a single click. We highly recommend that you use the Lifecycle Preset in most, if not all, of your workflow configurations.

To learn more, refer to Use the Lifecycle Preset in Workflow Designer.

The Lifecycle Preset properties are required for customers to be able to leverage contract status and auto-renewal features. These properties are used by Ironclad to automatically track the status of a contract over time. If the Lifecycle Preset properties are not populated in a workflow, the resulting records may not accurately reflect the correct Active/Expired status and automatically follow their auto-renewal terms. To learn more about contract status, refer to Contract and Record Status Overview.

List of Properties, Conditions, and Launch Form Questions in the Lifecycle Preset

The Lifecycle Preset is relatively simple to use in a new workflow configuration because you’re building it from nothing. The preset is added by default and then you can modify the properties, conditions, and launch form questions to suit your exact needs.

Name	Type	Question	Description	Required for Statuses/Auto-renewals
Contract Owner	email	Formula: Get workflow owner’s email	This property is useful for having a modifiable, contract owner email in the Repository that you can send reminders to. By default this is powered by a formula which is set to be the email of the Workflow Owner.	No.
Expiration Date	date	What is the initial expiration date?	The expiration date is when this agreement will end or become inactive, if an expiration date isn’t present then the effective date plus the initial term length are used to determine the expiration date.	One of Expiration Date or Initial Term Length are required in order to determine the expiration date of an agreement. This is not required if the agreement is evergreen/perpetual or if it doesn’t have an explicit expiration date. The agreement will then stay active until the user manually marks the contract as expired.
Effective Date	date	What is the effective date?	The effective date is when this agreement begins and is considered active. If the effective date is not defined then the executed date of the agreement is used as the effective date.	Not required. If this is not present or left blank, the system will use the executed date (a system generated value which tracks the date when all signatures, or all approvals for contracts that don’t require a signature are collected).
Initial Term Length	duration	What is the initial term of the agreement?	The initial term length is the time from the effective date that the agreement will be effective for. If this is not defined, then the agreement will be active until the expiration date. If an expiration date is also not defined, then the agreement will be active indefinitely, until the agreement is manually marked as terminated or expired.	One of Expiration date or Initial Term Length are required in order to determine the expiration date of an agreement. Not required if the agreement is evergreen/perpetual or doesn’t have an explicit expiration date. The agreement will then stay active until the user manually marks the contract as expired.
Renewals Allowed	number	What are the maximum amount of times this agreement will auto-renew? (unlimited if left blank)	Agreements that have an auto-renewal, may have a maximum number of times they will auto-renew before expiring. If left blank, then the number of auto-renewals will be unlimited.	Only required for auto-renewing contracts that have a maximum number of auto-renewals, if not present or left blank the contract will auto-renew perpetually until canceled/terminated.
Renewal Term Length	duration	What will be the term of the renewal for this agreement?	If an agreement auto-renews or has an optional extension, that renewal/extension will have a term (1 year, 6 months, etc).	Required for agreements that are auto-renewing or have an optional extension and used to calculate the new expiration date when the agreement renews.
Renewal Opt-Out Period	duration	What is the opt-out period for this agreement?	An agreement may have an opt-out period that let’s you opt out of the upcoming auto-renewal before it renews. In the case of an opt period, the last day to opt out is the expiration date minus the opt-out period.	No.
Renewal Opt-Out Date	Date	What is the opt-out date for this agreement?	An agreement may have an opt-out period that let’s you opt out of the upcoming auto-renewal before it renews. In the case of an opt period the opt-out date is the expiration date minus the opt-out period.	No.
Renewal Type	text - multiple choice	What is the renewal type for this agreement?	The renewal type for an agreement will govern what happens on its expiration date if it has one. Auto-Renew: These agreements will automatically renew on their expiration date which means they will then have a new expiration date which would be the current date plus the renewal term length. Optional Extension: These agreements have an optional extension which means that the party can choose to renew the agreement by the renewal term length without renegotiating the contract. There may be a notification requirement to exercise this option. Evergreen: These are agreements that don’t have an expiration date, which means they are active forever. Also known as perpetual agreements. None: This is for agreements that don’t have a renewal provision and will expire on their expiration date. If an agreement has no renewal provision but also doesn’t have an expiration date, it’ll be active forever. Other: For renewal provisions that are not covered by these options.	Required if you would like to accurately track the full lifecycle of the agreement. If this is not present or left blank, the contracts will either stay active forever or expire if an expiration date is present.
Termination Notice Period	duration	What is the notice period for this agreement?	This is the number of days of notice that needs to be given before this agreement can be terminated.	No.
Other Renewal Type	text	If other, what is the renewal type for this agreement?	For renewal types not handled by the Ironclad platform. In this instance, Ironclad will treat these as contracts with no renewal provision.	Yes, if you would like to account for renewals not captured by the renewal types listed above. The Ironclad platform, however, will just expire these agreements on the expiration date if an expiration date is present.
Condition: Auto-Renew	condition	Renewal Term Length Number of Renewals Renewal Opt-Out Period Expiration Date		This ensures that the questions relevant for auto-renewals only show up when required.
Condition: Optional Extension	condition	Renewal Term Length Number of Renewals Renewal Opt-Out Period Expiration Date		This ensures that the questions relevant for optional-extensions only show up when required.
Condition: Renewal Type Other	condition	Other Renewal Type		This ensures that the questions relevant for other renewal types only show up when required.
Condition: Evergreen	condition			This ensures that the questions relevant for evergreen agreements only show up when required.
Condition: None	condition	Expiration Date		This ensures that the questions relevant for agreements with no renewal provision only show up when required.

Additional Properties

Using the lifecycle preset will also add additional properties to the company that aren’t in the preset itself. These properties are used by the statuses and auto-renewals features.

When doing a metadata import, or creating records via API, these properties can be populated in order to reflect past events that may have already happened such that statuses on legacy contracts are also accurate.

Important Note: The effective dates for termination and supersession are what are used to determine the status and are needed if you would like the status to be populated accurately.

Name	Type	Description
Anniversary Date	Date	For evergreen contracts, the date on which the contract will have been active for another year
Autorenewal Cancellation Date	Date	The date on which the auto-renewal was cancelled
Contract Extending	boolean	Whether the optional extension has been exercised or not for this expiration
Renewals Remaining	number	The number of renewals an auto-renewal or optional extension with limited renewals has left
Superseding Record ID	String	The record ID for the contract that has superseded this contract.
Supersession Date	Date	The date when the contract was superseded
Supersession Effective Date	Date	The effective date of the superseding contract
Terminated Date	Date	The date when the contract was terminated
Terminating Record ID	String	The record ID for the contract that terminated this contract.
Termination Effective Date	Date	The effective date of the contract termination
Times Renewed	number	The number of times the contract has auto-renewed or the number of times an optional extension has been extended

Lifecycle Properties in the Repository

This functionality is currently in beta and is not enabled for all users; it will be available in the coming months.

Lifecycle properties are used to compute the status of a contract that is then displayed via a contract status pill across the product.

The values for the properties in the lifecycle section of a record indicates its current state, which can be different from the original value in the contract and properties. For example, when an auto-renewal takes place and the expiration date shifts, or when a user leverages status actions to edit the renewal or extend an optional extension.

The Insights, columns, filters, and reminders features will all use the current values for the properties, rather than the original ones so that you always have access to the latest information.

Upcoming Deadlines View

The Upcoming Deadlines view in the Repository enables you to filter your active contracts and sort them by expiration date. This provides you with the ability to view the most important contracts that you need to act on, first.

Bulk Actions and Metadata Import

If you use bulk actions or metadata import on one of the lifecycle properties, that will update the original value of the property, thus leading to a status recomputation.

Smart Import Detection

Smart Import is an AI-powered feature that simplifies the process of tagging your uploaded contracts by utilizing AI technology to analyze and extract data in them automatically. Each uploaded document is also full-text searchable in the Ironclad Repository through our best-in-class OCR technology.

This feature enables you to upload executed contracts and other documents directly to the Repository. This is useful if you have historical contracts that you are migrating to Ironclad or if you have a contract that was executed outside of an Ironclad workflow.

Smart import detects lifecycle properties. The only exception to this is the Renewal Type property. Smart import only detects Auto-Renew for Renewal Type.

Smart import detects lifecycle properties that are required for powering statuses and auto-renewals. The only caveat to this is the Renewal Type property - Smart import only detects Auto-Renew for Renewal Type.

Edit Properties in the Metadata Panel

You cannot edit properties in the Lifecycle section of the metadata panel. This is because the lifecycle section is intended to display the current data for these properties, which may be different from the original data for these properties.

Updating the original data, which is also present in the relevant sections for it, will recompute the entire lifecycle history for the contract, thus automatically changing the values for the properties in the lifecycle section. Any status actions that were taken will be overridden as well and will have to be performed again, if needed.

Additionally, if you want to modify the values in the lifecycle section to indicate changes in the future of the contract’s lifecycle, you can do so by clicking the status pill.