Data Manager Overview

This article will provide you with a basic overview of Data Manager. This includes what tools it provides, how the interface functions, and key facts.

Data Manager serves as a central location to view and manage all of your contract properties and record types across workflows and records. Admins can create, merge, rename, and delete properties, and create and delete record types in Company Settings.

Data Management Tools

Ironclad Data Manager provides tools to help you manage and optimize your data:

1. Define and Discover: You can improve the discoverability of your properties and record types by refining their names and descriptions. This also ensures that users share the same understanding of what the property or record type is intended for.
2. Manage Data: As your organization evolves, you can easily manage changes to your data with tools to modify existing data properties and record types, deprecate unused or outdated elements, and create new properties to track.
3. Custom and Default Properties: You can create and control custom contract properties, pertaining to your unique contract and business needs. For example, you may create and use properties like Region, Billing Contact Email, and Product Name - all of which are custom. Additionally, Ironclad provides a number of system-generated ("Default") contract properties in your account to support consistent data structures and usability.
4. Real-Time Monitoring: At any time, you can view all of your properties and record types and see where they are being used throughout Ironclad. This real-time monitoring enables admins to understand and track data to ensure their Ironclad data is optimally configured.

These tools enable your organization to maintain a clear, structured, and easily understandable data model within Ironclad. Using Data Manager, you can provide your team with a consistent framework for capturing and analyzing contract data, leading to improved decision-making and operational efficiency.

Data Manager Interface

Dashboard

Property Panel

When you click on a property on the Data Manager dashboard, a details panel displays on the right. This panel lists the following information:

Item	Description
Name	How the property is displayed throughout Ironclad. This includes in workflows, workflow configurations, and records.
Type	The property’s data type. This is important if you are cleaning up your data. Only properties with the same data type can be merged together.
Unique Values	The number of unique values that occur for this property throughout Ironclad.
Example	The example provided to users as a guide for what value to enter.
System Generated	Whether or not the property was system generated. You can only edit custom properties.
Usage	A total number of where the property is currently used in published configurations, workflows, and records.
Visibility	Whether or not the property is visible throughout Ironclad. This is helpful if you want to track that specific property without it being available to everyone in your Ironclad instance.
Schema	The Schema section lists the property’s unique key. If you previously merged the property with another, it will also have a button to view Retired Properties. When you click View, you will see a list of the properties that were merged with the current one.

If the property you are viewing is a custom property, you can click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner to edit the property. System generated properties cannot be edited. To learn more about editing an existing custom property, refer to Clean Up Data Schema Models in Ironclad.

Record Type Panel

When you click on a record type on the Data Manager dashboard, a details panel displays on the right. This panel lists the following information:

You can click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner to edit the record type. To learn more about editing an existing custom property, refer to Clean Up Data Schema Models in Ironclad.

Key Facts About Data Manager

• Edit Names, Descriptions, and Visibility
  • You can edit the display names. descriptions, and visibility settings of custom properties and apply those changes across your account wherever that property is being used.
• Usage
  • You can download a .csv file that lists an individual property's usage. The export includes links to all of the published workflow configurations, workflows, and records that contain that property. This is not a comprehensive list of all of your properties. 
    • To export a property's usage, click on a property in Data Manager. A panel displays on the left. Locate the Usages section and click the Export Usages icon. Select which information you would like to export and click Export.
• Merge Custom Properties
  • You can only merge properties of the same data type with Data Manager. Merging properties of different data types requires tooling outside of Data Manager, namely Metadata Import and Bulk Actions in the Repository.
  • Merge custom properties that are functionally the same with their corresponding standard, preset properties to ensure lifecycle and obligation data is tracked in a consistent, standardized format.
• Delete Properties and Record Types
  • You can delete properties and record types that you no longer use. You can only delete custom properties with 0 usages in your account. You cannot delete system-generated (“standard”) properties, and you cannot delete custom properties with any usages in published workflow configurations.
  • Workflow Configuration usage refers to published configuration versions. This means, if you add a property to a workflow configuration, but have not published that version of the configuration containing the property, the property will be logged in Data Manager, but it will show 0 for configuration usage. If you delete a such property in Data Manager, any configurations containing that property will show an error message for that property.

Next Steps

Academy

We highly recommend taking our Manage Data in Ironclad course in Ironclad Academy. After you complete this course, you will be able to:

• Explain Ironclad’s data structure and its relationships to your contracts.
• Identify system-generated properties within the Lifecycle Preset.
• Define and manage the data you track in Ironclad with Data Manager and Workflow Designer.
• Add and configure the Lifecycle Preset in your workflows.
• Align your data structure to Ironclad’s standard, system-generated properties.

Help Center

To use Data Manager as efficiently as possible, we recommend working through the following articles in order:

• Restructure Your Lifecycle Data: This article will walk you through a multi-step exercise to organize and align your lifecycle-related contract properties to Ironclad’s standard dataset to support consistent data tracking across all contracts in your account.
• Introduction to Ironclad Data: Key Concepts and Terms: This article will provide you with definitions of some key Ironclad data concepts and terms related to Data Manager.
• Plan Your Data in Ironclad: This article will walk you through how to create a data schema plan before you begin using Data Manager. This will help you create a solid foundation for you to build your future workflow configurations around.
• Manage and Optimize Data Schemas with Data Manager: This article will provide an overview of data schema management and provide a list of relevant resources for further data management.
• Clean Up Data Schema Models in Ironclad: This article will walk you through how to clean up your data schema models in Ironclad. This includes how to merge new and existing data, remove invalid data, and manage default data.
• Improve Data Discoverability with Data Manager: This article will walk you through how to improve your data’s discoverability. This includes how to change a property’s display name and add/edit the description.