Migrate Entities to Ironclad

Before you begin migrating your counterparty data to entities, take time to plan and assess your current setup. This will ensure a smooth transition and minimize the risk of data loss or disruption to active workflows.

Assess Your Current State

Start by reviewing how counterparty data is currently organized and used across your systems.

• Take an inventory of existing counterparty records in the repository.
• Document workflow dependencies that rely on counterparty data.
• Identify custom fields and metadata that must be migrated.
• Note any integrations connected to counterparty records.

Establish a Source of Truth for Entity Data

Before creating entities, determine your source of truth for counterparty or entity data.

• Do you already have a system you want to import from or sync via API?
• Or do you need Ironclad to serve as your primary source of truth?

If you don’t have an existing system, consider using counterparty data from Ironclad records as a starting point.

Define Your Migration Scope

Once you understand your current setup, outline the scope of the migration.

• Decide which counterparty records need to be migrated.
• Set a timeline and allocate necessary resources.
• Identify key stakeholders and create a communication plan.
• Back up existing data before making any changes.

Create a Migration Checklist

A checklist helps you track progress and ensure all preparation tasks are complete. For example, your migration checklist might include the following items:

• All counterparty records identified.
• Custom fields mapped to entity properties.
• Workflow dependencies documented.
• Testing environment prepared.
• Rollback plan established.

This step presents a valuable opportunity to not only map your existing entity properties to Ironclad's schema, but to also clean up and optimize your counterparty data during the migration process. We recommend standardizing naming conventions, consolidating duplicate entries, validating data, and establishing consistent formatting rules that will improve data quality across both the repository and entities going forward

Set Up Entity Relationship Types

To use entities, you must first configure your relationship types. A relationship type defines how you interact with your entities. Ironclad comes preconfigured with three types of relationships:

• Customer: Used for companies you sell goods or services to.
• Partner: Used for companies that you partner with.
• Vendor: Used for companies you buy goods or services from.

If needed, create additional relationship types in Data Manager to best suit your use case.

To learn more, refer to Create and Manage Relationship Types.

Set Up Entity Properties

After you create your relationship types, configure the properties you want to include for each relationship type. Entity properties are data points you want to collect and track. For each relationship type, you can set required properties, remove properties, or view property details. Data Manager provides a central location to manage all your entity properties.

To learn more, refer to Create and Manage Entity Properties.

Configure Entity Permissions

Admins can manage group entity permissions by navigating to Company Settings > Groups > Configure Group. Based on the selected permission level, users can view, select, or manage entities, with granular options available for specific entity types.

To learn more, refer to Configure Entity Permissions.

If Counterparty Data is Stored in Ironclad as Properties or Related Records

1. On the Ironclad Dashboard in the Repository view:
   1. Filter records by type to show only records containing entity data.
   2. Configure columns to display only necessary counterparty data (e.g., name, address).
   3. Save this view for future use.
2. Export record metadata from the Repository. Select Visible columns to be included in the export.
3. Continue to Phase 4.

If Counterparty Data is Stored in an External System

Export the counterparty data from the external system in spreadsheet format. Include an ID from the external system so the entities can be cross-referenced. If given a choice, export the addresses into multiple columns (street, city, state, etc).

Now that you’ve exported or created your spreadsheet, we recommend cleaning it up before you import it to Ironclad. The goal is to ensure you have a clean list of data without duplicates. This will ensure you don’t create multiple entities for the same counterparty. As you follow the steps below, it also offers a good opportunity to validate data is correct (such as verifying addresses are up to date).

1. Remove unnecessary columns: Only keep data required for import.
2. (Optional) Name columns correctly: Name your columns in the spreadsheet to match the naming of your entity properties that you are using in your relationship type templates. This makes the import process easier by auto-mapping if the name matches.
3. (Optional) Trim whitespace.
4. (Optional) Remove exact duplicates.
5. (Optional) Identify and remove near duplicates: We recommend using highlighting techniques to find similar records. Manually merge or delete unnecessary duplicates.

If you are using the “address” question type in your workflow templates and you want to populate those properties with data from your entity profile, you will want to make sure that your addresses are formatted correctly in your entities.

In order to do this, you need to ensure your address data is split in individual columns for each part of the address. Then, when you are mapping the data during the import process, you need to map the data to the correct part of the relevant address property (ie. “Address - street 1”, “Address - street 2”, “Address - city”)

If your address data is currently in a single column, you can manually use an address parsing tool to clean-up the data for you.

If you want to define the relationship type (ie. vendor) of an entity during the import process, each entity must have a relationship type key in your spreadsheet. The key is displayed on the relationship types page and is always a single word without spaces that starts with a lowercase. Note: The key can be different than the relationship type name.

During import, map the column to the Relationship Type Key property.

Import Limitations

Review these before starting:

• Business Type: You can’t set the business type via import. Imported entities default to “Company.”

Import Your Spreadsheet

1. Click on the Entities tab.
2. Click the three stacked dots located in the top right corner, and then click Import entities.
3. Click New Import and upload your spreadsheet.
4. Map your spreadsheet column headers to entity properties. If the column name matches a property, it is automatically mapped. Otherwise, you must manually map your columns during the import process.
   1. Select the appropriate entity property for each column.
   2. If a property is missing, add it via Entities Properties in Data Manager.
   3. Important: Map the entity name to the system “Name” property; otherwise, imported entities will be labeled “Imported.”
5. Configure the Merge duplicates using drop-down. Choose a property to control which should be used as a reference between Ironclad and the spreadsheet when updating existing entities. This allows you to make sure the right entities in Ironclad get updated with the right data. The options include:
   • ID: This will use the entity identification number (ie. d307076a-6825-44d3-b25b-1494e4c4b144) to match the data in your spreadsheet to the entities in Ironclad. If any entities in your spreadsheet don’t have an ID listed, a new entity will be created.
   • Name (recommended): This will use the “Entity name” to match the data in your spreadsheet to the entities in Ironclad. This is the best option if you want to ensure that you don’t have any duplicate entities with the same name.
   • Create all new entities - This will create all new entities.Note: Using this will not check for duplicates and will create new entities.
6. Click Next: Preview to view a summary of how many entities are being imported. Review errors and re-upload if needed.
7. Click Start Import.
8. Complete upload.

Choose Connection Method

After creating your entities, you must connect those entities to your existing records. There are a few different methods to do this. Review the table below to verify which method best fits your use case:

Update Workflow Designer

In Workflow Designer, you can configure the entities section that will be presented on the launch form. By default, new workflow configurations have this section is added to the top of the form. You can manually add the entity question to your existing workflow configurations. You must then choose a relationship type and map the entity properties to properties in the workflow. This ensures that the data is correctly synced across Ironclad.

When you use an entity to populate information on your launch form, the counterparty information is tied to the entity’s profile. If you make any changes to the entity profile, you can refresh the data populated in the workflow, ensuring the workflow (including any workflow conditions) has the latest data from the entity profile.

To learn more, refer to Configure Entities in Workflow Designer.

Update Workflow Components

After configuring your workflow configurations, review and update your workflow components to ensure they work correctly with entities:

• Forms: Update counterparty selection fields
• Approvals: Modify routing based on entity properties
• Integrations: Update API calls to use entity IDs
• Reports: Adjust to pull from entity data
• Notifications: Update merge tags for entity fields

After completing the migration, it’s important to validate the data and test workflows to ensure everything functions as expected. Use the following checklist to confirm a successful migration:

Testing Checklist

Data Validation

• All counterparty records successfully migrated to entities
• Entity relationships correctly established
• Custom properties populated accurately
• No data loss or corruption
• Record-to-entity mappings are correct

Workflow Testing

• Entity lookups function correctly
• Workflow routing works as expected
• Integrations properly handle entity data
• Reports display accurate information

User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

1. Select test users from different departments
2. Provide test scenarios covering common use cases
3. Document feedback and any issues
4. Address concerns before full rollout

Performance Validation

• Monitor system performance post-migration
• Check query response times
• Ensure no degradation in user experience

Once your migration is complete, we recommend communicating changes, training users, monitoring adoption, optimizing processes, and updating documentation to maintain data accuracy and workflow efficiency.

Communication and Training

1. Announce completion to all stakeholders
2. Provide training on new entity features
3. Share documentation and quick reference guides
4. Establish support channels for questions

Monitoring and Optimization

• Track entity usage patterns
• Gather user feedback
• Optimize entity search and filtering
• Refine permissions as needed

Documentation

• Update internal process documentation
• Record lessons learned
• Create troubleshooting guide
• Document custom configurations