If you, your reviewers, or approvers prefer the convenience of working with offline documents, you don't have to switch the contract source from Structured Terms to Attached Document. After making changes to the contract offline, you can use the Update Structured Terms Automatically option to upload the contract and run the Word Import function. The function detects changes in sections, clauses, and variables and allows you to accept or reject the changes.
You must have the non-standard authoring privilege to use the Attached Document feature, that is, to update Contract Source to Attached Document and to attach primary contract documents. See Oracle Contracts Function Security.
The content of attached documents is neither verified nor validated by Oracle Contracts.
The main stages involved in switching from structured terms to an attached document are as follows:
If you have Contract Source=Structured Terms, you can generate and download a Microsoft Word document from the structured terms.
After you have generated and downloaded a Microsoft Word document to your desktop, you can edit the document externally, and save it to a location accessible from your desktop.
Switch the Contract Source of the business document to Attached Document, and upload the edited file from where you saved it.
The document is attached as a contract document with Document Category=Contract, and is marked as the Primary Contract Document.
Note: If reviewers and approvers provide you directly with an offline document containing all the contract terms, which you wish to make the primary contract document, you do not have to go through the first two stages.
If your contract terms were previously represented by structured terms, the switch keeps the contract template association with the business document, but effectively masks all the sections and clauses that were available before the Contract Source switch, whether they originated from the contract template, or were added in subsequently.
All of these sections and clauses can be reactivated in the business document if you switch the Contract Source back to Structured Terms and use the same contract template as before.
In this case, you start off with the terms and conditions provided by a contract template, sections, and clauses in Oracle Contracts.
Start with the Contract Source of the business document as Structured Terms.
Add in and edit sections and clauses as appropriate.
Generate a Microsoft Word document of the structured terms.
Edit the Microsoft Word document offline.
Possibly send out copies of the Microsoft Word document for review.
Switch the Contract Source of the business document from Structured Terms to Attached Document, and attach the Microsoft Word document as the Primary Contract Document.
For more information on the main operations outlined in this scenario, see Generating and Attaching Microsoft Word Documents.