Things you should know before you start

One of the things that Oneflow users love is the powerful search function. You can search and filter through tags, dates or keywords across all your contracts simultaneously – it’s like googling for your contracts with spreadsheet functions.

How do we do it?

We do this by using tags and by making data fields, key properties in the contract searchable. Data fields are determined by users, for e.g. product(s) listed in the contract, total, address, etc. Key contract properties include dates, duration, company and participant details. Tags are additional dimensions that are added by the user to make the content of a contract searchable.

What are tags?

Tags are used to mark your contracts and templates to make them easier to find. You can add tags both in the archive view and in the contract view. You can add an unlimited number of tags to your contracts and they can be sorted alphabetically.

Why use tags?

You can think of tags as the dimensions you use to organize your contracts with. There is no hierarchy in tags. This means you can search across all contracts in one go.

Here are some of the best practices

Use tags for other dimensions than data fields and key contract properties

The goal with tags is to make the content of your contracts searchable. Before you start adding tags, remember that any content available as data fields, dates, duration, company and participant details are automatically made searchable. This means there is no need to add these dimensions as tags to your contracts.

Add tags to templates instead of contracts

The tag(s) you add to a contract template will automatically be added as tag(s) to all the contracts created with the template. This minimizes the risk of errors, enforces the desired centralized tagging structure (if any), and prevents users from having to add tags to contracts ad-hocly.

Control who can manage tags using permission

Employees can be restricted from managing, adding and removing tags by Managers. Although there is no limit to the number of tags you can add to a contract, we recommend organizations to restrict permission as best practice in order to minimize the risk of error due while keeping the tagging structure as centralized as possible.

Good tags are consistent and intentional

Consistency makes searching for contracts by tags easier. In order to ensure consistency, besides controlling who can manage, add or remove tags, we recommend organizations to consider the following:

• Capitalization of the tag. Will you be writing NDA, Nda or nda? This is important because Oneflow will automatically classify NDA, Nda and nda as three different tags. Although this error can be easily corrected, it is best practice to prevent the error from occurring by only allowing Manager to manage tags.
• The granularity of search that you want to perform. Will you be searching contracts by region or by city or by postcode, etc.?

Most of Oneflow users use tags to organize contracts by:

• Location (e.g. region, territory, country)
• Contract type (e.g. employment contract, NDA)
• Line of business or workgroups (e.g. recruiting, partner)
• Project type (e.g. GDPR, CRM integration)

More tips on organizing contracts in Oneflow

Our Customer Success Team works daily with thousands of Oneflow users – from small businesses to large enterprises – to improve their contract process using best practices. Feel free to reach out to us if you need more help or inspiration.

Thank you for using Oneflow!