Set up object coding mode

Object Coding Mode allows you to open a custom object, such as a Contract Family object, in the Contracts Viewer when you click Edit from the object list. This lets you populate and review information at the family level in addition to the document level.

When to use object coding mode

Contracts are often amended over time, making it difficult to identify the latest source of truth across a family of documents. By creating a custom object for each contract family, you can consolidate key data from multiple related documents onto a single object.

For example, if you have an employment agreement with four amendments and the compensation section has changed over time, you can:

1. Create a Contract Family object for the employment agreement family.
2. Add a Compensation field to the family object.
3. Code that field with the latest source of truth for the family

Viewer behavior in object coding mode

When you open the Contracts Viewer in Object Coding Mode, the viewer behaves differently than in standard document coding mode:

• The list and queue on the left side display objects from the list you navigated from, not documents.
• The layouts on the right pane are layouts on the object.
• Fields on the layout are fields on the object.
• The multi-object field for documents that you added to the object displays as an inline list. Clicking a document in this list displays it in the viewer.
• You can code an object even if no documents are linked to it.
• You can use send to field on the object across documents. For example, you can send the original contract's effective date to an Original Effective Date field and the effective date from the latest amendment to a Latest Effective Date field.
• If you click the green dot on a field, the viewer navigates to the document associated with that field value.
• You can right-click a data point to link it to a field on the object, just as you can link data points to fields when coding documents.

Set up object coding mode

To set up object coding mode:

1. Navigate to the Contracts Settings tab.
2. In the Object Type to code field, select the object you want to configure to open in the Contracts Viewer.
3. Click Save.
4. Add an object list for documents to a layout on the object. This is a requirement for object coding mode.
5. Verify that all the documents have run through analysis.
6. From the object list for the object type you selected in step 2, click the Edit icon.

The Contracts Viewer will open in Object Coding Mode.