Linked Agreements help facilitate sophisticated workflows where completing one agreement can trigger another agreement to be sent out. You would use Linked Agreements if one or more of your documents you were sending was dependent on another. There are multiple types of linked agreements, and numerous ways to setup linked agreements.

Linked Agreement Example

There are Primary Templates, “A”, and Secondary Templates, “B”; both types are included in linked agreements (See Figure 1).

Agreement Express has two main linked documents. The first is best explained with an example. Let us say that you are applying to University. The document in Template A, is your online application. The application includes your basic application form, your transcripts, and letters of reference. You want to send this document package over to the University, and once it is received, you will be sent an e-mail of confirmation. Your documents in the original e-mail are all part of Template A. After the University has accepted your information, it is then broken down into individual forms so that it can be sent off to different departments of the University (See figure 2).

Finally, when every form in your original e-mail package has been approved by each department, an acceptance letter, or letter of denial will be sent to you.

The second type of linked agreement is that when the first documents are completed (A &/or B), a completely different document is then sent out. An example of this is you could setup a linked agreement to send out a welcome package once a customer signs up for your service. You could even setup different welcome packages to be sent out depending on a data field within the first document. 

Setting up a Linked Agreement

On the left-hand side of the agreement manager, click on “Templates”, and then “All Templates” (you may need to select your company from the drop-down depending on your level of access). Under template manager, choose which document you would like to be Template “A”. Mark Template “B”  with a yellow star icon, making this one of your personal favourites and available to be used as a linked template. Below the list of available templates is a “Link” icon (). After selecting Template “A”, click the Link icon to open the Linked Agreements setup panel. This will then open the window shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Link Template Settings

Linking type: In this drop down menu you will choose which type of Linked Agreement you would like to use.
Primary Template: Your Template “A”
Secondary Template: Your Template “B”; Only templates marked as personal favourites will be available
Execute on: This depends on which linking type you have chosen.

Only When field:

Select a field: You can choose a field from the document to control when the linked agreement is executed

: This drop down menu lets you choose how to compare the data in the field chosen to the textbox beside it

Select comparison: This drop down menu determines whether the field you have chosen is has a numeric or string value.

When linking:

Copy field values: Determines if you want the field values to copy onto the the Secondary Template.  Form fields must have the same name for the data to be copied over.
Don’t attach completed agreements You can choose to have Template “B” separate from Template “A

Link name: This is the name of the linked template you are creating.
Append the primary agreement launch link to the message: If selected, will include a link to the first document in the email that is sent (only available for link type Document from Secondary Template are added to the Primary Template when Primary Completes)
Message: The message will appear in the body of the email sent with the attachment link to the linked agreement (Template “B”).

Once you have chosen the settings for your template link and saved, you’re ready to send an agreement using template “A”.

Checking Existing Linked Templates

To see, edit and delete template links, open the template manager and click on the link symbol beside the template you wish to look at. A new window will open listing all template links for that template. To edit or get further information on a template link, select the link and click the Edit Template Link icon below the list of template links. This will open the same Link Template panel as before. Similarly, to delete a template link, select the template link and click on the delete icon.