Get Started with DocuSign CLM Essentials
Welcome! If you’re here, you're likely playing a key role in the implementation of your organization’s DocuSign CLM Essentials solution–otherwise known as Contract Lifecycle Management. We've created this 7-step interactive checklist to get you prepared for your upcoming deployment.
Learn Best Practices to Implement CLM Essentials
CLM Essentials is a simple yet powerful contract lifecycle management product to organize and automate agreements all in one place. We have collected best practices to help you prepare for your CLM Essentials deployment. Read our blog learn how to:
- Align executive sponsors and stakeholders
- Clearly define your vision and business outcomes
- Build a strong program structure and governance model
- Empower enablement and change management for your team
Take CLM Essentials Training
Get ready for your CLM Essentials deployment with our specialized learning plan from DocuSign University for both Admins and Users. This interactive resource runs through key features, use cases and administrator capabilities—helping your team build foundational knowledge and expertise.
Select the course for your role below:
Manage your Parties
Allow your users to view and upload contracts, capture data, and manage agreements per party. In CLM Essentials, a party is any organization or collaborator that you engage with via agreements. These key resources help you become familiar with how you can populate your repository with existing parties.
Instructions:
- Log in to your CLM Essentials account
- Click the gear icon in the upper right
- Select Parties from the dropdown menu
- Instructions in the product will be provided to download the Parties CSV file
- Start adding your parties to the CSV file
Best Practice
Have the file ready for your implementation, as your Professional Services representative will review and assist you with uploading parties into your CLM Essentials account.
Migrate your Legacy Documents
With CLM Essentials, you will want to identify your legacy documents and prepare them for migration (also referred to as “Ingestion”) into your CLM repository by defining key data points about those documents. Your Professional Services Implementation team will review your files for metadata ingestion of legacy agreements. A template will be provided to you on the Admin page.
Here are some examples of common tags:
- Agreement Name
- Party Name
- Type
- Effective Date
- Expiration Date
- Contract Value
- Requestor Name
Identify your Templates and Prepare for Configuration
To prepare your organization for your Professional Services engagement, it is critical for launch to identify your document templates that will be automated in CLM Essentials.
A template map and markup is part of document generation in CLM Essentials. A template map is a spreadsheet of all your document fields, field types, and their applicable template(s). This should include fields you want to put in the template to leverage in your implementation.
Marking up your document templates with comments for desired field locations helps to ensure an expedient implementation. After completing this step, you can develop the best workflows to address your use cases.
Build your Agreement Process
Learn how to use the new process builder in DocuSign CLM Essentials to create a process for document generation and approval of agreements.
Administrators can create customizable processes to automate and streamline agreements through workflows. This guide will cover the creation of a process in Process Builder by uploading a document template.
Connect Salesforce
CLM Essentials seamlessly integrates with Salesforce so you can simply sign in and get contracts moving right from the Salesforce interface.
In our guide you will learn how to:
- Install Apps Launcher
- Connect Salesforce to a DocuSign Account
- Configure Admin Settings
- Set up User Management Page
- Map Salesforce Objects to CLM Essentials
Learn Best Practices to Implement CLM Essentials
CLM Essentials is a simple yet powerful contract lifecycle management product to organize and automate agreements all in one place. We have collected best practices to help you prepare for your CLM Essentials deployment. Read our blog learn how to:
- Align executive sponsors and stakeholders
- Clearly define your vision and business outcomes
- Build a strong program structure and governance model
- Empower enablement and change management for your team
Take CLM Essentials Training
Get ready for your CLM Essentials deployment with our specialized learning plan from DocuSign University for both Admins and Users. This interactive resource runs through key features, use cases and administrator capabilities—helping your team build foundational knowledge and expertise.
Select the course for your role below:
Manage your Parties
Allow your users to view and upload contracts, capture data, and manage agreements per party. In CLM Essentials, a party is any organization or collaborator that you engage with via agreements. These key resources help you become familiar with how you can populate your repository with existing parties.
Instructions:
- Log in to your CLM Essentials account
- Click the gear icon in the upper right
- Select Parties from the dropdown menu
- Instructions in the product will be provided to download the Parties CSV file
- Start adding your parties to the CSV file
Best Practice
Have the file ready for your implementation, as your Professional Services representative will review and assist you with uploading parties into your CLM Essentials account.
Migrate your Legacy Documents
With CLM Essentials, you will want to identify your legacy documents and prepare them for migration (also referred to as “Ingestion”) into your CLM repository by defining key data points about those documents. Your Professional Services Implementation team will review your files for metadata ingestion of legacy agreements. A template will be provided to you on the Admin page.
Here are some examples of common tags:
- Agreement Name
- Party Name
- Type
- Effective Date
- Expiration Date
- Contract Value
- Requestor Name
Identify your Templates and Prepare for Configuration
To prepare your organization for your Professional Services engagement, it is critical for launch to identify your document templates that will be automated in CLM Essentials.
A template map and markup is part of document generation in CLM Essentials. A template map is a spreadsheet of all your document fields, field types, and their applicable template(s). This should include fields you want to put in the template to leverage in your implementation.
Marking up your document templates with comments for desired field locations helps to ensure an expedient implementation. After completing this step, you can develop the best workflows to address your use cases.
Build your Agreement Process
Learn how to use the new process builder in DocuSign CLM Essentials to create a process for document generation and approval of agreements.
Administrators can create customizable processes to automate and streamline agreements through workflows. This guide will cover the creation of a process in Process Builder by uploading a document template.
Connect Salesforce
CLM Essentials seamlessly integrates with Salesforce so you can simply sign in and get contracts moving right from the Salesforce interface.
In our guide you will learn how to:
- Install Apps Launcher
- Connect Salesforce to a DocuSign Account
- Configure Admin Settings
- Set up User Management Page
- Map Salesforce Objects to CLM Essentials