Create alerts for expiring vendor contracts

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◆ Applies to: Vendor Insights on TBM Studio 12.8 and later (v107)

As contracts approach expiration, contract owners and vendor managers might want to be aware of expiring contracts so they can decide to renew or close the contracts to prevent auto-renewals and to have sufficient time to renegotiate contracts.

In Vendor Insights , you can set up contract rules that trigger email alerts to be sent to recipients of your choice whenever the days remaining until contract expiration meet a designated minimum or maximum value. Alerts allow you to easily track contract expiration.

For example, you can create an alert called Days Remaining Until Contract Expiration that notifies you when a contract you own will expire in 90 days. In addition, you can configure that contract to suppress alerts if the contract is already renewed or if the renewal contract exists.

An alert can contain multiple, unique thresholds (or rules). You can define multiple thresholds for a single contract.

For example, you might want to send an alert 90 days prior to contract expiration when the Vendor Type associated with a contract is Strategic while setting a 30-day alert for a vendor whose Vendor Type is Transactional. A threshold can contain various contracts that meet the criteria for a specific metric. Each contract can be associated with its own list of email recipients who are notified whenever the threshold criteria are met.

For more information, see Alerts and thresholds for Public Cloud .

Step 1 - Set up the Suppress Alerts field

To use the contract expiration alert feature, you must upgrade to TBM Studio 12.7 and Template 107 (or later). The use of the Suppress Alerts field is optional but highly recommended to prevent unexpected mass alert emails.

To set up the Suppress Alerts field for contract expiration:

  1. Follow the instructions in About upgrading Cost Transparency to upgrade to TBM Studio 12.7 (or later), upgrade to Template v107, and upgrade the VI-Contracts component.
    TIP : It's a best practice to upgrade all installed Vendor Insights components whenever one component needs to be upgraded.
  2. In the Contract Raw table in TBM Studio , click the Formulas step, then create a column named Suppress Alert with the following values:
    • Yes = Suppress alerts. Do not send alerts.
    • No = Do not suppress alerts. Send alerts.
      In the following example, the original data has a column called Suppress Alerts Override with a value of N to prevent the suppression of alerts for certain contracts. All other contracts have the value Yes to suppress alerts.
      img
  3. Set the default value for the column to Yes to suppress alerts by default.
    Examples :
    • Specific contract - Set the Suppress Alert formula value to Yes to suppress alerts for all contracts except the one contract that you want to trigger an alert.
      For example, you can set the Suppress Alert formula value to Yes for everything except contract 12345, and set the Suppress Alert value for contract 12345 to No. Contract 12345 will be the only contract to kick off an alert email when a threshold is met.
      =if(Contract ID IN ("CTACME_0001","CTACME_0002"), "No", "Yes")
    • Contract owner or vendor manager - Set the Suppress Alert formula value to Yes to suppress alerts for all contracts except those assigned to a specific contract owner or vendor manager.
      For example, you can set the Suppress Alert formula value to Yes for all contracts except those owned by contract owner John Doe or vendor manager Jane Doe, then set contracts owned by John Doe or Jane Doe to No.
      =if(Contract Owner IN ("James Hunt","John Smith"), "No", "Yes")
    • Renewal date - If your contract data source contains a separate column for the ID of a renewal contract, the Suppress Alert formula can use that column to determine whether alerts should be suppressed.
      For example, if contract 12345 has a renewal contract ID value of 12345-v2, then the Suppress Alert formula can be set to No if the renewal contract value is empty.
      =if(Len(New Contract ID)=0, "No", "Yes")
  4. In the Append step for the Contracts Master Data table, map the Suppress Alert fields to each other.
    img

Step 2 - Create an alert

Alerts are triggered whenever threshold requirements are met upon the checking in and promotion of data to production.

Perform monthly uploads

For alerts to work, perform monthly uploads of the latest contract raw data into the previous period in TBM Studio . By default, thresholds look at the contract end date in the previous period to evaluate whether the threshold is met. Alerts require that the Suppress Alerts value is set as desired for the month. Do not promote to production yet. First, after uploading the latest data, define the thresholds for all desired contracts using the latest contract data before promoting to production in the next step.

For example, if today is May 6, 2019, the latest contract data is uploaded to the previous period of April 2019. Thresholds are then checked against the contract end date listed in the April 2019 data. In the March 2019 data, if the contract end date for contract 12345 was accidentally entered as 2/1/2019, then corrected to 12/1/2019 in the April 2019 data, the threshold is checked against the 12/1/2019 end date.

Define thresholds

To set up a threshold that sends an alert:

  1. On the Application menu, click Vendor Insights .
  2. On the Report menu, click Contracts .
  3. Click Alert ( img ) on the top right of the page.
  4. In the upper right of the Threshold Alerts page, click New to open Threshold Settings .
  5. For Name of Threshold and Alert , enter a descriptive name for the alert. This name will appear as the heading of the alert.
  6. For Alerts will link to this report , select the report that you want linked in the alert email.
    The Contract Expiration Notification report is recommended, but any of the Vendor Insights - Contracts reports can be used.
  7. For Metric , select the type of data that you want to trigger the alert.
    The Days Remaining Till Contract Expiration metric is the only option available for Vendor Insights because it measures the number of days between today and the contract end date (expiration date) for the threshold you're setting.
    For example, if today's date is May 6, 2019, and the contract end date is May 15, 2019, the time remaining until contract expiration is 9 days. (The metric is evaluated monthly, when the data is promoted to production.)
    NOTE : It's possible to create custom metrics. See Add a customized metric to alerts .
  8. For Filter by , select the checkbox, then define the columns, operators, and values for one or more filter criteria to find the contracts to set the threshold.
    For example:
    Contract Owner, EQUALS, John Doe
    Suppress Alert, NOT EQUALS, Yes
    Vendor Type, IN Preferred, Transactional
  9. For Break down by this column , select Unique Vendor Contract ID to list all of the contracts that meet the filter criteria.
    Unique Vendor Contract ID is the only option that will display the contract details.
  10. Click Apply Settings then scroll down to the Alert Conditions section, where you can specify and enable the thresholds for specific contracts:
    • The label of the left-most column (for example, Unique Vendor Contract ID ) changes depending on your selection in the Break down by this column box in the Threshold Alert Settings section.
    • The Threshold column displays the value you want the metric to be compared against (the days remaining until the contract expiration date for each contract).
  11. In the Alert when column, select the operator you want to use.
  12. In the Threshold column, enter the numeric value you want to trigger the alert.
    For example, if the metric value is 76 and you select <= and enter 90, the alert will be sent when the number of days remaining until contract expiration is less than or equal to 90 days.
    CAUTION : Metric values are rounded up.
    For example, if a value is 89.5, it will be rounded up to 90. However, even though the threshold is set to 90, a metric value of 89.5 won't meet the threshold of 90, so an alert won't be sent. Apptio recommends that you accommodate for rounding by entering threshold values that are 1 day higher than needed, so alerts are sent as expected.
  13. In the Recipients column, type in the list of emails of the alert recipients. As you begin typing in the email address, a pop-up box may appear with a list of email addresses that are configured to have access to Apptio on Access Administration and contains the text you've begun typing. Select or manually enter one or more email addresses, separated by commas. Enter a comma after each name to see the full list of email addresses again in the drop-down list.
  14. In the Enable column, select the checkbox to activate the alert.
    You can enable and disable any combination of thresholds. Deselecting a threshold allows you to turn off the alert without deleting the definition so you can use it in the future.
  15. Define as many thresholds as needed for the alert. When you're finished, click Save .

    NOTE : After clicking Save , the color of the metric (Days Remaining Till Contract Expiration) changes:
    • Green : The current data does not meet the threshold and no alert will be sent.
    • Red : The current data meets the threshold and an alert will be sent.

Step 3 - Promote to production

To trigger contract expiration thresholds to send alert emails, check-ins (not just updates to contract data) need to be promoted to production. During the month, multiple check-ins and promotions can occur, but until data is promoted to production, alerts won't be triggered.

To promote to production:

  1. In TBM Studio , upload your contract data into the previous time period.
    For example, if today's date is May 6, 2019, upload the contract data into April FY2019.
  2. Check in the new contract data.
    The latest Days Remaining Till Contract Expiration metric appears in the Threshold Settings .
  3. (Optional) If you want to change the thresholds using the new data, add and update the thresholds from Threshold Alerts .
  4. When the staging calculation is complete, lock the staging data.
  5. From TBM Studio , promote the data to the production environment.

By default, it takes approximately 30 minutes for emails to be sent after a promotion is performed. This configuration can be changed by an Apptio administrator. For more information, see How to Promote a Project .

About alert emails

When a threshold is triggered, an email is sent to all of the recipients listed in the threshold definition. The email contains an explanation of the threshold that triggered the alert and a link to the report you associated with the threshold setting. In the email, recipients can click the Edit Threshold link to open the Threshold Settings page to see the threshold definition. The timing of email alerts is based on the metric evaluation (Days Remaining till Contract Expiration) defined for the threshold.

Recipients can click the View linked report link to open the Contract Expiration Notification report. In the report, the Days Remaining column and the color indicator for the Notify Days column use today's date in its calculation to determine the number of days until contract expiration.

NOTE : This calculation is different from the one used in the Contract Expiration report, where it uses the As of Date in its calculation to determine the number of days until contract expiration previously seen during the past time periods.

  • Only one alert email is sent per recipient. This email contains the list of all contracts that met the threshold criteria.
  • Recipients receive only one email per contract expiration every 29 days regardless of whether multiple promotions to production occur. This prevents emails from being sent every time data is checked in and promoted in TBM Studio .

Resend alert emails

It's possible to reset a threshold to send an alert email even though an email was already sent during the previous 29 days.

To reset the threshold trigger:

  1. Open the Alert Conditions page.
  2. For each contract that you want to reset, clear the Enable column.
  3. Click Save .
  4. Re-select the Enable column for those same contracts.
  5. Click Save .
  6. Promote new contract data to production.

Emails for the reset thresholds will be sent in approximately 30 minutes.