If you have been using UCM for supporting document storage, and the dates of those supporting documents are critical to your process, then you probably have some Document Specific Date Fields on your Summary data. Now that you have the ability to track Milestones on an individual Document though, what should you do if you want to begin using Document Milestones, but also avoid any confusion for your End-Users?
Below, we'll detail out three scenarios; one for "retiring" your old Milestone Rules on the Document specific Date Field; one for preventing any new data from being entered in the old Document Date Field from the Summary tab, and another for eventually removing the Document specific Date Field entirely from the system.
Deactivating an Old Milestone
Scenario: You have a COI Expiration Date Field (A) on your Summary Tab data, and a Milestone created specifically for that Date Field (B).
Solution: Deactivate old Summary Milestone; preserve existing Milestones so no current COI Expiration dates are missed; create a new Document Attribute Milestone specifically for COI Documents.
Steps:
- Go to Company Admin --> Contract Administration --> Automatic Milestone Rule Administration, and select the Milestone you want to deactivate.
- At the bottom of the configuration options, simply uncheck the Active box and Update the Rule.
- You'll then receive a warning message asking if you want to Delete any existing Milestones, that you'll want to select NO for. This will preserve any existing Milestones in your system, so the notifications from your Summary Data will still send out.
- Create a new Document Attribute Milestone for your COI Document Category. Detailed instructions on how to create them can be found HERE.
- Please keep in mind any Contract Type restrictions you had previously had on your Summary Date Milestone. When setting up the new Document Attribute Milestones, remember to check the Contract Type checkbox to only allow for the Document Attribute Milestones to be created on just the Types you want. OPTIONAL.
Conclusion: By completing those steps, your Users will now be able to add the Expiration date directly to the document itself upon entry instead of needing to add the date to a Summary Tab field on all new Contracts. By keeping the old Milestone Notifications in the system however, it allows any old Contracts to still send out those alerts, but then when your Assigned Users come in to review the expiring document, they will be able to use the new and improved method when they upload the renewed or revised document.
Next Steps: Deactivating the old Summary Date Field so that Users aren't confused by seeing two places to enter a document expiration date.
Deactivating a Summary Date Field
Scenario: You have enabled Document Attributes and created a Milestone specifically for your COI Documents. You have a Summary Date Field of COI Expiration Date (A), that you need to do something with to avoid confusion for your End-Users, because they will now be asked to enter an Expiration Date on the Document Upload page (B).
Solution: Deactivating the COI Expiration Date Field will allow any existing dates to stay on the summary tab, but when that Field is open for editing, or a new Contract is being entered, that Field will be locked out from entering any new data (C).
Steps:
- Go to Company Admin --> Contract Administration --> Contract Field Administration, and select the Date Field you want to deactivate.
- At the bottom of the options, uncheck the Active box and Save. You will NOT receive a warning message here.
- Now, when you either create a new Contract, or edit existing Field Groups that this Field is a part of, it will look like image (C) above, where the field is grayed out and cannot be adjusted or entered.
Conclusion: This will be the "bridge" stage where you will still need to hold onto some of the old data to ensure that previously uploaded documents do not miss their Expiration Date notifications. That means that any dates will still be visible and reportable in your system, but new Contracts and any reviewed/renewed documents that are uploaded will begin using the new Document Attribute Milestones.
Next Steps: Deleting the old Summary Date field entirely from UCM.
Deleting a Summary Date Field
Before deleting any Fields in UCM, you always want to run a back-up just to be safe. Instructions for how to back-up your system can be found HERE.
Scenario: You have completed the above steps, but are ready to go one step farther and remove the Field entirely from your system like it never existed.
Solution: The solution itself is simple, Delete the Field. However, we ONLY recommend deleting a Date Field for this reason AFTER all historically kept data and Milestones have been completed, and all new Document Expiration dates are being tracked by Document Attributes. You can run reports on either the Date Field specifically, to see any that are still upcoming in the future, or, run a Milestone specific report that will let you know of any outstanding or still upcoming Milestones for that Date Field.
Steps:
- Go to Company Admin --> Contract Administration --> Contract Field Administration, and find the Date Field you want to delete in the grid.
- From the grid itself, click the red/orange X to initiate the Delete process
- You'll receive a set of three separate pop-up confirmation messages to make sure that no deletion is done by accident. In the second pop-up window (2), you'll get a list of everywhere in your system that the Field is still being used. You can use this as a last way to validate that you are ready to delete permanently.
- After the final warning is given (3) and you click Continue Deletion the Field will be deleted, and will no longer be in your system.
Conclusion: Now that the Field is gone entirely, the only place that a User would ever see a Document Expiration date is on the Document itself or any reports. This will help to clean up the Summary Tab by keeping that information more specific to just the Container itself, and now, whenever there is a question about a document, all the information surrounding Effective dates, Expiration dates, and reminders, are all stored in together.
If you have any questions or concerns about the steps above, please contact UCM Support.