Monax User Guide

Getting Started

Creating an account

Right now, Monax is in the Beta release stage of our platform. Because of that we only have a handful of slots available for users so that we can ensure your experience will always go above and beyond. If you’re interested in joining our Beta Membership program we’d love to hear from you! Please don’t hesitate to contact us here: [email protected].

Once approved, we’ll onboard your entire team and start transforming your contracts.

Creating an organization

To get you started, Monax will create your Organization. Within your organization you can add Teams and Members with ease. Once you define your Teams you can create specific Templates and Agreements that will only be accessible to them. To learn more about your teams and members please review this section.

Getting Oriented on Monax

This section provides an overview of the main pages within the platform. Each topic will cover how to find everything and that page’s core functionality.

Dashboard

In the overview section, we can see the whole ecosystem of our agreements. From the dashboard we can track our tasks, agreements and the productivity of the team.

On the left you have your Obligations List, this is where you can track any tasks you need to complete. You can expect to see any signing, renewal or approval tasks to populate there and on the top right we can filter these tasks by teams.

On the top right, you have the Agreement Progress widget. There we can track what agreements have been completed or are still active on a Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual basis. We can drill down specific filters to track the workloads of specific teams. In the video below, we’ll show you how Tradefuse’s utilizes it to track how many agreements the Sales team has expiring this quarter.

Agreements

From the Agreements Page we can find any agreement we’ve created or that has been sent to us. Think of it as an inbox of your agreements. We can view each agreement by clicking the title, or perform a more advanced action by clicking the arrow button on the far right, highlighted in the video below.

• Any agreement with the bell icon has an action to be completed.
• Quickly check what status your agreement is in: Active, In Progress, Pending, Completed or Canceled.
• Review who’s action is required in the Waiting For column. Your organization will always be in the Monax blue.

Templates

From the Templates Page we can find any template we’ve created or that has been assign to our team. Every template we see here can be used to create an agreement from. To learn more about the templates page please watch the video below:

Drafts

From the Drafts Page we can find any template or agreement that we’ve saved as a draft. These are agreement and templates that need a bit more refinement or internal review before publishing or sending. To learn more about the drafts page please watch the video below:

Account Settings

From our Settings page, users can quickly update their personal information, review what team they belong to, inspect their roles and decide what language they’d like the platform to render in. To learn more about your account settings page please watch the video below:

Agreement Record

Our Agreement Record pages are the living copy of your agreements. From this page we can review the details of agreements, including: the prose, parties, key dates, milestones, terms, and obligations. These pages also provide the path for us to complete obligations related to those agreements, such as signing or renewals. To learn more about your agreement record pages please watch the video below:

• Enter the agreement record by clicking the title of any of your agreements

• Update the title at any time for your convience

• View your documents or add new ones by click the “View your documents” button

• Adjust the view of your document with the button on the bottom right of the document. Enter full screen mode by click the “Expand” Icon, it looks like this:

  

• Review your parties on the right, where you have the option to update your representative if needed.

• Review key dates via the Dates panel, by clicking the calendar icon on the right.

• Review key terms via the terms panel, toggle between terms defined by you and your counter party.

• Lastly, you can review obligations where you can see any upcoming, or completed Obligations. You can click into any signature obligation and see your our your counter parties signature. Additionally you can add additional obligations like a reminder or notices throughout the lifecycle of the contract through the “Create Obligation” panel. Once create we can track the progress in the “Upcoming Obligations” panel.

Organization Management

This section provides an overview on how to get your organization and teams setup on Monax. We’ll go over topics such as, creating a team, inviting team members and assigning user roles. These features are only available to users who are admins.

Adding and Managing Teams

Teams allow you to organize your users and the assets they can use on Monax. In this section we’ll review how to create a team, and add users. If you’re looking how to assign a template or agreement to a team please review this section:

Adding Teams

The way we can add teams on Monax is quite straight forward. If we navigate to the Organization page and enter the “Configure your Organization Tab” we can follow these three steps to create a team.

Step 1: Click the blue “Add Team” button at the bottom of your teams list. (outlined in the Image Below)

The Add Team button is represented in the blue box above

Step 2: By clicking the add team button a new blank team should show up. Provide a Team name.

Step 3: Click save in the top right corner to confirm your team.

The Save Button can be found on the top right of the screen.

Adding and Removing Users from a Team

We can easily add users to a team by dragging and dropping them into the appropriate team.

Once we move users to the appropriate teams be sure to click the blue Save button in the top right corner to persist those changes.

Similarly we can remove a user from a team by hovering over their icon in the team card and click the gray X button. Again, making sure to click the blue save button at the end.

For a quick overview of those steps please watch the following video:

Inviting and Uninviting Users from your Organization

Managing your users on Monax call all be done from the Manage Members tab on the Organization Page. Below we’ve provided a quick video on how to add or remove users from your Organization and a quick write up as well.

Inviting Members

Inviting your team to Monax can be done in just a few clicks. From the organization page we can navigate to the “Manage Members” tab and find a list of our team members’ email addresses. We can easily add another user by inputting a user’s email into the input on the bottom and clicking the “Add Team Member” button.

Removing Members

From the same page we can quickly deinvite a user by clicking the “Cancel” button on the top right of their email address.

Resend Invitation

If someone has lost their invite or is slow to respond we can quick send a new invite by clicking the “Resend” button on the top right.

Deleting a User from your organization

We can quickly remove users from our organization by clicking the gray X next to their name on the “Configure Your Organization” Panel. Below is a screen shot highlighting the X. Once we click delete ensure you click the save button on the top right to secure those changes.

Assigning User Roles

Your user can have be assigned any of these 3 user types:

User Types

Admin - Can create agreements and templates on behalf of all teams, create teams, invite users, manage user roles, assign signing authority and manage permissions.

Standard - Can create and approve agreements and templates on behalf of their team within the platform.

Restricted - Can read agreements and templates assigned to their team, can create agreements from templates assigned to their team.

We can easily assign and update a user’s role from the User’s list on the Configure Organization tab in our Organization page. Next to each user’s name is a user type dropdown, from there we can easily toggle a users role. Once we’ve made the necessary updates to our user’s role, make sure to click the blue save button in the top right. The video below will provide an in-depth overview of the actions listed above:

Assigning Signing Authority

Any type of user can be assigned signing authority on Monax. With this designation that user will be granted the capability to complete any signing tasks on behalf of the organization. This traditionally is reserved for senior members within the organization who have legal authorization to sign documents.

The video below shows how you can navigate to your “Assign Signing Authority” tab from the organization page and quickly remove or add signing authority by clicking the button next to the user’s name:

Creating Assets on Monax

This section will equip you with all the tools necessary to create anything on Monax.

Format your documents for Monax

To fully leverage documents on Monax we’ve created a formatting language to help our platform recognize critical information in your .docx files. The following section will highlight how to leverage that language to add Terms, Parties, Dates and Signatures to your agreement.

Adding Terms:

To highlight a key term in our document we must apply two {'s on either side of the term, like this: {{term}}. The video below highlights an example of how to do that within the text editor of your choice:

Formatting:

Once formatted here’s where you can expect to find the terms when you uploaded the document during template or agreement creation:

Uploading Template:

Uploading Agreement:

Steps to adding Key Terms:

1. Find a word you’d like to turn into a flexible term.
2. Wrap the term with two { like so: {{term}}
3. Repeat until you’ve formatted all the terms you’d like Monax to recognize.
4. Upload document during Agreement or Template creation.
5. Define your parties, we can leverage the key terms we’ve defined here, like Supplier or Buyer if it makes sense.
6. Navigate to the Terms panel.
7. Assign the terms to either party.
8. If we know what the values of the terms should be for the template or agreement, populate them now and find them in the agreement. They will now have those values in their place.

Adding Parties:

To highlight parties in our document we can mimic the same pattern for terms, by adding two { ‘s to either side of the party name, like this: {{party name}} . The video below highlights an example of how to do that within the text editor of your choice:

Formatting:

Once formatted we can upload the document during agreement or template creation and create a connection between the highlight term and the parties defined on our template. The videos below outlines where you can do that during template and agreement creation,

Uploading Template:

Uploading Agreement:

Steps to adding Parties:

1. Find a word you’d like to define as a party.
2. Wrap the party with two { like so: {{party}}
3. Repeat until you’ve formatted all the parties you’d like Monax to recognize.
4. Upload document during Agreement or Template creation.
5. Navigate to the Parties tab (it’s the default starting tab).
6. For Templates: Add a party, or using your default, click the “How do you label this party in your document?” dropdown and assign that party the term you’ve highlighted. Repeat for all applicable parties.
7. For Agreements: On each party section, click the “Link to Key Term” dropdown and select the term you’ve highlighted for that party. Repeat this process for all applicable parties.

Adding Dates:

For dates, the Monax templating software recognizes two specific dates: Agreement Effective Date, and Agreement Expiration Date. In order to define them in our agreements we’ll rely on our “curly brackets” { but this time the text we will surround will either be Agreement Effective Date or Agreement Expiration date, like so: {{Agreement Effective Date}} {{Agreement Expiration Date}} . Please watch the video below to see how we can format these int he document:

Formatting:

Once formatted, the Monax software will populate either of these dates when they are defined within the agreement. Below is a quick video about how we can use the formatted document during template or agreement and how the dates will be populated when defined.

Uploading:

Steps to adding Effective Date:

1. Find where you’d like to include your effective date in your document.
2. Add {{Agreement Effective Date}}
3. Save Document
4. Upload document during Agreement Create Flow
5. Define Effective Date as effective on signing or a fixed date.
6. If you set the Effective Date, view the agreement for your effective date. If you choose on Signing wait for your agreement to be signed for it to be defined.

Steps to adding Expiration Date:

1. Find where you’d like to include your effective date in your document.
2. Add {{Agreement Expiration Date}}
3. Save Document
4. Upload document during Agreement Create Flow
5. Define Expiration Date as relative or a fixed date.
6. If you set the effective date to be a fixed date view the agreement for your effective date. If you choose relative to signing wait for your agreement to be signed for it to be defined.

Adding Signers and Signatures

To add signers to a document we first must add a Party. By defining a party within our document, it will allow us to leverage it so that who every signs the agreement on behalf of the party we can pull their information and populate it in the agreement. For example, if Tradefuse is defined as the party on our agreement and Evelyn Padilla signs for them, we can leverage the Monax templating language to pull Evelyn’s name, date of signature and e-signature straight into the document. To target these fields we can use “dot syntax”. For example, if our Tradefuse was defined as the Supplier in the agreement we can pull the Supplier’s signing information like so:

Name of Signer = Supplier.name

Date of Signing = Supplier.date

Signature = Supplier.signature

The first video below will highlight how we can leverage this syntax in a document, and the second illustrates how we can upload that document, create an agreement and view the fields once the agreement is signed.

Formatting:

How they Populate:

Steps to Adding a Signature:

1. Define a party in your agreement using the steps highlighted in the Parties Section.
2. Scroll to the bottom of your agreement where you plan to have signatures.
3. Use the dot notation to add the Party’s signer’s name, date of signature or signature in this section.
4. Save the document.
5. Upload to Monax
6. During Agreement or Template creation assign the party you’ve defined to your team or a counter party to the agreement.
7. Create and sign the agreement to view how your name, date and signature populate in the agreement.

Upload a previously Signed Agreement

Monax is focused on growing your future and a part of that is bringing your old agreements up to speed. Follow the step by step guide below and learn how to get all your agreements on Monax.

Storing and tracking legacy agreements take 10 easy steps:

1. Upload PDF document
2. Define your parties. For legacy documents if your goal is just to keep your internal team informed we recommend leaving your counter party blank, but if you need to send reminders or obligations to your counter party please add them as a party..
3. Mark no E-Signatures required.
4. Define the Team that should manage this agreement
5. Provide a Beginning Date and Ending Date
6. Add any Renewals or Additional Key Milestones
7. Add any custom Key Terms for internal Tracking
8. Add any custom Obligations such as Reminders, or Notices.
9. Publish for tracking.

Creating a Template on Monax

In this section we’ll review how you can turn a formatted document into a reusable template. We’ll break it down into the seven easy step’s we can take to create a template.

Step 1: Upload your Document and Assign Permissions

The foundation of any asset on Monax is the document it’s attached to. When we click the create template button on the Templates Screen we’re immediately asked to upload a document. We have the option to upload a docx, pdf or markdown file here, but in order to maximize Monax’s templating language, discussed in our formatting documents, section we must use docx format.

Once we follow the upload instructions and click Next, in the top right corner, we’ll be prompted to assign this template to a team. Whichever team we assign this to will have access to create agreements from it. No other teams will have this privilege.

Additionally, we’ll be asked to default an approver as well. The person we elect as the approver will have the opportunity to reject or approve any agreement that is then created from this template. This is completely optional but is a nice safeguard and can accommodate multiple workflows.

Once that’s all configure we can click the next button on the top right and begin editing our Parties, Dates, Terms and Obligations.

Step 2: Assign a Title

Before moving to some of the more important panels we can quickly add a title to this template. Directly above our document there should be something that looks like the image below:

If you click on the text that reads Eg. Independent Contractor Agreement you can populate any title you’d like. We recommend leading with Template - and then the agreement title, resulting in a template title: Template - Independent Contractor Agreement .

Step 3: Adding Parties

By default, every creation screen starts on the parties panel and as part of this default your organization is set to a party. At first it will look like this:

From here we can begin connecting our parties to the prose in our document. By clicking on the How do you label this party in your document(s)? input we’ll reveal a drop down of any terms we’ve highlighted in our agreement. We can then select one to connect to this party and it will auto populate and instance in our document. In this case, we’ve chosen Tradefuse to be the Supplier.

Once our party is squared away we can repeat this bottom bellow by clicking the Add Party Button and defining how that party should be labeled in the agreement. Once that’s completed we can check a few last items:

1. Leave the counterparty’s Organization field blank so that when a user creates an agreement from this template they can customize their counter party.
2. Make sure each party’s eSign input is set to Yes if you want them to sign.
3. Double check that your Party’s Team field is populated in order to ensure the proper internal users have access to it.

Step 4: Adding Dates

From the Monax dates panel we can achieve several goals. We can assign the effective and expiration date, the option to renewal or any other milestones we may need to track.

Effective and Expiration Dates

By default our effective dates are set to effective on signing, as illustrated by the screenshot below.

However, if we would like our template users to set a fixed start date, we can toggle the effective on signing marker and leave the Begins Calendar blank for them to populate as they create an agreement. It will look like the screenshot below.

In terms of the End date, we have three options: Fixed, Relative or None. To set no expiration date all we have to do is check the box as illustrated below:

In order to allow template users to set a fixed date we just need the top input to be set to fixed and either populate a set date below or leave it blank.

Step 5: Adding Key Terms

Step 6: Adding Obligations

Step 7: Publishing the template

Lastly, we can click through our tabs and review our template. Making sure that everything aligns with our business needs. Once completed we can click the big blue Publish button on the top right saving our template and providing our designate team access to create agreements from it.

Creating an Agreement from a template on Monax

Once we have templates populated on the platform it’s a breeze to start converting them into agreements. Since our agreement needs have been defined on the template level all we need to do is populate the fields and send for signing. The video below walks through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve this:

Approving an Agreement

As a senior member of an organization there are many work flows where we’d like to review agreements before it’s sent to a counter party. Monax helps streamline this process by allowing agreement creators to assign an approve to their agreements. If you’re assigned as an approver, you’ll receive an email, and a notification on Monax to complete an approval. Additionally, any agreements on your agreement page in the state “Pending” and have a bell icon on them are ready for approval. The video below displays how an individual can find and complete a renewal.

While reviewing, we can edit any terms by clicking the edit button above each term. Once completed, we’ll see our agreement at the top of our agreements page with it’s status set to IN PROGRESS.

Creating an Agreement on Monax

Creating an agreement on Monax can be achieve in a few quick steps. For context, we’re going to upload a formatted document, if you’re not sure how to format your documents please review the section above.

To create an agreement well follow these 7 steps:

1. Upload a document

   • The foundation of any asset on Monax is the document it’s attached to. When we click the create agreement button we are immediately prompted to upload a document. We have the option to upload a docx, pdf or markdown file here, but in order to maximize Monax’s templating language, discussed in our formatting documents section, we must use docx format. Once we follow the upload instructions and click Next, in the top right corner, we’ll enter the parties screen.

2. Define Parties

   • On our parties screen, we can decide who should be involved with this agreement. On the left, we’ll see our internal team defaulted as a party. There we can decide who should serve as the representative of the agreement and who should approve it. Additionally we have the option to turn off E-signing if that is necessary.
   • On our right, we can add counter parties to this agreement. We can toggle between company or individuals and we can begin to type in our counter parties accordingly. If we’ve created or signed an agreement before, any counter party we’ve worked with will be available as part of our address book.

3. Provide a Title

   • As we navigate to our agreements page, we can quickly navigate to the top left and provide a title for our document.

4. Review our Parties

   • On our right we can see the parties we’ve predefined. If we’d like we can take some time here to link our parties to any key terms we’ve defined previously. In the video we’ve provided, we can see from the Link to Key Term drop down we can assign our parties to any key terms we’ve predefined. In doing so, we can see that our party’s name can be populated throughout the document.

5. Define Key Dates

   • Once our parties are good we can navigate to our key dates panel using the navigation tabs on the right. There we can define when our agreement should start and end or if a renewal or any additional key dates are required.
   • Effective Date: For our start date, we can either predefine it, using our date selector ensuring that our agreement will start on that specified date or we can set the agreement as effective on signing. Meaning that as soon as both parties sign this agreement will become active.
   • Expiration Date: For our expiration date, we can set it in three ways. We can say that the agreement should never expire, like an employee contract. We can set it to a fixed date, like July 10th, 2021. Or we can set it to relative to our start date, such as 1 year after the effective date.
   • Renewals: In order to add a renewal, one must ensure there is an expiration date. Once the expiration date is set we can define a renewal by selecting which party should renew, setting a specific window for them to complete the renewal, ie. 10-20 days before expiration and finally the duration of the renewal, ie. this agreement will renewal for 12 months.
   • Milestones: Lastly, we can add specific milestones that represent important contract dates that extend beyond the start or expiration date. For example, in a Supplier Agreement there may be a delivery date or payment date that needs to be defined. We can easily leverage milestones to make those as flexible and responsive as possible. In this case we can make a milestone fixed or relative as well as deciding if it should be a reoccurring event. We can set any milestone to repeat by assigning it a value from the “Does it repeat?” dropdown.

6. Define Key Terms

   • From our terms page we’ll be able to assign terms to ourselves or our counter parties. If we formatted our document using Monax’s templating language, we can see that any key terms we’ve defined are shown when we click the Add Key Term Button. We’ll also see the option to “Add Custom Term”.
   • When we select our term or add a new one we will have the option to define it there. On any Key Term we can see predefined options to select from via the “Add Option” functionality or we can define a key term by inputing in the value field.
   • We can also define the type of key term by utilizing the “Type” dropdown. From there we can elect to make the key term a Text (short or long), Number or Boolean (Yes/No).
   • Additionally, we can quickly assign this key term to ourselves or our counter party via the “Assign To” dropdown.
   • Lastly, there are times when we want our key terms to remain private, so that our counter party cannot view them. An example would be a customer’s ID for internal tracking. In such instances we can toggle the Visibility by clicking the “Visible to all” button on the top right.
   • Once we’ve set up our key terms we can toggle to our counter parties tab and view or add any key terms they must define. Wen assigning a key term to a counter party the added functionality we gain is the ability to frame the key term as a question. This ensures that the individual receiving the document will be prompted with a question versus a generic key term. For example, if we need a counter party’s delivery address, rather than providing them a form that reads “Delivery Address” we can replace that with a question such as “What is your delivery address?” to make the filling out of key terms more streamlined for your counter parties.

7. Add an Obligation, a reminder

Managing Assets on Monax

Agreements List Screen

The agreements list screen allows you to quickly search for specific agreements. It allows for field based and fuzzy searching in the prominent search bar at the top of the screen.

Fuzzy searching means you can put in part of a word and that will match against the title of agreements. In addition, field based searching allows you to search for agreements based on specific criteria you establish. This criteria may be added together into a long search with each additional field narrowing the search further.

You can use the following fields to search:

• title: the title field is the default field, but you can also use it in complex queries. Example: title:NDA will retrieve all of your agreements with the text NDA in the title. Not if you only wanted to search for the title field then you do not need to add title into the search bar. Just add what you are searching for.
• team: the team field will retrieve all of your agreements for a specific team. Example: if you would like to retrieve all of your agreements made under the Sales team then you would add team:Sales to the search bar.
• status: the status field will retrieve all of your agreements that are in a specific status (this can be found in the colored tabs used on the screen). Example: if you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that are in the Canceled state you would add status:canceled to the search bar.
• effective the effective field will retrieve all of your agreements that became effective before (or after) a certain date. Example: if you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that were effective before 2021 started you would add effective<January 1, 2021 to the search bar. If you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that were effective after 2021 started you would add effective>January 1, 2021 to the search bar. One point of note is that dates fields searching is inclusive. Meaning that >January 1, 2021 will also include January 1.
• expiration the expiration field will retrieve all of your agreements that have or will expire before (or after) a certain date. Example: if you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that expired before 2021 started you would add expiration<January 1, 2021 to the search bar. If you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that expired after 2021 started you would add expiration>January 1, 2021 to the search bar. One point of note is that dates fields searching is inclusive. Meaning that >January 1, 2021 will also include January 1.
• renewal the renewal field will retrieve all of your agreements that have or will renew before (or after) a certain date. Example: if you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that renewed before 2021 started you would add renewal<January 1, 2021 to the search bar. If you would like to retrieve all of your agreements that will renew after 2021 started you would add renewal>January 1, 2021 to the search bar. One point of note is that dates fields searching is inclusive. Meaning that >January 1, 2021 will also include January 1.

Managing Events on Monax

Monax is an extremely event driven system. Most everything users do or are able to do raises events within the Platform. These events are extremely useful in that they can be leveraged by users to command and control their other business systems. Using the events system, users can direct messages to key members of their team or counterparty representatives.

Event Subscribers

Any single user may select a set of events they wish to be notified of as well as how they would like to be notified. These subscriptions help those that are on the receiving end of an event to be notified when and how they so choose.

Sender Policies

In addition to event subscriptions which apply to individual users and allow them to “route” messages to the messaging system of their choice, Monax also allow organization administrators to set up what are called “sender policies”. These policies are broken down into: distribution lists and integrations, and the management of these policies is only available to organization administrators.

Administrators may setup policies to send any event to a predefined set of users over email or other messaging system, these emails may be completely customized or they will use the Monax default email templates and branding. Administrators may customize recipients, email template, branding, recipients, and message subject on each distribution list.

Administrators may also setup policies to send any event to an API or service via a webhook framework. Such integrations allow administrators complete control over how they interconnect their digital agreements on Monax with other business systems. Integrations may be completely customized including: destination URL, authentication, and integration JSON template to POST to the destination.

Policies are additive and as many as are needed may be used by administrators; meaning administrators could set up 50 policies on one event and 0 on the remaining event. Each policy also allows administrators even more control over messages or integrations that leave the Monax Platform to destinations via a filtering system. The filtering system allows administrators to set up, as an example, emails that only go out on a particular event when the name of the agreement includes “NDA”, or emails that are very particular and only go out when something happens on a particular agreement with a specific ID.

Distribution Lists

Distribution Lists are built to enable administrators to predefine a set of recipients that should receive messages upon the happening of specific events such as a new agreement becoming created or an obligation completed. Distribution lists use the following fields that are filled out by users.

[TODO: video]

Each distribution list allows users complete control over they messages they send including the subject line of the email and the body of the email that goes out. This means that users may add their own branding, styles, and voice to messages that go out on the organization’s behalf.

Templates uploaded to the Monax Platform must be a JSON file with the following structure:

{
	"meta": {
			"subject": "MY SUBJECT",
			"name": "Template Name",
		},
	"body": "<body><p>YOUR TEMPLATE</p></body>"
}

Both the subject and the body are able to leverage handlebars template system and will have all the information available to the EventPayload object [TODO: link to this payload from docs]. There are some additional niceties to be considered.

• If you would like to modify any of the emails which invite new users onto the platform then you can also allow them to register in any of the specific languages that Monax supports. To do this, onto the performanceURL you will add &locale=es-ES (or whatever i18n language code you desire and Monax supports).