Collaborating on contracts (comments & suggestions)

Contents 🚀

Introduction
Commenting on a contract
Redlining on a contract
Disabling commenting and suggesting for external users

Introduction 👋

Smooth collaboration is at the heart of a good contract flow, so having the tools to enable this is essential.

In Juro, internal and external stakeholders can use the commenting and redlining ('suggestions') functions to facilitate discussion about key areas of a contract.

💡 NOTE: Adding comments and redlines before signing is a different process from Juro's Negotiation Flow.

For more information on this, you can read our dedicated article.

Commenting on a contract 💬

The COMMENTS function can be used in cases where direct edits to the contract text are not required, but users still want to ask questions, clarify or sign off on certain sections.

To give optimal flexibility, you can leave comments for both internal and external users in the relevant sections. In the INTERNAL COMMENTS tab, only Juro users with access to your workspace can add and see comments. The EXTERNAL COMMENTS tab is for interacting with your counterparty and for them to interact with you. Comments left in this section can be seen by anyone who accesses the contract even if they do not have a Juro profile.

💡 NOTE: Comments added to the EXTERNAL COMMENTS section can be seen by all external users with access to the contract. This includes comments left by internal users in this section and ones that have been resolved.

During the contract drafting process, we recommend leaving sensitive or private comments in the INTERNAL COMMENTS sections.

Internal comments 🌖

Any user in your workspace can leave comments in the INTERNAL COMMENTS section. These can seen by other internal users with access to the workspace where the contract is stored.

To add an internal comment:

1. Click the Internal Comments icon

2. Type your comment at the bottom of the INTERNAL COMMENTS tab.

You can tag an internal user by typing @ and then their user name or email (e.g. @Jimmy Mooring, or @jimmy@juro.com).

3. To add a comment to a specific part of the text, highlight the text on the editor and select the Add comment icon in the formatting bar.

4. Toggle the comment switcher to INTERNAL, type your comment and press Enter to save it.

Alternatively, you can hover your pointer over a comment in the INTERNAL COMMENTS sidebar, click and hold the 6 dots that appear to the left of the comment, and drag and drop the comment onto the relevant portion of text.

External comments 🌘

In certain cases, you or a counterparty may want to discuss parts of the contract before signing it: this can be done in the EXTERNAL COMMENTS section.

External comments can be made by any user (internal or external) once the Comment & Suggest option is enabled for their access link.

By default, this is enabled for both the counterparty's signing link and the reviewers link. To learn how to turn this off, click here.

To add an external comment:

1. Click the External Comments icon.

2. At the bottom of the EXTERNAL COMMENTS tab, type your comment.

3. To add a comment to a specific part of the text, highlight the text on the editor and select the Add comment icon in the formatting bar.

Alternatively, you can hover your pointer over a comment in the EXTERNAL COMMENTS sidebar, click and hold the 6 dots that appear to the left of the comment, and drag and drop the comment onto the relevant portion of text.

4. Toggle the comment switcher to EXTERNAL, type your comment and press Enter to save it.

You can also navigate to the portion of text that a comment has been assigned to (where relevant) by selecting the hyperlink symbol next to the comment. This will appear when a comment has been added to a specific portion of text.

Certain users will also receive notifications by email when a comment is added.

💡 NOTE: It is not possible to assign a comment to a specific part of a document uploaded from a PDF file.

To resolve a comment:

Click the Resolve icon: this will appear when you hover over the comment.

Importing & exporting comments ⬆️ ⬇️

Comments added to the EXTERNAL COMMENTS section of your contract will be included as comments in Word exports of that document.

In Juro	In Microsoft Word

Comments added directly to the Word file offline, as well as replies to comments, will be

automatically detected upon upload and added to your Juro contract.

The commenter's name will be attached to their comment, as will the time and date that the comment was originally added to the Word file. Juro will also detect new comments, and updates made to existing comments offline, and give you the option of which ones you'd like to import back into Juro.

💡 NOTE: As comments added to the INTERNAL COMMENTS section often contain sensitive information specific to your organisation, these do not export with Word downloads from Juro.

Deleting comments 🗑️

To delete a comment that's been left:

1. Hover your mouse point over the relevant comment and click the 3 dots that appear.

2. Click Delete.

3. In the prompt window that appears, click Yes, delete.

This will remove the comment from the document.

Redlining on a contract✏️

As soon as a contract or template is created, you can start making redlines to be reviewed by another party, internal or external.

💡 NOTE: All redlines made will appear in the EXTERNAL COMMENTS section. Like external comments, these can be seen by users outside of your organisation.

If you're adding redlines to collaborate with your teammates on a new template, you can duplicate the original template once you've completed this process; this will remove comments from the new version.

During the contract drafting process, it should be noted by all users that internal redlines will be visible to external users once they access the contract.

To add redlines to your contract or template:

1. Click the redlining icon to the right of the document's title.

Clicking this button again after enablement will disable the redlining functionality.

2. Make suggested additions by typing your text, and suggested deletes by highlighting the text and pressing backspace.

3. Each edit will appear in the EXTERNAL COMMENTS section, where you and external users have the choice to:

accept it: this will incorporate the redline into the document
reject it: the redline will be removed and no changes made to the document
reply to it: if the redline requires further discussion, a thread can be created for easy reference to the specific redline.

You can add as many redlines as needed before sending the contract for review or signature by another party. If the Comment & Suggest option is enabled on your contract, they will be able to add redlines of their own.

💡 NOTE: External users cannot accept or reject redlines on a contract; only an internal user can action this. We recommend that external users indicate their acceptance of any changes in a thread on the original suggestion.

Internal users can delete redlines from the comments sections at any time by accepting/rejecting the redline and clicking the Delete icon that appears in the comment bubble.

Tracked changes added directly to a Word file offline, as well as replies to these, will be automatically detected upon upload and added as redlines to your Juro contract.

The name of the user that made the changes will be attached to their redline, as will the time and date that the comment was originally added to the Word file. Juro will also detect new redlines, and updates made to existing comments offline, and give you the option of which ones you'd like to import back into Juro.

Disabling commenting and redlining for external parties 🚫

If you'd prefer to remove commenting permissions for an external party, this is very easy to do at either the template or contract level:

1. In your template or individual contract, open the Document Members tab.

2. Click Can Sign + next to the SIGNATORIES heading and uncheck the Comment & Suggest box.

Commenting will now be disabled for any user accessing the contract through the external signing link. If you would like to disable commenting for those accessing using the reviewers link, you can repeat Step 2 above under the REVIEWERS heading.

💁‍♀️ As always, our Support Team is happy to help you with anything further if needed. Start a chat with us right here by clicking the Intercom button in the bottom-right-hand corner of this page.

Alternatively, you can email your query to support@juro.com 🚀