User Guides

On the overview screen of most objects, there are some standard action buttons to let you perform updates and track changes. Additional actions are available when the Thomson connector has been enabled. 

Standard actions

1. Edit
   To edit an object, click the "Edit" button. To validate and save the change, click "Save".
   
   
2. Assign To
   Assign an object to another system user or owner as needed. To assign an object, click the "Assign To" button in the toolbar of the object's Overview screen. The application will display a Choose Page where you can select the new owner and enter comments for the notification email that will be sent to the new owner.

   

   When you assign an object to a new owner, the system will automatically notify that user via email. When an object that you own is assigned to another user, the system will automatically notify you via email. When you assign any object to another user, you no longer own that item, so it will no longer appear on your home page.

If the object is restricted and you have not been added to the Authorization list for that object, once you assign it to another owner you will no longer have access to it. So don't forget to add yourself to the Authorization list of a restricted object before reassigning it!

3. Run Report
   This feature is only applicable for companies who purchase Inova custom reports.
   
   
4. Audit Log
   The Audit Log lists of all additions, modifications, and deletions made to that record or object. The Audit Log also stores the name of the user who made the modification and whether or not the change was made by the user or the user's deputy. Each change is listed with the date, the old and new values of the fields, and the name of the user who made the change.

   You can filter the audit log by time scale, the user who made the change, and the object type. It also helps identify whether a change was made by a user or her deputy. 

Within the audit log is an additional feature called Snapshots. A snapshot captures all the overview details of an object plus its linked documents, emails, and activities. Snapshots are created automatically for an object when it is created, archived, or deleted, but a user can manually create an snapshot at any time.

5. Watch it
   To receive alerts about changes to your projects and other objects, use "Watch It". Every 24 hours, the system checks all the objects that you are watching. If any of them have been updated in the last 24 hours, the system will send you a notification by email that contains links to the overview screen and audit log of each modified object.
   
   The types of changes that trigger a "Watch It" notification are:
   • Updates to any of the fields in the Overview section, such as Product Name, Owner or Status.
   • Creation of a new link between another main business object and the watched object, e.g. when another user links an asset to an in-licensing project you are watching.
   • Creation of a new link between the watched object and an object it contains,  e.g. when another user attaches an email to an alliance that you are watching.
   • Deletion of a link between the object you are watching and any other object it's linked to, e.g. when another user deletes a contact from the Contacts portlet of a patent you are watching.

   When you are watching an object, instead of "Watch It", the button label will say "Stop Watching".

   
   

   To stop watching an object, click "Stop Watching". You can stop watching multiple object in one go from your "Watched Objects" list, available via the main menu.

   
   
   
   

   A few limitations on watching objects:

   • The "Watch It" feature is available to read-only and read-write users only for business objects in the modules they have access to.
   • Your ability to watch certain objects can change based upon whether the owner of an object decides to restrict access to it. If the owner restricts the object but doesn't add you to the authorization list, you cannot see the object at all, let alone receive notifications about it. Contact your application administrator for details.
   • You will not receive a notification when you make changes to an object you are watching.
   • There is no way to see if an object is watched by another user.

6. Quick Create
   On some objects, "Quick Create" lets you quickly create a linked object while retaining important links to the object you are creating it from. For example, if you create an agreement from an in-licensing opportunity, the company and contacts linked to the opportunity will automatically be linked to the agreement. See the section "Quick Create" of this article for more details.
7. Archive
   An alternative to deleting an item is to archive it. Archiving a business object does not remove it from the system, but instead gives it an Archived status which you can use for filtering when configuring lists. Archived items cannot be edited.
   
   To un-archive an object and edit it, click "Un-Archive". The page will refresh and the status will change to Reopen.
8. Delete
   When you click "Delete", the system displays a confirmation message.
   You can't delete something that is linked to another object. For example, this in-licensing opportunity is linked to a meeting, asset and agreement. These links are displayed in the popup to allow the user to quickly access and unlink them.

If you attempt to delete an object and the message "The deletion was impossible because current user does not have right to delete the following dataobjects" appears, it most likely means that the object can only be deleted by its owner. If you need to delete an item and the owner is no longer a system user, contact your system administrator.

Deleting a object from the system cannot be undone. This is why in most cases, users do not delete objects, but archive them instead. This allows them to retain the full history of their interactions with other companies and refer back to that history at any time.

Thomson and Watch It

Every asset imported from Thomson Cortelis can be watched so that when Thomson updates an asset, it triggers the email sent to the watchers. This feature allows you to be automatically reminded when an asset's highest development phase is updated, for example, or a new indication is found. This can help you decide whether it's time to re-evaluate an opportunity that you put on hold or previously declined.

Connect to Thomson / Update from Thomson

When Thomson is enabled, a couple of action buttons will appear on the asset overview screen. The first, "Connect to Thomson", appears when you create an asset manually from the New Asset form. In most cases, the user will search and import the asset from Thomson using the lookup field. But if the lookup isn't available, he can always create the link later by clicking the "Connect to Thomson" button.

For assets that were imported from Thomson, the button is displayed as "Update from Thomson". This lets a user manually query Thomson and retrieve any new data on the matching record in Cortellis. Updates are highlighted with a red date in the updated field.

See the pages on Thomson Cortellis querying and asset creation with Thomson for details on Thomson-related features.

Activities help you track all the tasks that need to be executed and completed on a project or other object. You can assign an activity to another user and set a reminder for them to complete the task. Activities that a user creates or is linked to appear in the "My Activities" tab on their home page.

Activities can be created from:

1. The Activities tab of an object, as described below.
2. The Workflow tab of an object, as described in this page. 
3. By default, as defined in the administration module.

Note that it's recommended that you use the Workflow tab to manage your milestone and activity tracking. The Activities tab is available on most objects, but the Workflow tab provides better usability and other improvements that will make using the application easier and more efficient. 

Create an activity from the Activities tab

You can create an activity by going on a project or other object and clicking New Activity in the Activities tab.

The New Activity form appears:

1. The name allows the owner of the task to easily understand (and later remember) what the task is about. 
2. If you want to indicate that the task owner will need some help from other people, use Person(s) Associated. If you add other application users to the task as Person(s) Associated, the task will appear on their "My Activities" tab on the home page.
3. You can only assign an application user to a task. This person is responsible for either completing the task or making sure that the person supposed to complete it does so on time. This person should update the status of the activity when applicable. Until the task status is changed to Completed, the task will be displayed under both the creator's and the owner's home page on the "My Activities" tab.

As soon as you save the task, the system will send an email alert to the task assignee.

4. If you have many tasks to complete, Priority can help you track the most urgent ones.
5. The Status is automatically consistent with the Initiated Date and Complete Date. The Status could be either "Not Started" when there is no Initiated Date, "In Progress" when there is an Initiated Date, but not a Complete Date, and "Complete" when there is a Completed Date.
6. Select the appropriate Parent Milestone (see next section).
7. Use the Category to indicate which kind of task this is for reporting purposes.
8. Describe everything that needs to be done in this task.
9. Once the task is complete, there may be some further Action Items to execute.
10. The Initiated Date is the date that the activity is started.
11. The Due Date allows users to sort activities by due date directly on their homepage, in the My Activities tab. 
12. The Complete Date indicates that the task is competed. When completed, a task will disappear from the "My Activities" portlet.

 

13. Additionally, you can set up some reminders. Under Reminder Recipients (automatically pre-populated with your name), you can select the users who should receive a reminder. This reminder will be sent upon the completion of the task if the checkbox "On Completion" is checked, but most users use the date picker to select a specific date as a reminder that the task is NOT yet completed. 

14. You can also attach documents related to the execution and completion of the task.

Activities can also be used to trigger the scheduling of milestone payment or event due dates related to a contractual obligation. In this case, you must create the activity on the obligation's related agreement before selecting it as a triggering activity. Click here for details about obligations and here to learn about triggering activities.

Manage/Edit an activity

1. To edit an activity to change the due date or the content of some fields, click "Edit Activity". Note that if you try to remove a date while editing the activity, you will have to also update the status field for the change to be correctly saved.
2. You can archive an activity to filter it out from the lister view.
3. If you want to change the assigned person, click Assign To. An email about the change of ownership will be sent to both the previous and the new assignee.
4. You can delete an activity that is no longer valid for the project.

Associate an activity to a workflow stage

To learn more about tracking activities within the new workflow tab, check this section on Milestones.

Below we can see an example of an active project's workflow, with the Screening phase completed and the Due Diligence phase ongoing.

1. The "Triage Meeting" activity, belonging to the Screening milestone, has been completed.
2. The "Prepare CDA" activity, belonging to the Due Diligence milestone, is in progress. The user can click Complete and select the completed date for the milestone in the popup, indicated that the task has been completed and entering any related comments. 
3. The "Scientific Evaluation" activity, belonging to the Due Diligence milestone, has not yet started. For this milestone, the user can click Initiate once the task has started and is in progress. Doing so will automatically populate the Initiated Date with today's date.
4. The "Marketing Evaluation" activity, belonging to the Due Diligence milestone has not yet started. The user can click on Complete and select a date in the popup to indicate that this task has been completed. Doing so will automatically populate both the Initiated Date and the Complete Date with the date selected in the popup.

Default activities in the Workflow tab

In the new Workflow tab, default child activities are indicated with a special icon, as shown below:

Default child activities can be edited and reordered, but not deleted. 

The Deals and Alliance application includes advanced reporting features that allow users to generate dashboards in various formats, including funnel charts, bar charts, pie charts, tables, and heat maps. These reports can be exported to Excel or PowerPoint. In addition, a scheduling feature allows the users to receive reports on a regular basis via email. 

Dashboards are not populated with system data in real time, but by a connector that brings in the data on a daily basis. So when users add or update data in the system, they will only see the related modifications to the dashboards the following day.

With advanced reporting, a library of pre-configured reports are available in the application. These reports generally follow the standard configuration of the application. Click here for details. 

Access the Dashboards

In the main menu, click the Dashboards link.  

1. If the link is not displayed in the menu, the dashboards have not been activated. Contact your Inova administrator for details. 
2. To see a list of all the dashboards available to you, click All Dashboards. The dashboards are grouped by module. 

All dashboards can be filtered. To see filter options, click the Show Filters button. 

1. Filtering criteria are displayed in grey, as shown in the screenshot. Check the values you want to filter by. You can filter by multiple criteria at a time. 
2. Click Apply. The criteria will automatically be applied. To remove the filter, click Reset. 

 

 

Custom dashboards

If the standard dashboards do not meet your reporting needs, it is possible to create your own. To create dashboards, navigate to All Dashboards>Custom Dashboards. 

1. Select a tab where the dashboard will be placed. Tabs let you group and organize dashboards as you create them. 
2. Select the type of object you want to report on.

1. Click add chart.
2. Click the chart type.
3. Set the chart configurations. As you make your selections, the tool will automatically display a preview of the what the chart will look like. 
4. Click Save Dashboard. The chart will be displayed in the tab you selected. 

The following is a list of dashboards available in Advanced Reporting as of October 2017. Note that the reports below are based on the D&A standard configuration, but any dashboard can be adapted to fit your configuration needs. Also, additional use cases and metrics can be configured as per client requirements.

For any questions about these dashboards or about how Advanced Reporting works, contact your Customer Success Manager or Inova Support. 

Partnering Overview Dashboards

The Ongoing Opportunities chart presents the number of active or on hold opportunities (in-licensing projects) in the pipeline as of the current date. To be included in this pipeline, the project has to have at least one milestone initiated. 

Click on a milestone to be taken to the Time Spent in Phase chart for that milestone. In this chart, you will see all in-licensing opportunities currently in each milestone, as well as the number of days each project has been in that milestone.

In the example above, 

1. The user is considering all opportunities currently at the milestone called Business Case Presentation.
2. On average (since 1 year ago), it takes 115 days for an opportunity complete this phase
3. On average (since 1 year ago), a project that enters this phase is declined in 107 days 
4. Of all the in-licensing projects in the system, 6 are currently in this phase. 

You can also access this dashboard by navigating to All Dashboards>Opportunities Details.

Two different formats to illustrate the landscape of current opportunities being considered, grouped in different ways: Active Opportunities by Business Unit and Active Opportunities by Therapeutic Area and Development Phase. 

Note that each pie or bar section is also a filter. When you click on a section, the contents of all the reports on that page are filtered by that parameter.  

With the Alliances Overview, the alliance manager can have a view overall Alliance Management activity, review the number of active alliances, and identify the ones which are going to expire in any given quarter.

Operational Reporting 

Some reports can be used in internal operations of the company as they work on deals, have status meetings, and collaborate to meet contract deadlines. 

Going into a monthly meeting, a BD manager can prepare Opportunity One-Pager per project to show the details and status and check next steps. Such one-pagers can be distributed via email or printed before the meeting so that everyone can review the important elements, including the score (the score could be manually given or automatically based on some criteria (likelihood of success, strategic importance of the asset, size of the deal, etc).

Similar to a BD manager and the opportunity one-pager, an alliance manager can create an Alliance One-Pager to bring into a meting for discussion on the alliance status and next steps.

At a higher level, the Pipeline Evaluation dashboard us useful for yearly business development activity meetings, respecting the following roles:

• Head of BD - Shows number of projects completed per quarter or year.
• Departmental or Regional VP - Can know if they are on target regarding the objectives. If projects are mostly declined late in the process, could they be identified sooner, and if so, how?
• Individual Project Manager - Can ascertain how their opportunities performed and plan for doing better in the future.

Opportunities (in-licensing projects) appear in this chart if they are Active or On Hold and have at least one Initiated milestone.

You can filter this report by last or current month, quarter, or year in and analyse the results according to the key at right. In the above example, during the current year:

• 17 opportunities entered the initial screening phase
• 2 opportunities were declined during the business case presentation phase
• 1 opportunity was completed (deal signed). 

To display the list of projects that were declined or that initiated or completed a milestone during the selected date range. click on the respective number, as shown below:

 

Partnership Reporting 

As of version 6.0, a list of standard review templates is available. With Advance Reporting, the results of the Alliance Health Check review can be fed into a dashboard in a spider chart format, as shown in the example below:

 Mouseover text describes the internal and external average for a review criteria. 

Administrators manage review templates as of version 6.0. In order to include the responses of a review in a spider chart, the review administrator must remember to select response type 1-5 for each question. Additionally, in order for the criteria label to be represented correctly on the dashboard, it needs to be in quotes, e.g. "Culture". 

Alliance managers can also see how agreements they are working on stack up against one another in the Priority Graph. Agreements are scored using the Priority fields configured in the Agreement Overview. 

Alliance and BD Managers can use the Resource Optimization report to ensure that the right people are associated with the right projects, e.g. that a complex opportunity or alliance should not be assigned to a junior member of the team, to see who has bandwidth to work on additional projects and likewise see where resources are stretched too thin. 

Internal Compliance 

Compliance reports can help alert managers stay on top of outstanding tasks that may be hindering the completion of deals, identify internal issues with governance, and understand where licenses might need to be reallocated.

The Monthly Activity Summary is a report distributed via email to all user types, tracking project activities and current status. Recipients can easily check if the information is accurate and up to date for their projects and see at a glance if there are any upcoming tasks. 

Note: Reports distributed by email can also be shared outside the system to executives who do not use the system but need to stay aware of the team's activities and any issues putting deals at risk. 

To help with governance on projects or highlight issues that need special attention, the Health Status Alert can be a big help. It can flag projects with issues or of very high complexity, or be used to track incomplete / invalid projects (eg: identify missing information, or inconsistency between the steps announced and the data entered) for auditing purposes.  

 

Application administrators can access User Activity reports to track how well the application is used, both overall and per user. With these insights, the admin can identify groups not using the application as they should and the root causes, e.g. lack of training or complexity of configuration, and take corrective action, e.g. provide addition training or work with Inova to simplify the system and make it easier to use. 

 

The Agreements section allows the user to create and maintain all post-deal signature activities. This section is generally used by the Alliance Manager as a central repository of all activities related to the agreement in collaboration with the finance and legal teams. 

Create an agreement

1. Enter the name of the agreement. 
2. Link the company related to the agreement.

If you use the Quick Create option from an In-Licensing Opportunities, the company field will be prepopulated with the company linked to the opportunity.

3. Click the "Details" section and fill in the fields as needed.

4. Click the "Priority" section to display additional fields. These fields can be used prioritize agreements and allocate related resources. Fill in these fields as needed. 

Manage your agreement

Once the agreement is created, a number of additional features help centralize all agreement-related activities and communications: 

1. Financial obligations and related payments for defining each obligation and setting up related due date alerts
2. Payment summary for viewing payment information for all financial obligations associated with the agreement 
3. Non-financial obligations and related events
4. Manage activities, including triggering activities related to milestone payments
5. Governance bodies to manage steering committees on an alliance as well as their related tasks and documentation, and for peer matrix tracking (managing roles on an alliance)
6. Issue log to track all issues that need to be managed as part of meeting the contract obligations
7. Manage your contacts including the ones not in a governance body.
8. Standard features to store Documents and Emails
9. Reviews for asking colleagues for their opinions, to review information, and perform alliance health checks. 

Create an alliance

In some cases, when a relationship with another company involves multiple agreements, it can be useful to linked the various agreements together under a single Alliance. The Alliance object acts like a portfolio for all the agreements, gathering on one screen all the rollups of all the related obligations, activities, and payments associated with the different agreements.

To create an alliance, click the "New Alliance" button on the "Alliances" tab, populate the required fields, and click "Save". 

As with agreements, alliances include key features such as their own governance bodies, issue logs, documents, contacts, reviews, and notifications. 

Note that the alliance is generally used by companies with very advanced organization around alliance management. For smaller or simple organizations, it's possible to indicate a multiple-agreement alliance in the system by linking agreements to one another.

Also, it is possible to push an email to an agreement, but not an alliance.

Before you can push emails into the system, you need to install and configure the Outlook Add-in. Please refer to the add-in setup article for instructions.

The simplest and fastest way to push an email to the application is to use quick select. This feature lets you select the object you're pushing the email to by searching for it by name. All selected emails and their attachments will be pushed to the root folder of the object's document manager.

Note, however, that this method doesn't give you options such as pushing attachments into subfolders, nor does it allow you to create a new object in the same action. To use these advanced features, please refer to advanced push.

Quick select

1. Select one or more email(s) to push into the application
2. Go on the "Inova" ribbon and select the type of object you want to push to, then click "Quick select"
3. In the pop up, start typing the name of the object (an agreement, in the above example). It will search the application and present the results. Once you have found what you need, click "Link"

Note that after clicking on "Link", if the add-in detects that contacts linked to the email don't yet exist in the application, it will automatically display the Contact Push pop-up (if activated in the settings).

If the search results don't include the object you're looking for, it may not be in the list yet because it was created recently. Refresh the list by clicking the refresh icon (4). This will refresh the list of options to include the most recently created objects.

Recent Objects

The objects you have most recently pushed emails to are directly available in the "Recent" list without needing to go through the "Quick Select".

In the above example, after the user pushed an email to the "Cox-2 inhibitor agreement", that agreement became directly accessible from the "Recent" list (5). So to push another email to that agreement, the user can just select the email, click Agreement, then select the agreement name from the dropdown list. 

Potential Alerts

• The add-in will not let you push the same email to the same object twice. If this happens, it will display the following message:
  
• The size limit for email attachments is 10MB. If you exceed the limit, the add-in will display the following message. 
  

Before you can push emails into the system, you need to install and configure the Outlook Add-in. Please refer to the add-in setup article for instructions.

Advanced push allows you to push one or more emails into an object in Deals and Alliances. But unlike the quick-select, advanced push also lets you :

• Create a new object on the fly,
• Choose which attachments you want to push and which ones you don't need,
• Choose a subfolder to push attachments into,
• Delete the original email.

Using advanced push

1. After selecting your email(s), select the type of object you want to push to.
2. Click on "Advanced push". A new tab will be then opened :

Note that after clicking on "Advanced push", if the add-in detects that contacts linked to the email don't yet exist in the application, it will automatically display the Contact Push pop-up (if activated in the settings).

3. Start typing in the name of the object (in the above example, an opportunity). The auto-complete feature on the name field will suggest matches as you type.
   
   
   • If you select an already existing object, the page will reload and display the data already populated for that object and you can edit these fields.
   • If you want to create a band-new object, just type in the full name and be sure to populate the rest of the required fields in the form.
4. The Emails section displays the list of emails you are pushing. You can rename the email if needed. 
5. Select the attachements you also want to push into the system.
6. Chose the document subfolder you want each document to be pushed to.
7. Define if document is covered by CDA/NDA. To learn what this means, please refer to the document management article.
8. If you only need the attachments and do not need to push in the email itself, check this option. 
9. Click Save.

When pushing an email through advanced push or quick select, if the add-in detects that one or more of the contacts linked to the email does not exist in the application, it will offer the option to create those contacts in Inova.

Contact Push pop-up

After successfully pushing an email into the system, the add-in will display the Contact Push pop-up. 

1. The popup will include any contact from the To, From, or CC fields whose email address doesn't have a match in the Inova database. The add-in will also pre-populate fields such as First Name and Last Name if it finds that information in the email itself or from the contact's matching record in your Outlook contact list if it exists there. 
2. If you do not want to push in one of the contacts from the list, select it and click the Delete button. 
3. Update the rest of the fields as needed. Only the email and name fields are required.
   
   Note: From the Company dropdown, you can select the company to be linked to the contact being created. As you're typing the company name, the application will search to see if the company already exists. If the application doesn't find a match, the message "No match found. Press enter to create new." will be displayed. Enter the rest of the company name and press Enter to create the new company. 
   
   
4. If needed, review the content of the email that was pushed. It may contain additional details about the contact that you can copy and paste into the fields at left. 
5. When you are ready to push in the contacts, click create. Note that the contact will also be automatically linked to the object that you pushed the original email to.  
6. If you don't want to create any new contacts, click "Cancel Creation".

   This action will not cancel the push of the email.

Note that contact push is also triggered when you use the Additional action to push in your email.

If you need to push an email to an object that is not directly available in the Add-in ribbon such as a meeting, alliance, or governance body, you will need to use the Additional Actions button. This option offers the same options as advanced push.

Using Additional Actions

1. Select the email, then click the "Additional Actions" button
2. The system will display a popup that lists all the types of objects you can push emails to.
3. After selecting the desired object type, click on Next to continue.  The system will display the object's input form. 
4. Now you can follow the same steps to complete the push as you would with Advanced Push. For more information, please refer to the advanced push article.

The list of objects that appears in step 2 is maintained in Administration. Contact your Inova administrator if the object type you are looking for does not appear in the list. 

Instead of pushing emails manually to the application, you can have emails automatically forwarded from a designated Outlook folder to an object in the Inova application.

When you link a folder to an object in Inova, the folder contents will be pushed automatically to the linked object. Going forward, all emails or files dragged into the folder get pushed to the object. 

Note: It is impossible for the add-in to push calendar objects like invitations or meeting acceptances into Inova. If such objects are dropped in a linked folder, they will be ignored.

Link a folder

 

1. Select the folder and right-click.
2. Select "Link to ..." from the menu.
3. Select the type of object you want to link to. A pop up will appear.

The type of objects you can link to a folder can be configured in the add-in settings. 

 

4. Click in the search field and select the object from the dropdown. You can also begin typing in the name of the object to filter the list down and select the one you want from the results. 
5. Click the Link to folder button. When the link is in place, the icon will change as shown:
   
   

If an email you drag into a linked folder has and attachments, those attachments will be automatically filed in the object's document manager. 

Note: More recent versions of Outlook do not display folders in the inbox by default. In such cases, the blue Inova icon will not appear automatically. You can choose to display folders by selecting the Folders option via your Outlook preferences or settings, or by pressing CTRL-6. You can also use a naming convention on linked folders that will help you remember the link has been set. 

Once you link a folder to Inova, you can also use Outlook distribution rules to push emails automatically from your Inbox into a linked folder, and from there the link to Inova will cause those emails to be pushed automatically into the application. 

Unlink a folder

Once a folder is linked, all emails you drag and drop into it will be pushed into the linked object in the application. Removing the link will not delete or change any emails already pushed to the application.

1. Select and right-click the folder. 
2. Click Unlink Folder. If the folder icons are displayed in your Outlook, the blue Inova icon will change back to the standard folder.