Conga › Conga Contracts migration
Migrating from Conga Contracts
to Conga CLM
The standalone Conga Contracts platform is no longer in Conga’s marketed portfolio and parts of its API are formally deprecated. The question is not whether to move, but how to move without losing ten years of contract history.
Where Conga Contracts stands today
Conga has not published an end-of-life date for the standalone Conga Contracts platform, and we will not tell you it has. What is observable is this: the product no longer appears in Conga’s marketed product portfolio or in any of the four platform pillars, and parts of its API are formally marked as deprecated in Conga’s own documentation.
If you are running it, that is enough to start planning a route to Conga CLM rather than waiting for a notice. Most of the installations we see were implemented around a decade ago, are now used as a repository with the workflow happening in email, and are carrying a renewal decision within the next year or two.
Two ways to migrate, and how to choose
There is no single right answer here, and any partner who gives you one without seeing your data is selling. These are the two archetypes and the trade-off between them.
| Phased transformation | Accelerated migration | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Transform while you migrate. Active contracts first, templates redesigned from scratch, workflows re-engineered upfront, integrations re-architected API-led | Bulk move with minimal redesign. Basic workflows replicated first, optimisation follows once the repository is stable |
| Upfront effort | Higher | Lower |
| Value | High from the point of go-live | Builds over time |
| Main risk | Scope grows, and the migration becomes a transformation programme with a deadline attached | You carry legacy design decisions into the new platform and have to unpick them later |
| Fits when | You have appetite and sponsorship for process change, and no hard licence deadline | A renewal date is driving the timeline, or the business will not absorb process change right now |
What actually moves
Contract repository
Executed documents in PDF and Word, version history, metadata, and the relationships between records. This is the part people assume is simple and is not.
Templates and clauses
Rebuilt in the CLM framework. Merge fields remapped to the new token schema, conditional logic re-implemented, alternate language preserved.
Workflows and approvals
Parallel and sequential chains, intake, obligation and milestone alerts, and permission sets. Often the first place we find that the documented process and the real process diverged years ago.
Integrations
The CRM layer, eSignature, and any ERP or HRIS connections, with APIs remapped and webhooks or middleware rebuilt.
How we run it
Nine steps, each with entry and exit criteria and a sign-off gate agreed with your stakeholders before we start.
Discovery and assessment
What you have, what state it is in, and what the migration is actually going to cost.
Migration strategy and design
Which archetype, what moves in which phase, and what deliberately does not move.
Data preparation
Profiling and cleansing, scoped to what phase one actually needs rather than a general data quality project.
Build
Configuration, templates, workflows and integrations in the target.
Data migration
Extraction, transformation and load, with repeated mock runs rather than one attempt.
Testing and validation
Reconciliation by contract count, metadata checks, and document validation by checksum and file size.
Go-live
A pilot on a representative data set first, then the full cutover.
Post go-live
Hypercare with a dedicated resource on standby, not a support address.
Adoption and governance
The part that decides whether anyone uses it in six months.
What goes wrong, and what we do about it
This is an abridged version of the risk register we work to. We would rather you saw it before signing than after.
| Risk | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Incomplete migration | Reconciliation by contract counts and metadata checks, document validation, and multiple mock migrations before the real one |
| Documents or attachments lost | Migrated separately from records, validated by checksum and file size, then sampled at random by a human |
| Poor legacy data quality | Profiled early, and cleaned only to the extent phase one requires, so the migration does not become a data project |
| Undocumented legacy customisations | Found in discovery rather than in testing, which is why discovery is a paid gate and not a free sales call |
| Permissions do not carry across | Mapped explicitly as a workstream rather than assumed to follow the records |
| Regional variation | Surfaced per region, with regional business owners assigned to sign off their own contract types |
| No business owner | Named owners agreed before kick-off. A migration with only an IT sponsor stalls at validation |
Start with a Migration Assessment
A fixed, short engagement that tells you the scope, effort, timeline and cost of moving to Conga CLM. You keep everything it produces, whether or not we do the migration.
- A contract inventory by type, status and volume, taken from your system rather than from a questionnaire.
- A recommended archetype with the reasoning, including the case against the one we did not recommend.
- A phased plan with what moves when, and what stays behind.
- A risk register specific to your implementation, not a generic list.
- A cost and timeline you can take to a budget conversation.
Questions
Is Conga Contracts being discontinued?
Conga has not published an end-of-life date that we can point to. What is observable is that the standalone platform no longer appears in Conga’s marketed portfolio and parts of its API are formally deprecated. Plan a route rather than wait for a notice.
Do we have to move workflows at the same time as the documents?
No, and often you should not. A repository-first phase gets your contracts onto a supported platform against a licence deadline, with workflow rebuilt in a second phase once the business has bandwidth for process change.
What tooling do you use?
Conga publishes X-Author for Migration Manager for this class of work. We also run our own extraction tooling against the Conga Contracts API, which paginates the full contract set out to a structured export for mapping and validation.
How long does a migration take?
Our current phase one, covering roughly 8,300 contracts and 28 GB of documents as a repository move, is a 13-week plan. A transformation-led migration with template redesign and workflow re-engineering runs considerably longer.
Can you tell us what it will cost before we commit?
That is what the Migration Assessment is for. It is fixed price, it ends in a scope, timeline and cost, and the output is yours whether or not you use us for the migration.
Explore the rest of the Conga practice
Still running Conga Contracts?
A Migration Assessment tells you what moving actually involves, in weeks rather than months, for a fixed fee. You keep the output either way.