Aline keeps your entire contract lifecycle — drafting, internal approvals, counterparty negotiation, redlining, and signature — in one place. This guide is written for legal and operations teams who want to launch a template, run a collaborative review with internal stakeholders and counterparties, and gate signature behind one or more approval phases.

If you just need the basic launch flow, see Create a Workflow from a Template. This article picks up from there and focuses on the review, redlining, version control, and multi-phase approval pieces.

Use this guide when you want to:

💡 A consistent naming convention makes it easier to find and track workflows later.

You'll be guided through assigning:

💡 Don't know who the counterparty signer is yet? You can leave it blank and add them later.

At the bottom of the assignment screen, you'll see options to connect to your CRM. Aline integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and several other CRMs.

Connecting a CRM lets you use Aline as a document generation tool — fields like company name, deal value, contact details, and contract terms are imported directly from the matching record so you don't have to type them in manually.

Click Continue when you're done.

Before the document goes out for signature or collaboration, you'll have a chance to manipulate it. Two common patterns:

Click Continue when the document is ready.

On the next page you'll see your options. Note that Send for Signature is intentionally locked until internal sign-off is complete.

⚠️ This gate exists so signature can't accidentally happen before required approvals. Until sign-off is done, your only options are:

💡 This is one of the most valuable parts of Aline — every approval and sign-off is tracked and visible to the team.

Sharing works similarly to granting access to a Google Doc.

💡 Suggester is the default. For counterparties, you'll usually want to avoid giving editing permissions and stick with Suggester or Commenter.

Once a workflow with a legal review phase is launched, the assigned reviewer is automatically notified by email and routed back to the workflow.

As the legal reviewer, you can:

💡 The exact stage you receive the review task depends on whether it's your paper or third-party paper, and where you are in the negotiation. For third-party paper, legal often reviews first. For your own paper, legal may step in after the counterparty has returned redlines.

Most negotiations involve multiple rounds:

All comments, replies, and changes stay in one place so you have a full record of the negotiation.

If a counterparty returns a redlined copy outside of Aline, you don't need to start over.

💡 This is especially useful when negotiations move between Aline and email attachments.

When redlines are finalized and you're ready to move forward:

Once your phase is complete, the next phase is launched automatically.

Approvals in Aline are organized into phases. You can configure as many phases as you need.

Parallel approvals — put multiple reviewers in the same phase. Everyone in that phase can complete their tasks at the same time.

Sequential approvals — put each reviewer (or group) in their own phase. For example:

Each phase is launched automatically once the previous one is complete. Every sign-off is recorded so you have a clear audit trail.

Once all approval phases are complete, the workflow owner (or manager) can send the document for signature.

✅ Completed phases stay visible on the summary page so you always have a history of who signed off and when.

If you have questions, click the Support button in Aline to reach our team in Slack, or email us directly.