Document Assembly > Techniques for enhancing your templates

Techniques for enhancing your templates

The more you work with document assembly, the more you will develop techniques for drafting your documents elegantly and easily. These techniques can be then reused in other templates.

To do this, go to the Standard Template Details dialog and open the template whose technique you wish to copy. Select the relevant passage and copy it. Then close the document and return to Amicus. Now open the template where you wish to re-use this technique. Place your cursor where you wish to use it and Paste.

This topic covers:

Setting Template availability
Program Arguments
Using information from Extended Fields in Files
Template Location

Setting Template availability

In the General view of the Template Details dialog, you can specify who may use the Merge Template.

Firm Members

To specify which Firm Members can generate documents from the Template, select the All Firm Members option, or, select The Following Firm Members, click the Select People button, and select one or more particular Firm Members in the dialog that appears.

Program Arguments

In the Advanced view of the Template Details dialog, you can specify program arguments as an attribute of your Merge Template that will be passed as instructions to the document program when it is launched to generate a document. This is a feature for advanced users only. It is similar to the program arguments in the DO button for launching a macro.

Tip for HotDocs 6.0 or higher users: For Merge Templates that do not require specific questions to be answered by end users and include only data filled from existing fields in Amicus, you can skip the HotDocs Interview by specifying /nw /stw as the program arguments. (These are the No Assembly Window and Send To Word Processor options, respectively.)

Note: In some cases, using program arguments may cause a separate instance of your document program to be launched.

Using information from Extended Fields in Files

Some types of File information can be quite large, such as All To Do's on a File. It slows down the document assembly process when this information is collected and passed on to the document. To help speed things up, all of this information is not normally passed to documents unless it is specifically requested.

If you want to include this type of information when a document is generated, it is not enough just to include the Merge Variables in your template. You must also select the corresponding checkboxes in the Standard Template Details dialog.

Navigate to the Extended Fields view of the Document Details dialog.

Select the checkboxes for the kinds of information you want extracted from Files when generating documents.

Most of the checkboxes correspond to list items in the File Details views. For example, All Appointments, My Appointments, My Time Entries, and All Written Communications.

For information about the Last/Next Report, see the "Merge Variables Guide", available from the Amicus Help Center or from the Amicus Attorney Technical Resource Guides/Updates section of our website.

Date range

The extra information extracted for Extended Fields (as detailed above) can be limited to items within a date range. For example, you could set a Template to include All Appointments that have a start date within the last 90 days.

Navigate to the Date Range view of the Document Details dialog.

Select one of the methods of date selection for this Template:

Select the first option to include Extended Fields regardless of date.
Select the second option to always use the date range you specify here, and then specify the number of days in the past and the number of days in the future (relative to whenever the document is generated). You can enter 0 (zero) to indicate today.
Select the third option to always prompt the user to enter dates when generating a document. At that time, the Date Range dialog will appear. For more information, see Specifying a date range when generating a document or e-mail.

Note: Some the Extended Fields are not affected by date range: All Total Time, My Total Time, Value of All Total Time, Value of My Total Time, Last/Next Report, and My Last/Next Report.

Template Location

When you first create a document template, it is automatically named according to the Merge Template name field and will save it in the network location designated for document templates. If the template gets renamed or moved for any reason, Amicus will be unable to locate it. If this happens you will need re-specify the template location in your Amicus record.

Important: It is crucial that you configure your preferences relating to document assembly. Secondly, all document templates must reside in the location set by your Amicus Administrator under Firm Settings.