Quick Review

So far, we have looked at:

• A different approach to developing – plan and design fully before programming
• The pros and cons of single & shared component files
• Getting our project space set up with appropriate sub folders and documents
• Why Excel is an excellent tool for planning document assembly
• Variable and dialog naming structures
• Ensuring we have the raw materials to design a complete document assembly system, covering as many variations of our day to day templates as possible
• "Preparing" or indexing and ordering said raw material so that we can work with them efficiently

It is now time to start the document assembly process. Everything up to this point has been preparation. We have assembled all the raw precedents and documents (raw content) that we will now forge into a document assembly system.

Document assembly development starts here!

Previously, we stopped at the point where we had prepared the content for a master template for each precedent in the system. The reason was that this is the point where you DIY in-house or outsource. So, everything up prior to this point will help you on every document assembly (or document process related project). Everything after this point will assist with developing your own document assembly systems.

What We Have

We now have a list of all precedents that will eventually become templates in our system, and each precedent template has one ore more documents associated with it that will be incorporated into it (each document representing a variation of the template). Hopefully, what we have for each precedent represents the majority of the content that it will need to contain (for at least the next year or so, until staff decide they want more!)

Moving Ahead

Now for the steps that the document assembly developer will have to take on each project! This is where the fun begins - this approach will appear counter-intuitive to many document assembly developers, especially those who follow the "pick up document #1 and program" approach. This approach deals with planning all the code in the project before you fire up HotDocs or other document assembly platform. As stated, our preferred approach is to use Microsoft Excel to plan every aspect of a project. That being the case, this walkthrough will deal with techniques used in Excel however, you can use a database, tables in Word or whatever other tracking mechanism you are comfortable with. We recommend using a tool that has filtering functionality but this is not necessary, just useful.