HotDocs Tips & Tricks

The ascend instruction is used with the REPEAT instruction to sort the resulting output.  Here’s what the official HotDocs help file states:

The ASCEND instruction sorts lists of answers (gathered using a REPEAT instruction) in alphanumeric order, from 1 to 9, and from A to Z. The DESCEND instruction sorts lists of answers from 9 to 1, and from Z to A.

There are two major uses for the ASCEND instruction: in a computation and in a template.

Recently, we looked at how to use the ADD and CLEAR instructions in HotDocs to dynamically create an option for widows and widowers, so that regardless of gender of our client, the user was always presented with a gender appropriate reference, that still had an identical option under the hood.  This time, we’re going to look at the real power of these instructions: with dynamic repeating content.  For this article, we’re going to look at a situation where we have to address a single letter to multiple vendors and have those vendors specified by the user during the interview.  Here’s the pieces:

VENDOR RPT - repeating dialog that collects vendor data
VENDS Name Full TE - the full name of the vendor on VENDOR RPT
VENDS Addr Block CO - a computation that calculates for address block for each vendor (code not listed, it could just as easily be a text/memo field that is filled in)
LETT Vendors MS - a multi select, multiple choice variable that will ask the user which vendors they wish to send a letter to (dynamically created)
flt LETT Vendors CO - a filter that will look at the user selections in LETT Vendors MS, and filter out the ones that weren’t selected.
COUNTER - the HotDocs system variable that will return the number (as a number) of the current repeating dialog. This can ONLY be used inside a repeat instruction.

Two of the more useful instruction models in HotDocs for dynamic interviews and variables are ADD and CLEAR, which go hand in hand to dynamically construct multiple choice variables.  This is the first of two HotDocs tips, which will deal with the basic CLEAR/ADD instructions with “static” content.  The next article will be about dynamically building a multiple choice variable in HotDocs with a REPEAT instruction.

This tip covered the expression models: ANSWERED(VAR) and ANSWERED(DIALOG).  Most often these are used in templates, but they are also used in computations to test whether a variable or a dialog has been answered.  Hotdocs scripts will be interrupted if the value of any required variable is not known.  For this reason, the use of the"answered" function gives a value where no value is known.

This tip covers the instruction model: AGE(DATE).  Use this expression if you want to know the age in terms of years as of the current date.  If you want to know the age as of a specific date, other than today, then you will need to use YEARS FROM( DATE , DATE )

This tip covers the instruction model: ABSOLUTE VALUE(NUM). This model returns the positive (or absolute) value of a number variable.  In some accounting formulas, the result of the formula will be a negative number.  You may want to not the value as a negative, but still be able to treat and format the number based on its positive value

This tip covers the use of the instruction model: ZERO(NUM).  When is a number not a number?  When it has no value.  That doesn’t present an issue unless you start running calculations based on an unanswered number.  The solution is ZERO(NUM).

HotDocs, DealBuilder and GhostFill all work with RTF Templates.  On occasion, a template may include an image for a watermark, a logo, or some other purpose.  Thanks to an ingenious feature of Word, when you some a document to rich-text format (RTF) the images are converted to a useless, but huge windows metafile.  This ensures compatability with ANCIENT word processors, but does nothing for you.  In fact, a simple company logo can expand the size of a short letter from 20K, to 1,200K (or 1.2 MB).  And that is before you start adding text.  The solution is a simple change in the registry for WORD on each machine. 

You want to control the number of lines that appear on a dialog that displays in “Spreadsheet” style.  Quite often, the default number of lines visible on a spreadsheet style dialog are aesthetically offensive. We need to control this for two reasons: 1) its ugly; and 2) screen real estate is quite often at a premium.

This tip covers when to use and how to use the HotDocs Instruction Model: ADD TEXT TO MULT_CHOICE.  HotDocs supports dynamic multiple choice variables.  A list of options (and their associated prompts) for a multiple choice variable can be seen in the definition of a particular component. However, this restricts the user to options known at the time that a component file is authored. This instruction model lets the developer dynamically change the option values and their associated prompts based on answers given by the user during an assembly.