HotDocs Tips & Tricks

Today’s tip is about the DEFAULT and SET instruction models.  Both of these models will allow you to specify that a variable has a certain value, but in different circumstances and with different results.  This article provides the basics on when and how.

The DECREMENT and INCREMENT instructions are relatively new to HotDocs and they serve identical, but reversed purposes.  DECREMENT will reduce a given number variable by one, whereas INCREMENT will increase by one.

The HotDocs DEBUG instruction model is very simple, very powerful and very clear about its use.  DEBUG is used to...well, debug!  If you have templates or computations that are producing unexpected or incorrect output, using the DEBUG instruction may get you back on track just a little quicker.

A very brief HotDocs tip today - the CONCEAL and OMIT instruction models.  These two commands make working with HotDocs dialogs as answer sources a little cleaner and easier for users to work with.

Unfortunately, the CLEAR instruction model doesn’t really have any use on its own.  Its job is simple: to remove all the options and option prompts from the specified multiple choice ("MC") variable.  That’s it.  When used in conjunction with the ADD instruction (which adds options & option prompts to a specified MC variable), you end up with a pair of commands that can dynamically build MC variables on the fly, based on whatever data you desire.

One of the cooler instructions is the ASSEMBLE command, which allows you to queue up a template for assembly in HotDocs.  When it comes to assembling individual documents in packages/batches (as opposed to a template package in a single document output), assemble is the only way to fly.

The ASK instruction does exactly what it appears it will do - forces HotDocs to ASK (present to user) a specific variable or dialog.  ASK is quite often under utilized, as many developers permit HotDocs to generate a template interview.  For those developers in the know, there is a lot more functionality, flexibility and control possible when you write your own interview.  For those developers who design their own interviews, use of the ASK statement is absolutely critical.

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.