Using Titles with your XpressDox templates Assigning titles to your templates presents a cleaner interface to users. When they are looking at a list of templates, instead of seeing the template names including the .xdtpx extension they can see a friendlier name. This may also be the case if your...

Version 14 of XpressDox is without a doubt our most exciting and innovative update! We are proud to show you some of the features you can expect after upgrading to this version.   Desktop version: You will find an orientation video here detailing what to expect after upgrading your Desktop...

The Question Command in XpressDox Document Automation With the launch of XpressDox low code, or version 14, the Question command was introduced to simplify the process of template coding. On the XpressDox ribbon click “New Question”, complete the information in the helper and click OK to insert your new fillpoint....

Adding comments to a complicated template, or a complicated piece of code, is always a good idea. It helps for the maintenance of templates, for readability, and for reminding yourself why you did things a certain way. It is also useful when another template author in the firm needs to...

Fillpoint delimiters in your XpressDox templates If you are a long time user of XpressDox you may be aware that some years back we changed our Fillpoint delimiters from << >> to « ». It is of course fine to stay with either type of Fillpoint delimiters, and you can set...

Throughout the XpressDox documentation, reference is made to Commands and also to Functions.  Syntactically commands and functions appear the same, but their functionality is different and in some cases this difference is important. A rule of thumb for distinguishing commands from functions is that commands are used for global layout...

XpressDox offers various ways of connecting templates in some way; IncludeTemplate, IncludeCodeTemplate, InsertTemplate as well as MergeTemplate and RunTemplate. But what is the difference between all these commands and functions?   Below is a summary of each of the commands. Each of them can of course be used conditionally, and...

When designing interviews that will be integrated into other applications, there are commands which should be considered:   EnableWebLocalSave Enables the “Save Local” feature in the browser interview.   EnableWebPreview Enable the preview on integrated interviews.   SendWebEmail Upon assembly, emails can be sent to one or more recipients with...

In some situations, the name of a file to be included in the document is contained in the Data Set. In these cases, instead of IncludeTemplate, the command InsertDocument is used.

The original article regarding inserting documents with variable names was written way back in 2009.  Since then, as a result of further maturing of XpressDox, some really useful innovations have been added.  In particular, if there are data elements whose values are set very early in the process (in fact...

In XpressDox, a Data Sheet is a document that contains a table with a list of data elements and values.   Why a data sheet? A data sheet is useful in the case where, for example, a lengthy and complex document is produced by a template, and the list of...

Parameterized scripts assist with the re-use of XpressDox code Here are some examples of Scripts which may be useful:   Write out a full name from individual data elements: «Script(FullName,FirstName,MiddleName,LastName)» «concat(SuffixWith(&FirstName&,’ ‘),SuffixWith(&MiddleName&,' '),&LastName&)» «ScriptEnd()» The SuffixWith() functions will ensure that the names are suffixed with spaces only if those data...

Because XpressDox uses XSLT as its document automation engine, the arithmetic features of XSLT are all available to template authors. There is a caveat, though, and that is that XSLT requires that all numbers presented to it in calculations must be in a specific format.  The specific format is that...

XpressDox supports multi-language XpressDox supports the user-facing interface in the language of the user.  In this context, a “user” is the person who runs a template.  That means that the XpressDox Explorer, Interview and Ribbon will be in the language of the user. All template authoring tools, which include the...

When entering dates for a contract, it is important to get them right during the interview. It might be possible to control this via the Rule command, but often it is very useful to reflect this to the user as they are typing into the interview. For the purposes of...

The XpressDox Rule command can be used to validate a NINO in a template.   You have a template which needs to capture and use a NINO (National Insurance Number) as described in NIM39110 – National Insurance Numbers. You would like to make sure that the value captured in the...

Selection of multiple templates to be run can be done by the user using the XpressDox explorer, but the template author can also control the selection of templates using a master template with document-selection logic built into it.

Letterheads: BaseTemplate is an option, but does not give you much control: When it comes to inserting letterheads on your templates, there are different techniques you could employ. Should you have a very simple letterhead, 1 header with 1 footer that do not change then the BaseTemplate command is acceptable....

In the article Define layout in a base template, a mechanism for hard-wiring various fields in a letterhead base template is discussed. Now suppose that it’s not a letterhead that is the base, but the outline of an agreement on which other agreements will be based.  In this base agreement...

Suppose you want to set up a variable (called ‘Party’)  to contain either Defendant or Plaintiff, depending on PartyType and then a variable containing the possessive case of that  – i.e. the value should be “Defendant’s” or “Plaintiff’s”.  The apostrophe is going to give trouble. Here’s how to do it. ...

Performing calculations on currency amounts Probably the most accurate way to perform arithmetic on money values in XpressDox is to reduce all currency to integer values (e.g. Dollars to cents, Pounds to pence, etc), perform the arithmetic and then render the value back to the currency value.  The aim is...

It would be really useful for XpressDox to be able to present an interview in French if the user is a French speaker, and in English for English users, where the document itself is in English. For the same template. And vice versa. XpressDox can indeed do that, as long...

XpressDox has numerous string handling functions.  The number of different applications is vast, and this article tries to provide a number of situations all in one place. Extract the last few characters of a string Suppose you have a situation where a particular data element will always contain a specific code in...

PDF forms which contain fillable fields can be populated with XpressDox data PDF documents which have been prepared with PDF Form Fields (using a suitable PDF Form editor) can be filled with data captured with an XpressDox interview. In fact, the PDF form can be filled with data from ANY...

Using scripts when filling PDF forms need to be done in a certain way   When you are defining a PDF form field map in the Prepare PDF Form UI, you can specify that the source for a particular PDF field is either a data element, or a script. If...