Would you like to empower your end users to effortlessly generate documents? Discover how to build a self-service solution that allows end users to answer questions and automatically generate documents, including contracts and other types of documentation.
This image illustrates the transition from template to self-service document. The placeholders in the template will be replaced by text generated in response to user answers.
How to build a document generation process
To automate document generation:
1. Prepare a template in MS Word
- Create a new template in MS Word or open an existing template document.
- Populate your template with placeholders (wrap text in double curly braces, such as {{effective_date}}).
2. Upload your template in a Create Document action node
- After constructing your questions, add a Create Document action node to your module.
- Upload the template document in the Create Document action node. A list of all placeholders in the document will display.
- Confirm that each placeholder will be replaced by the correct variable.
3. Make the document available to your end users
- You can share the generated document in different ways: Attach it to an email, download it in an input or Result node, or transfer it to a database.
Related topics
When working on building an automatic document generation solution, you might encounter some challenges and need to implement more complex elements in your templates. Here are some tips and solutions to common issues:
- Dynamic text blocks: Update Text Block values to make text content dependent on end user answers.
- Conditional content: For complex document templates, add conditional content directly into your template.
- Table creation: If you need to add tables to your document, collect data in a collection and convert it into a table. Alternatively, if your data is in a non-tabular format, place placeholders within a table and manually configure it.
- BRYTER MS Word Add-in: Easily automate Word document templates within BRYTER by providing quick access to placeholders and commands.
- Document preview: To provide end users with a preview of the generated document, utilize Document View.
- Removing empty lines: Prevent unwanted empty lines in documents by including deletion commands in your template.
- Electronic signatures: To enable automatic document signing, consider integrating with DocuSign eSignature.