Connecting Documents to your online forms

SYNTAQ has an on-line form-builder that enables you to create sophisticated documents from your form Records.

The ability to create Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF documents is available to all of our plans. To create a document from a Form Record a Microsoft Word document template is required. Your document Template is only different from a normal document in that it will need Word Mergefields that match the Form Field names used on your Form.

Upload Document Template

To upload your Document Template to your Form, navigate to Documents under Templates in the main menu and click the ‘New Document Template’ button in the top right of the page.

Document Assembly Features

Document creation goes far beyond just inserting Form Fields into a Word Mergefield. Our platform supports advanced document assembly features, including:

• Repeat Sections (with filtering)
• Conditional content
• List formatting
• Case formatting
• Number to text formatting
• Currency to text formatting
• Leading and following switches
• Date formatting
• Mask formatting

Basic Mergefields

The simplest concept in document automation is inserting content from a Form Field on a Form into a document Template. This is done by including a Mergefield into the document Template with the same Field Name as is used on your Form:

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 }

Conditional Content

Not all content within a document Template will be relevant to each end Document. Depending on the User’s answers on the Form, you may wish to include some content and exclude other content. This is called ‘conditional content’.

Conditional content is included or taken out of a document Template by the use of the ‘IF’ statement. The «IF» statement is usually driven by the answer to a Form Field on a Form. For example, the Form may ask the question “Do you have a dog?” [Field: Has_Dog_yn] If the User answers ‘yes’ to this question, then certain content will be included in the Document, otherwise the content will be left out. This would be achieved using the following IF statements in the Document Template:

Example
{ MERGEFIELD IFStart:A1 has_dog_yn = 'true'}you have a dog{ MERGEFIELD IFEnd:A1} 
{ MERGEFIELD IFStart:B1 has_dog_yn = 'false'}you do not have a dog{ MERGEFIELD IFEnd:B1}

Multi-row Repeat Section data

Sometimes a Field needs to contain multiple data. For example, a range of numbers, a list of dates, or a number of lines on an invoice. In order to record and store this type of data you can use a Field surrounded within a «Table» statement. The «Table» statement enables the User to enter multiple lines of data into the one Field.

Example
{ MERGEFIELD TableStart:1}This content will be repeated for each row of data{ MERGEFIELD TableEnd:1}
{ MERGEFIELD TableStart:1 has_dog_yn = 'true'}This content will be repeated for each row of data where has_dog=true{ MERGEFIELD TableEnd:1}

List Formatting

The «ListFormat» statement will format lists in Documents accordingly to set rules. In order to implement the «ListFormat» statement three components are required:

• First you need an opening «ListFormatStart» statement before the paragraphs.
• Then you need to include a «ListItem» statement at the end of each paragraph where you want to include the list formatting, i.e. the “.”, “;” or “; and”, etc.
• Finally you need to include a closing «ListFormatEnd» statement after the end of the paragraphs.

Example
{ MERGEFIELD ListFormatStart:List1 a, b, and c}
{ MERGEFIELD TableStart:1}
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000}{ MERGEFIELD ListItem:List1}
{ MERGEFIELD TableEnd:1}
{ MERGEFIELD ListFormatEnd:1}

Our Word add-in makes this process much simpler, see here for details.

Letter Formatting Switches

A Switch can change the format or action of Field content. For example, a Switch can make all of the Field’s contents into capital letters, format a date, or it can format the content into a given number.

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \*FirstCap} { MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \*Caps} { MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \*Lower} { MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \*Upper}

Leading and Following Switches

These Switches enable you to include content before or after the Field’s contents. This can be useful to provide the leading wording, or trailing wording, that is appropriate to a Field in a particular context:

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \f "following content"} { MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \b "before content"}

Date Switches

These switches change the format of a date Field:

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \@ ddd MMM YYYY}

Dollar Formatting

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \# "$#,##0"} dollars with no cents { MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \# "$,0.00"} dollars and cents

Masks

You can format the content of a Field using a ‘mask’:

Example
{ MERGEFIELD Field_1000 \Mask ## ### ###}

Deleting Empty paragraphs

The WF:DelEmptyPara Switch will remove a paragraph mark if there is no content in the paragraph. This has the effect of removing empty lines from the finished Document. In the following example, if one or more of the lines of the address are not present, then there will not be a gap above, below or between the entered lines.

Example
WF:DelEmptyPara