Updating a Microsoft Word Document with Laserfiche Workflow

Updating a Microsoft Word

Document with Laserfiche

Workflow

White Paper

Table of Contents

Updating a Microsoft Word Document with Workflow ..................................................... 3

Configuring the Word Document............................................................................................. 3

Adding merge fields to a Word document......................................................................... 3

Adding a field merge table to a Word document ............................................................. 4

Tips for working with merge fields ..................................................................................... 5

Using conditions and formulas in merge fields ............................................................... 5

Configuring the Update Word Document activity ............................................................... 6

Selecting the Word Document ............................................................................................. 6

Defining the action.................................................................................................................. 6

Find and Replace ................................................................................................................ 6

Simple Field Merge ............................................................................................................ 7

Table Field Merge ............................................................................................................... 9

Advanced Settings ................................................................................................................ 11

Using the Updated Word Document ................................................................................. 12

Emailing the resulting document .................................................................................. 12

Adding the resulting document to your repository ................................................... 12

Resources .................................................................................................................................... 13

Updating a Microsoft Word

Document with Workflow

Laserfiche Workflow's Update Word Document activity makes use of Word's find

and replace and field merging options to add information gathered throughout the

course of a workflow to a Word document. This activity makes it easy to

dynamically interact with Word documents, letting you generate line-item

documents, update customer records, fill out agendas or forms, and much more.

Configuring the Word Document

If you plan to use the Simple Field Merge or Table Field Merge features of the

Update Word Document activity, you must first prepare your Word document with

merge fields.

Merge fields in Word are similar to tokens in Workflow: they are placeholders in the

Word document that will be updated with information from a database, table, or

application. In our case, we want to update the merge fields with information from

Workflow.

Note: These instructions assume Word 2007 or later.

Adding merge fields to a Word document

1. Select the spot in the Word document where you want to add the field.

2. On the Insert tab, select Quick Parts, and then Field.

Tip: Instead of navigating through the toolbar, you can also add merge

fields to your document by selecting a bit of text and pressing

CTRL+F9. Then, right-click the text and select Edit Field.

3. The Field dialog box will open. In the Categories list, select All.

4. In the Field names list, select MergeField.

5. In the Field properties column, type a name for the field in the Field name

box.

6. Click OK.

7. The field will be inserted into the document. Repeat this process until you've

added all desired fields.

Note: The angle brackets Word automatically generates with the above

steps are not equivalent to the angle brackets you can insert from your

keyboard. If you want to manually add merge fields to your document

(without going through steps 2-5 above), use this syntax: {{ FIELD

NAME }}. If you chose to manually create merge fields with curly

brackets, Workflow will display a prompt when importing fields. You

will be asked if you want to load non-standard merge fields. Click Yes

to proceed. Note that these manually created fields will only be

imported if there are no standard merge fields in the document. You

cannot mix standard merge fields with manually created merge fields.

Learn more about merge fields in the Microsoft Office help files.

Adding a field merge table to a Word document

Workflow can fill out tables in Word documents with information from a data

source. To make use of this functionality, you will need to configure a field merge

table in Word, using regions instead of using normal merge fields.

1. Create a table in the Word document.

2. In the first cell of the table, insert a merge field with the name

TableStart:MyObject, where MyObject corresponds to the name of a your

region. Learn how to add a merge field

3. In the last cell of the first row, insert a merge field with the name

TableEnd:MyObject.

4. Between the TableStart and TableEnd fields, insert the merge fields that

correspond to the fields you want in your table's columns. These merge fields

will be populated with data from the first row of the data source Workflow is

retrieving data from, then the following rows will be populated with

additional data from the data source.

Tip: You can nest regions by defining one region inside another.

Nesting regions let you replicate the parent-child relationship of

imported data. Learn more.

Tips for working with merge fields

The Microsoft Office help files provide a lot of information about merge fields. At

any point while configuring your Word document, click ALT+F9 to see all the field

codes for the fields in your document. You can edit these field codes as needed.

Learn more about field codes

Additionally, see the Resources section of this paper for more information about

working with merge fields.

Using conditions and formulas in merge fields

Workflow supports formulas and conditions in merge fields.

Formulas allow you to perform basic math and other formatting with field values.

Workflow uses Open Office formulas, the same formulas as Microsoft Excel, Google

Sheets, and Laserfiche Forms. See a list of available formulas.

Learn more about

formulas in merge fields.

Conditions allow you to show or hide text. They use the following syntax:

{ IF Expression1OperatorExpression2TrueTextFalseText}

Learn more about conditions

Example: If a customer makes a purchase that totals over $500, you

want to display a coupon code on their invoice for 10% off their next

purchase. First, use a formula to total the amounts on the invoice. E.g.,

{={MERGEFIELD Amount1} + {MERGEFIELD Amount2}} where

Amount1 and Amount2 are the fields' names. Then, use conditions to

display the coupon code if the amount is over $500. If they don't spend

over $500, then just thank them for their order. E.g., { IF

{={MERGEFIELD Amount1} + {MERGEFIELD Amount2}}>=500 "Use the

coupon code A1234 for 10% off your next purchase." "Thank you for your

order."}

Configuring the Update Word

Document activity

The Update Word Document activity creates a copy of an existing document and

updates it either by finding and replacing words or by performing a field merge.

Selecting the Word Document

To configure the Update Word Document activity, you must first specify where

Workflow can find the master document.

1. Add the Update Word Document activity to the Workflow

canvas.

2. In the Properties Pane, use the Source drop-down menu to select the master

document's location: Workflow Server local disk, Server attachment

, or

another workflow activity.

3. Click the Browse button to locate the document. Alternatively, if you selected

the Workflow Server local disk you can specify a path manually.

Defining the action

The second step in configuring the Update Word Document activity is to define the

changes Workflow will make to the document. Workflow can perform a

straightforward find and replace in the document or it can interact with Word's

fields and tables.

1. Ensure the Update Word Document activity is selected on the Workflow

canvas.

2. In the Modifications section of the Properties Pane, click New.

3. In the New Modification dialog box, select Find and Replace, Simple Field

Merge, or Table Field Merge from the drop-down.

Find and Replace

The Find and Replace option lets you automate the same find and replace

functionality that's available in Microsoft Word. This option does not require your

document to contain merge fields or any special formatting.

Example: The Acme Insurance Company has a new client information

packet they like to customize with the client's and the account

manager's name. When a new client is brought in, their name and their

account manager's name are added to the metadata on the Client's

folder. Once those two fields are filled out, a workflow starts that runs

an Update Word Document activity. This activity automatically looks

for "ClientName" and "AccountManagerName" in each document in the

folder and replaces those values with the client and account manager's

actual names.

To configure Find and Replace

1. Select the Update Word Document activity, and in the Properties Pane, select

New under Modifications.

2. In the New Modification dialog box, ensure Find and Replace is selected from

the Type drop-down menu.

3. Type the characters or words that you want Workflow to find in the document

next to Find what. Then type the characters or words that Workflow will

replace the found values with next to Replace with. Use the token buttons to

find or replace words found in other parts of your workflow.

4. If you select the Match case option, the activity will only find results with the

same capitalization pattern as the value you type next to Find what. Clear this

option to find matches regardless of capitalization.

5. If you select the Match whole word option, the activity will only find whole

words, not partial words. For example, if you select this option and configure

the activity to find the word "book," it will find all instances of the word book

but not "bookmark," "bookkeeping," or "booking."

6. If you select the Use regular expressions option, you can use regular

expressions to extract specific information from a token you've added to your

"Find" value. For example, if you put an address token in the Find what field,

you can use regular expressions to only find the zip code from the address.

Learn more about regular expressions

Simple Field Merge

While the Find and Replace option offers basic updating functionality, if you have a

document that is going to be updated by a database as well as a workflow, or if you

have more complicated updating needs, then select the Simple Field Merge option.

To configure a simple field merge

1. Select the Update Word Document activity, and in the Properties Pane, select

New under Modifications.

2. In the New Modification dialog box, ensure Simple Field Merge is selected

from the Type drop-down menu.

3. While you can manually input the names of the merge field columns from

your Word table, it's more efficient to click the Import field names from

document link below the table. Clicking this list will automatically populate

the table with all the merge fields Workflow can interact with.

a. If Workflow doesn't find any merge fields, then it will prompt you to

import other types of fields from the document. If you click Yes at this

prompt, any items in the document that are wrapped in double curly

brackets {{ }} will be returned.

b. If a field you expected to use doesn't appear on the list, ensure you

have configured your Word document correctly. See the Configuring

your Word Document with Updateable Fields section above.

4. In the Value column, type a value or insert a token. The field will be replaced

with this value when the workflow runs.

5. In the Type column, choose the type of data that will be entered into the field.

Setting the type is important if you are inserting a token whose value could be

one of multiple types (e.g., it could be interpreted as a string or a number),

and you want to ensure Word interprets the token correctly. In most cases,

leaving Default in this column is sufficient.

6. In the Options column, click Default to provide custom formatting for the

field. You have the option to use the default formatting, render the field as a

checkbox, or render it as a barcode. Additionally, you can define custom

properties for barcodes not listed in the Barcode Type drop-down menu.

Example: Susan has created a label template in Word and uses the

barcode option in the Update Word Document activity to print

barcodes onto the labels. She then sticks these barcode labels onto

incoming reports, applying different barcodes to different reports.

When the reports are scanned, Quick Fields recognizes the barcodes

and is able to process the documents accordingly. The Update Word

Doc activity supports

these barcode symbologies. Learn more about

using barcodes with Quick Fields.

7. To add more fields to the table in the New Modification dialog box, start

typing in the last row. To delete a field, click the gray space to the left of the

field's row and press DELETE.

8. Below the table of fields are several options for cleaning up the Word

document after the merge runs.

• You can remove empty paragraphs, fields, regions, containing fields,

and static fields.

Note: The entire field will be removed from the document you

are modifying with this activity, not just the empty space an

empty field produces. To see all the fields in the document and

their values, open the Word document and press Alt + F9.

• You can also clear mail merge settings configured in the Mail Merge

Wizard.

• Select the Replace non merge fields option if you have other types of

fields in your document (e.g., text wrapped in double curly brackets {{

}}) that you want this activity to replace.

Table Field Merge

The Table Field Merge option lets you populate a table in a Word document from a

data source. If you select this option, you must have a Custom Query or Query Data

activity earlier in your workflow that retrieves the data you want to insert into the

table.

Example: You have a database containing transaction history from

different accounts in your company. Periodically, you need to send a

transaction history for the last month to a client. You configure a

Custom Query activity in Workflow to query the database, and then use

an Update Word Document activity with the Table Field Merge option

to fill out a table with the transaction history. You then configure the

activity to

save the resulting document as a PDF and use an Email

activity to send the document to the client.

To configure a table field merge

1. Select the Update Word Document activity, and in the Properties Pane, select

New under Modifications.

2. In the New Modification dialog box, ensure Table Field Merge is selected

from the Type drop-down menu.

3. Under Source Data File, click the Select link. Choose Results from the Query

Data or Custom Query activity that performs the database lookup for the

values you want to insert into the Word table.

4. Next to Merge Region Name, insert the name of the region that corresponds to

the table in Word. The region is the value you specified after the TableStart

and TableEnd fields in your table. Learn more about configuring this table

5. While you can manually input the names of the merge field columns from

your Word table, it's more efficient to click the Import field names from

document link below the table. Clicking this list will automatically populate

the table with all the merge fields Workflow can interact with.

a. If Workflow doesn't find any merge fields, then it will prompt you to

import other types of fields from document. If you click Yes at this

prompt, any items in the document that are wrapped in double curly

brackets {{ }} will be returned.

b. If a field you expected to use doesn't appear on the list, ensure you

have configured your Word document correctly. See the

Configuring

your Word Document with Updateable Fields section above.

6. In the Value column, type a value or insert a token. The field will be replaced

with this value when the workflow runs.

7. In the Type column, choose the type of data that will be entered into the field.

Setting the type is important if you are inserting a token whose value could be

one of multiple types (e.g., it could be interpreted as a string or a number),

and you want to ensure Word interprets the token correctly. In most cases,

leaving Default in this column is sufficient.

8. In the Options column, click Default to provide custom formatting for the

field. You have the option to use the default formatting, render the field as a