Put simply, templates are the blueprint for your perfect documents. Combined with data, they create 100% accurate documents, and they do it quickly.
The best templates contain all the information required to assemble a compliant document. This typically includes static and changing content, a connection to a data source, and relevant business logic. Once driven by data, these aspects come together to efficiently generate your documents.
Templates, data, and business logic come together to quickly create accurate documents.
Templates have the biggest impact when used by large organizations, as they ensure accuracy and compliance, and make document assembly significantly more efficient.
While all organizations have elaborate, high-value documents, large organizations benefit the most from using a document automation solution with well-designed templates. Without a reliable solution, these large organizations often cannot keep up with their document demand unless they compromise on quality. However, such a compromise is not viable – they cannot afford to make mistakes in business-critical documentation.
Well-designed templates can guarantee 100% compliance. You can be confident that your documents will always be produced based on the exact content and rules you define.
Templates are an accurate and efficient way of creating large amounts of elaborate documents. They store expert knowledge and business logic, which can otherwise be difficult to capture and review.
They let you move away from manual, laborious, and error-prone copy and paste document creation and towards a stable, reliable, and compliant solution.
Jeff Marti, Environmental Planner at the Washington State Department of Ecology.
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Using templates clearly has many benefits. Using ActiveDocs templates has even more – we have learned from our 25+ years of experience what's important, and what works best. We develop our software and features with that in mind.
As a result, here are a few things we do better:
Designing templates with ActiveDocs is super simple and intuitive. Your business users can easily take care of it on their own. ActiveDocs makes template design "non-codey", and there is no guesswork – every part of automation is represented visually. You can always see what you're doing.
Our customers have a couple of favorite template design features:
You can streamline your document production, and vastly reduce the number of your templates, by creating Template Sets. These let you put together several kinds of templates and documents, including external attachments, for a seamless output and delivery.
Our award-winning, modular Snippet technology lets you make quick updates across thousands of documents. When you make a change, you do it once – everywhere the Snippet is used will automatically update itself. Change once, change all, change immediately.
Template design takes place within the familiar environment of Microsoft Word, and utilizes its wide scope for styling and formatting. You can present your brand exactly to your specifications, and get it right, every time.
For extra confidence, we provide a range of training for business users who want to design beaufitul templates. This provides them with best practise for ongoing automation excellence, and an opportunity to build on their knowledge.
Manage your templates from a single, centralized location for maximum efficiency and transparency. Business users manage templates directly, subject to your defined overarching business permissions and approval – so you can be 100% confident that your business documents are always in line with the latest requirements.
Keeping your templates up to date is quick and simple. Content used across multiple templates can be updated instantly wherever appropriate. Changes can be scheduled for implementation at a time that suits you best. And if you want to undo your changes, there is additional peace of mind knowing that you can always roll back to previous versions without losing your work.
Once in place, the solution can be maintained by business users. No need to involve IT developers.
Just like our templates, content is also maintained from one place, which makes applying changes very safe and efficient. You will always know what impact your updates will have ahead of making changes, since ActiveDocs components are aware of their relationships with others.
Mariano Urguiza, CIO at Choice Legal Group.
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How you use your templates should be flexible. With ActiveDocs, you can define this very precisely. Here is how your ActiveDocs templates can be used to generate your high-value documents accurately, every time:
Templates find the information they need, verify it, and include it in the compiled documents without involving users. Documents know when to generate themselves, and what should happen to them after – the process is driven by data and logic.
Exluding users from document processes eliminates human error. It minimises risk, and ensures compliance for your organization. Humans aren't consistent – programs are.
Users participate in document generation by providing and selecting information via responsive questionnaires. The data needed to compile documents is collected and processed in real time, with the users prompted only for what's relevant to the documents being created.
Documents are created on demand, whenever it suits you, as soon as you request them.
Automation can be a combination of fully automated and user-driven document production. It can be anything in between, adjusted to whatever level you require, combining the elements that will work best in your environment.
You can design a solution that makes the most of both of these approaches, and adjust the level of automation as required.
It's about what works best for you. Whichever method you choose for your automation solution, ActiveDocs will help minimize risk, and increase the efficiency and success of your high-value documents. You can adjust and scale your solution in line with your changing business demands to create and use your templates with confidence.
