STRATEGIES AND DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
FOR MANAGING MICROSOFT WORD TEMPLATES
Our Microsoft Word document assembly solutions (Template Macro, Precedent
Retrieval Macro, and Document Assembly System) are optional components
our Word Macro package. Our strategies for managing Word templates automatically
apply for those applications, and you have a great deal of control over the
processes through database edits and INI keys.
We do emphatically recommend adopting a strategy to “manage” your
Word templates even if using third party software for document assembly.
TEMPLATE MANAGEMENT
A system that does not adopt a good strategy for managing Word templates
tends to be onerous to maintain, and can present a “nightmare” when
upgrading to a newer version of Microsoft Word or making significant change
to the computing environment. Such
systems can be especially problematic when your firm undertakes a letterhead
/ logo re-branding.
A system where all documents are linked to 20-50 “master Word templates” is
far easier to manage and migrate than a system where documents are linked
to 200 or 2,000 different templates.
To that end, our package of macros for Word includes a number of
features and design elements aimed specifically at managing templates to
keep the environment organized, easy to maintain
and flexible for changing
circumstances.
We deploy those strategies with our own document assembly tools, and
at your option, you can configure our system to adopt those or
similar practices
even if using third party document assembly software. In
fact, we do exactly that to integrate our solutions with existing clients’ third
party practice-specific document assembly applications.
“MASTER TEMPLATES” vs. “PRACTICE SPECIFIC” TEMPLATES
Our system design draws a clear distinction between master Word templates
and practice-specific Word templates.
While there may be hundreds (or for a large firm thousands) of
letter templates containing practice specific body content, there should
be one, and only one, master firm standard letter template. What should
happen, we believe, is that after initial assembly, any letter assembled
from one of those hundreds (or thousands) of “child” templates
should get permanently linked to the sole master letter template.
Hence, we spend a great deal of effort designing
the master Word templates for a new installation to achieve not only the desired appearance,
but also to implement the technical aspects required to support current
and future automation and management objectives.
SHOULD ALL DOCUMENTS REMAIN ATTACHED TO THE ORIGINAL TEMPLATE?
We believe the answer to that question is an emphatic “NO”. Generally
we attempt to design our environments so that documents remain attached
to the originating template ONLY if that
originating template does, or may likely in future, contain objects to be
made available permanently to all documents based on that template, such
as:
macros
building blocks
key mappings
Quick Access toolbar mappings
Ribbon customizations
Styles
If the originating template does not meet that criterion, our system
takes care of automatically attaching the new document to one of the
master templates.
The master templates house the objects that are to remain permanently
available to documents linked to them.
STORAGE STRATEGY FOR WORD TEMPLATES
As there are a relative few “master” Word templates,
we always store them on the local drive and automatically keep them
current as users log on to the network.
If you have ever sat and waited 20 minutes for Word to open a document
(the “slow opening bug” that can happen when
a document is attached to a network template that is no longer available),
you will appreciate why we locate the templates on the local drive.
Storing the master Word templates on the local drive also makes it
much easier for your administrators to modify those templates because
you avoid the problem that you cannot amend a shared template when
another user has a document linked to that template open in Word.
Our strategies for storage of templates and Word macros also consider
lawyers who frequently work offline on the laptop. The idea is that
the local files get updated automatically when the lawyer logs that laptop
onto the network. Later, off-line, that lawyer can create legal documents
and correspondence using the most current version of the firm’s master
templates, and have all of the numbering tools and other macros readily available.
In contrast, we usually locate the practice-specific
templates out on the network unless the client wishes to push them to the local
drive for off-line availability. Practice specific templates are subject
to frequent change (whereas master templates are not) and therefore it isn’t
usually practical to push them out to the local drive unless your computing
environment is at unusually high risk of network outage.
If you adopt our strategies for linking documents to local drive master
templates, the network templates are rarely, if ever, in use at the
time you wish to update them because immediately after assembly, we
reattach the document to a local drive “master” template.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR YOUR NEXT RE-BRANDING CONVERSION
Our strategies for handling the master firm
correspondence templates (fax,
letters, memos, accounts, etc.) illustrates our acute awareness that
at some point in the future your firm may decide to “re-brand” (revamp
its corporate logos and, hence, make sweeping changes to the layout of these
key templates).
Even if a “branding conversion” results in merely updating the
logo graphics for all letters, memos and faxes (and not a full reformatting
of the body), anticipating that up front can save a ton of collective time
when the event occurs.
Our strategies for managing document-to-template linkage, and for
formatting templates, are aimed at always keeping you in the best
possible state of readiness for that that branding conversion. The idea is
that when the event occurs, your users will be able to, at the push of a
button, instantly convert existing correspondence to the new formats.
If your branding conversion results in a mass reformatting of the body
of documents, that will, of course, require some custom macro programming.
Whether that task is small task, or a large task – or even feasible
at all - depends on whether the original design of the Word templates factored
in the possibility.
Some of the pre-emptive measures we like to take up front to address
this issue include
- all letters created from the system (including from third party document
assembly applications), get linked to a single master letter template
(as above).
- we assemble the letterheads/logo graphics at run-time rather than set
them into each and every template requiring those graphics
- auto-macros and Word event handlers ensure that letters and faxes
always stay linked to the master template
- the master correspondence templates are formatted with special template-specific
styles that support a programmatic reformatting of the
document with minimal code. A branding conversion macro can quickly change the
layout of a letter simply by editing the properties of those styles,
and by using those styles to reliably find specific elements to be reformatted
- we include document properties in the master templates to support
programmatic identification of documents and other information that
determines eligibility of, and instruction for, branding conversion
and other automation tasks.
CONSEQUENTIAL BENEFITS OF “MANAGED” WORD TEMPLATES
While the primary objectives for “managing” templates relate
to ease of administration and flexibility for future changes, the
pre-emptive steps to support those objectives allow us to provide some
cool toys for the users.
Because we have special styles and
reliable links between document and template, we can offer all of following
features in a way that allows us to configure them entirely with database
settings and autotext entries -- no custom programming is required.
- Maintain a single shared Word template for multiple firm
offices, and automatically assembly the logo graphics at assembly
time according to the current user’s office
- Create envelope or mail label by extracting from the letter on screen
(and populate the client-matter number, author initials, delivery
notations and privacy notions in the proper locations on the envelope
or label)
- Toggle a letter between pre-printed letterhead and “pseudo” letterhead
and simultaneously set select the proper paper bins for the current
printer
- Update letterhead graphics to the most current version
- Refresh the letterhead / logo graphics with the logs for the current
user’s office if the document originated at a different office
- Add / Remove acknowledgement of receipt stamps
- Add / Remove copy stamp
- Add / Remove fax disclaimer stamps (where users wish to fax the letter
directly, opting out of the fax cover sheet)
- Print letter macro that will do all of these steps
in a single pass (see our Word
Macros page for details)
- Shrink or expand a letter to fit page merely by editing the
styles
The styles that exist for the purpose for branding conversion
preparedness, and to support the tools above, come in very
handy when it comes to fitting a letter on the page. We can easily shrink or expand your letter to
fit the page and, unlike the native tool, do
so in a way that doesn’t
derogate from the corporate image the firm wishes to project through its standard correspondence templates.
- Add new recipient fax or letter (drawing the address from
Outlook or an external address sources)
All of these tools are completely customizable by editing
databases, INI files and/or editing building blocks located
in the master templates. No
programming is required.
WORD RIBBON CUSTOMIZATIONS
Because we manage the links between documents and master
Word templates (and because so doing requires a database table containing information
about the relative few “master” templates),
we can avoid maintenance nightmare that some firms are now
experiencing with Word 2010 ribbon customizations.
That is, the challenge of populating
the ribbon with controls to
access tools resident in the master templates. With Word 2003, that
task was simple – you simply created a toolbar in the
template and mapped the objects to the toolbar.
Replicating that functionality the Word 2010 ribbon presents
some challenges. What
some firms are doing is taking time to do the XML coding and VBA callbacks
for each and every master template that carries objects unique to that template. Of
course that means that if Word macros
apply to multiple templates, the
XML coding must be done in each and every relevant template.
We prefer to keep the environment easy to
maintain and
to that end have a solution that works well for us. That is, our Word ribbon
contains one, and only one,
ribbon control to access what we call “Template
Tools”. The ribbon control is a “dynamic menu” meaning
that its contents are populated at click time rather than
at system load time.
Hence, if you add a new macro to be available to all documents
linked to that template, you merely add a
row to the database.
When clicked, it queries the database of Word templates to
get a list of tools available to the current document’s
master template, and populates the menu with those items
only.
See below for an example for a letter, and for another master
template (“blank document on letterhead”). The
two templates share three macros in common (Add Logo Graphics,
Remove Logo Graphics, Update Logo Graphics).
 
The concept extends beyond the basic correspondence templates. The
BC Supreme Court Civil Rules bill of costs is a good example. After
initial document assembly, it is desirable to keep some tools handy for editing
the document. To that end, we set up a master template,
link all assembled bills of costs to the master and use the
template database to populate the template tools menu as
follows
WE ARE FLEXIBLE
We share our Word template management strategies here to
give the reader a sense of why things are as they are in
our macro package, and to give you some ideas for managing
your own Word macros and templates.
We do recognize that every firm is unique and
that we must (and we do) adjust our general strategies to
match the exact requirements of the client.
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