Adding Document Generation to Your MacroView DMF Solution

The Create Document plugin, which is available for download by MacroView DMF licensed customers free of charge, extends the right-click menu of MacroView DMF so that you can choose the template for creating a new Office document and have that new document saved in the area of SharePoint that you right-clicked.

Create Document displays a multi-level fly-out menu of available Microsoft Office templates

The Create Document plugin saves time and effort for Business Users by displaying a menu of available Office templates, including the templates that they would see if they were to start in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. To display its fly-out menus of available Office templates Create Document looks at the templates that are stored in the Workgroup Templates path. The screen shot below shows the nested folders in the Workgroup Templates path that were accessed to generate the fly-out menu for Correspondence in the above screen shot.

Workgroup Templates path – showing a Correspondence folder containing the MacroView Letter template

Using SharePoint Content Types to Deploy Templates

Templates that have been deployed by attaching them to SharePoint Content Types can also be displayed by Create Document: 

Create Document displays a dialog that allows the user to select from available Content Types, and so choose the associated template to be used as the basis for the new document.

Default (Blank) Templates

If no custom Microsoft Office templates have been deployed, Create Document will facilitate the creation of new blank documents using the default templates that are built into Microsoft Office applications.

Create Document display when no custom templates are available

What if the Template I Choose Has a Macro?

A macro is programming code stored in a template that can run as a new document is created from that template. The macro automates some of the tasks associated with generating the new document. To this end, the macro typically would display some form or forms to prompt the user for the details that need to be inserted in the new document, and / or to control the addition or removal of certain elements of the template.

If you use the New button in the SharePoint web browser UI and choose a content type, macros contained in the associated template will not run. By contrast, macros that are contained in the chosen template can run if the template is chosen from the menu displayed by the Create Document plug-in.  This is easily configured using an XML control file that ships with Create Document.

By using that XML configuration file you can also specify the location of the folders where the templates are stored (if you do not want to use the Workgroup Templates path) and whether the new document will be saved (with metadata) before the user gains control to start entering text in the new document. Create Document can even perform a check to see whether the SharePoint area that the user has right-clicked contains a particular Content Type that the template’s macro code might require in order to function correctly.

Silent Saving

For maximum Business User productivity Create Document also supports ‘silent saving’ of the generated documents by custom macro logic within the selected template. 

MacroView Professional Services can assist with the creation of Microsoft Office templates that: 

• help to enforce corporate branding,
• have best-practice use of styles and formatting
• integrate with Line-Of-Business systems to retrieve required details
• incorporate silent save logic.

The screen shot below shows the screen dialog displayed by a custom Microsoft Office Letter template custom-developed by MacroView.  When the user clicks OK the newly-generated document will be saved with an appropriate name and metadata in the correct SharePoint location, without the standard MacroView Save and Profiling dialogs being displayed (hence ‘silent save’).

Custom form displayed by a custom Microsoft Office template solution.

More Information

Please contact MacroView Services to arrange to download the Create Document plugin, or for information about how MacroView Professional Services can assist with the creation of Office templates, including those with ‘silent save’ logic. MacroView Services can also provide information about how MacroView ClauseBank streamlines document generation, while significantly reducing the number of Microsoft Office templates that you need to manage.