Authoring Documents Using the Word Add-in

Overview

The ShareDo Word Add-in provides the following tools for Document Authors.

Finding Reusable Content	Within ShareDo, reusable content is described as “Content Blocks”. Content Blocks can contain text, formatting or images. Within the Word add-in you can search for the relevant Content Block, preview it and then add it to your document. See Finding Reusable Content
Creating Reusable Content	Within Word you can selected content and create a reusable Content Block from this. This Content Block will then be available to other users. See Creating Reusable Content
Document Browser	When dynamic content has been used within your document - whether Tags, Sections or Content Blocks - these are visible within the Document Browser. The Document browser allows you to quickly “jump” to the relevant content or else remove it from your document entirely. See Document Browser
Refreshing Content in your document	Typically a generated document will be made up of many pieces of dynamic content such as tags and content controls. From within the word add-in you choose to refresh these with the latest versions stored in your ShareDo instance. See Updating Reusable Content
Finalising your document	When ShareDo generates a document for you it will add a number of content controls into which dynamic content is placed. These controls are necessary in order for you to be able to refresh the document with newer content. Often however you will want to remove these controls from documents before issuing them; you do this with the finalise action. See Finalising Your Document

Document Assembly Process Explained

As part of the document assembly process your template will be “merged” with ShareDo data and a new document generated, ready for the Document Author to review and amend as required.

This assembly process is performed as part of the Phase Plan for your Document Production work types.

i.e. When you progress your “Prepare Document” work type to the relevant phase – such as Generate - the merge process will begin. During this process

Each Dynamic Content control will have its Display Rules evaluated
If the Content control passes these rules then the relevant dynamic data will be inserted in it’s place.
Further, a variety of metadata relating to the work item, the source template and dynamic content are all inserted into the document’s properties. The Word add-in can read this metadata and effectively link the document back to the work item in ShareDo from which it was generated.

This link allows the Document Author to

Use the tools contained within the add-in to select pre-existing or create new, reusable content from ShareDo.
Refresh the document at any time to update it with the latest version of any dynamic content.

Once a document has been generated from ShareDo, the add-in will show

The name of the generated document at the top of the form (this typically contains a date/time suffix)
The ShareDo template that was used to generate the document

Finding Reusable Content

Note, to access the function, the user will need the ShareDo permission: “Content Blocks – Read” within the “Documents” category.

Since Content Blocks are stored as documents in the DMS, if the primary Word document references a Content Block but that block's document does not exist in the DMS or the path to the block's document is incorrect, you will encounter a 404 error when attempting to generate a document that references the Content Block.

To find reusable content within the Add-in, browse to “Content Blocks”:

You will be presented with a list of content blocks available for use.

To find the relevant Content Block, you can filter by keyword or user-defined tags. Clicking on the relevant Content Block will show you a preview of the content.

Clicking “insert” will then insert that content into your document at your cursor position. Note that a green tick appears in the Content Block on the right-hand side to denote that it is being used in this document:

Creating Reusable Content

Note, to access the function, the user will need the ShareDo permission: “Content Blocks – Create” within the “Documents” category.

To create a Content Block from within Word, you first need to select some content and then press the “Create” button.

ShareDo will then present you with the following form to complete.

Enter the following:

A meaningful short Title and longer Description
Enable for Template Authors and/or Document Authors. Toggle the relevant setting on or off to allow other Document Authors or Template Authors to use the new Content Block.
User-defined Tags. Enter a short name that can be used to “Tag” the Content Block. If the Tag does not already exit, an option to create it anew will be presented. As seen above, the list of Content Blocks can be filtered by these Tags.

Updating Reusable Content

As mentioned above, the add-in establishes a link between the metadata within the generated document and ShareDo. Accordingly, it can identify whether a new version of a Content Block used in the document has become available.

Note that this function only applies to the “HTML” style Content Blocks created either through the Add-in (as described above) or via the Contents Block editor in ShareDo. This functionality does not extend to Content Blocks created and saved as Word documents within ShareDo.

Toggle the following option on to filter the list and show only those Content Blocks that have been updated:

Clicking on the Refresh All button and answering Yes will replace every Content Block in the document with the latest version.

Alternatively, to review and update each Content Block manually, click on the black “paper” icon to the right of the Content Block description:

The latest Version details are shown. Click the Refresh button to replace any instances of the Content Block in the document with the most recent version.

Document Browser

When dynamic content such as Tags, Sections or Content Blocks is included in your document, you can see this via the Document Browser menu option:

Expand the section to see the elements underneath:

Clicking on an element will take you to the relevant place within the document.

It will also present a delete option - this is the preferred method of removing elements from the document (rather than deleting them directly from within Word) as it keeps the contents of the document in synch with the metadata presented in this panel.

Finally, note the Version number of the Content Blocks used when the document was generated. As detailed above, if a new version of a Content Block becomes available, the document can be updated to use that later version.

Finalising Your Document

When dynamic content is added to your document, it is placed within Word Content controls.

You can see the content controls used in your document in several ways, including:

Within the Word document, when you hover over a content control, it will change its highlight colour:
Via the Word Add-in “Document Browser”, this will show a tree view of all content controls in your document:

There are circumstances, however, when you will want to remove these content controls from the document in their entirety.

To do this click the Finalise menu option and click “Remove all content controls”:

NOTE: Once all content controls are removed from a document, it will no longer be possible to refresh any dynamic content within the document.