The Title and Reference Generator allows you to configure a work type to automatically generate titles and references for child work items, based on system data or data entered by a user. Depending on how they are configured for a work type, the title or reference generated when a child work item is created may be set to allow users to edit them, or not, and uniqueness can be enforced for titles/references entered by a user.
Configure the generator
The generator is configurable when you edit work types with the work type modeller. Usually, the parent work type would have the generators configured, and this gets inherited by the work type's derived types (children). Find the Title and Reference card on the work type configuration by navigating to Modeller > Work type modeller, then open the work type whose generators you wish to configure.
A future article will describe every configuration available to the generators, while this article concentrates on a few specific items.
Reference generator
Use the Reference generator to configure the mask used by the system to generate work item references. Three modes are available:
- Auto-complete
- User
- Generator
Auto-complete mode
Selecting this mode causes the system to auto-complete the reference from the selected provider when a user starts typing in a reference field.
Auto-complete is an extension point to allow references to be looked up from external 3rd party systems and requires custom integration code.
User mode
To create your own mask for generated references, select the User mode. If you require unique values, check the relevant box. The help text (as shown in this image) shows you the format of the mask.
Generator mode
The Generator mode allows for three types of generators:
- Generate a unique send email token reference: generates a unique token reference for outbound emails and receipt tracking.
- Proceeding reference generator: generates a reference for a proceeding using a type and court reference.
- Configurable generic reference generator: provides support for generating references using lookup rules, sequences, roles, types, and terms. The image below shows these options.
The Generation mask shows what the generated reference will look like.
Recent enhancements to the configurable generic generator changed the “Get next sequence number for the sharedo type” option. The Get next sequence number option is relevant to the Reference generator and it is recommended against using for a Title generator. Titles are generated more than once (unlike references), so the title would change on every save.
Get next sequence number
When generating a reference, one of the options is to use an incrementing sequence number as part of the reference. The sequence can be based on either the Root sharedo type, or a particular Sharedo type. The Root sharedo type uses a deprecated method to get the sequence and is included only for backward compatibility. The preferred method is to use Sharedo type.
To configure your incrementing sequence, you must first pick a work type in the Choose type field. Any sequences based on this work type will use the same incrementing number sequence, ensuring that the resulting reference number is unique. Generally, it will be the top-level type. For example, for both Appointment and Prepare Document, the top-level type is Task, since they both sit beneath Task in the work type hierarchy.
Start new sequence for each parent/ancestor work item: Check this box if you want to restart the sequence for each parent work item of the type you specify. For example, if you have a sequence generator for type Task and the parent work type is configured as Matter, tasks within Matter A would have sequence numbers 001, 002 etc., but in Matter B they would begin at 001 again. Choose which number to start at by entering a number in the Start at field.
Enter a number in the Zero pad count to minimum characters field to determine how many characters are in the number. For example, if you have the number 6 in this field, and the next sequence number is 123, the work item's reference would be similar to {createdate}.000123.
Title generator
Use the Title generator to configure the mask used by the system to generate work item references. Two modes are available:
- User
- Generator
User mode
This is the simplest mode and allows the user to enter the title.
Generator mode
The title Generator mode allows for a number of different title generators. Most are self-explanatory or described in the text on-screen when you select them.
The Configurable generic title generator options are shown in this image.
The Generation mask shows what the generated title will look like.
Review
This article introduced you to the Title and Reference generators which are part of the Work Type configuration. It also explained the Get next sequence number functionality.