At the last Amicus Consultant’s Conference I demonstrated some innovative ways of improving the way HotDocs and Amicus interact. A recent post on the LinkedIn user’s group, Amicus Wizards, has prompted me to post some pictures from that demo. The question was asked why is the HotDocs interview generated automatically by Amicus so long with so many dialogs. The answer is that the automatically generated interview DOES NOT HAVE any dialogs, it is merely a list of variables that are used in the template in the order that they appear in the document.
Category: Document Assembly
HotDocs-Amicus Master Component Eases Integration
SQL Adventures – Navigating PCLaw Billing Preferences From HotDocs
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he answer to the question is “MatterInfoSpareLong2″. After several hours of searching, calls to former PCLaw product managers and tech support directors, I got the answer I was searching for. My odyssey had started with a simple request: “Produce a report that combines File details in Amicus Attorney with billing and receivables details in PCLaw. Having presented a seminar on integrating Amicus Attorney and HotDocs, I thought it a simple matter to integrate HotDocs and PCLaw.
On the surface, it was easy. In PCLaw there is a MattInf table that stores the Matter information. You can use the MatterID from within HotDocs to query the SQL database and get file information. On the MattInf table there is a ClientID that links to information on the primary client, allowing you to pull in client data. For current statistics, there is a MattBal that contains data on each file regarding account balance, receivables, billings etc.
TheFormTool Pro 2.0 – Document Assembly Lite
Matthew Berg recently reviewed TheFormTool Pro in the BigLaw newsletter distributed by TechnoLawyer. Having read the review and the videos of TheFormTool website, I applaud some the technology used by the developers of FormToolPro. It seems to make the “simple things” easy, and gives you somewhat more functionality than Merge Fields. The support for conditional fields and live variable edits is more than what you would expect from a cheap utility. It may be adequate for some of your needs; but not for all of your automation needs.
Don’t be deceived. Document assembly tools like HotDocs, XpressDox, DealBuilder and Exari offer a wealth more features. Handling of REPEATS or COLLECTIONS; seamless integration with databases, and support for nested levels of conditional logic are assumed in these systems. Check out the tool of course, but you will soon want to take automation to the next level of efficiency.
XpressDox Integration With Salesforce
Previously, I have written about XpressDox integration with Salesforce.com and Advologix from a technical side, how from Microsoft Word you can access your template library, launch a template, and pull data from a Salesforce.com based practice management system. Such approach is very powerful and cost effective. But it also requires you to have Microsoft Word installed with an XpressDox plugin.
This post, however, focuses on implementation of a completely cloud-based assembly engine integrated into Salesforce.com. A prototype has been tested and implemented on a client site; however the tool is not yet ready for public distribution. In this system, a simple button would be added to the Matter object (or any object) in Salesforce.
How to Access Amicus Attorney Custom Records From HotDocs
At the recent Gavel & Gown consultants conference, I demonstrated a new way to access data stored on Amicus Attorney Premium Edition. Because Premium Edition is run on SQL Server platform, there is a way, through a secure connector to access the data for document assembly through HotDocs. More on that later.