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: HotDocs
HotDocs-Amicus Master Component Eases Integration
SQL Adventures – Navigating PCLaw Billing Preferences From HotDocs
T
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.
HotDocs Tips – Importing from Outlook
Working with Outlook
HotDocs has for years had a connector to Microsoft Outlook. It is an effective tool for importing data. However, the data that comes in, often needs to be “cleaned up” before it can be used.
- State Field: The state can sometimes be entered as Abbreviated (e.g. NY) or as a Full State (“New York”) which causes problems on import if you importing into a Multiple Choice field
- Street Field: The “Address” in Outlook is different from the BusinessAddressStreet field. And that field can have multiple lines in it, affecting how that text appears in your template where you may have coded Street1 and Street2
Further, some of the mappings in the tool are confusing because of the terminology used by Outlook and that used by most HotDocs coders can be quite different.
- Which Address: In Outlook there is a MailingAddress, a HomeAddress and a BusinessAddress. If you are importing into a primary address, then you would choose MailingAddress. If it is a Business, with a Company, you should use Business Address.
- Salutation, Title and Job Title: These fields are confusing since Title is “Mr.” or “Mrs”, Saluation is non-existent, and JobTitle is the positon someone holds at a company.
Must Software Evolve?
It has been a year and a half since Capsoft UK (based in Scotland) purchased the HotDocs division from LexisNexis, and the combined entity became HotDocs Limited . In this time period, HotDocs came out with a major release of its server product, including enhancements for integration with sharepoint, as well as a “shrink-rapped” portal for HotDocs Server. By switching from Javascript to the Silverlight engine, HotDocs was able to vastly speed up the rendering time for complex document assembly interviews. These high-end products put HotDocs squarely in line for the corporate general counsel market and for high-end law firms seeking to avoid the cost of desktop deployment of software. HotDocs provided partner training for the server product, and invested R&D in bringing the Server product up to near parity with its desktop product.
On the desktop side, the changes were more on branding, than on improvements. HotDocs 10 was released to handle compatibility with the release of Microsoft Office 2010. HotDocs 2009, developed under the tenure of LexisNexis, did a major switch to XML component files and to Unicode (t0 support foreign languages). However, there was little in the way of new features or options in either HotDocs 2009 or HotDocs 10. On the marketing front, HotDocs Professional (with HotDocs PDF Advantage) became HotDocs Developer (at $800) . HotDocs Standard became HotDocs Developer Lite (now at $500). And a new product HotDocs User (at $300), a “player edition” of HotDocs that could only be used to assemble documents was introduced.
HotDocs has over 500,000 users according to the HotDocs website. It is a product that has revolutionized the practice of law. It has dramatically increased the productivity of thousands of lawyers as well as their profitability. We have used it internally, and have built systems with it for nearly 15 years and so have an intimate knowledge of the product and its capabilities.
Some say it is “nearly perfect”. Others that it is the “Gold Standard”. What is true, is that all other document assembly systems are to be measured against it. “I can do it in HotDocs … Why can’t I do it with your product?” There are so many features to the product and so many capabilities. And yet, no program is perfect. Software evolves as new needs arise, as the product is put to new uses. New ideas generate new solutions to old problems. There needs to be some “new reason” to get the product, some sense that the product is dynamic, growing and evolving. Microsoft Office is being supplanted by GoogleDocs and OpenOffice, or OS-X version of Microsoft Word, and yet HotDocs templates can not be developed in those environments. Law firm web sites are morphing into “portals” through which clients and prospects communicate with their Attorneys, and yet HotDocs does not have a low-cost web-service that allows law firms to integrate their web-data, their practice-management systems and their document assembly systems. In our new “connected” world, dominated by “social networks” our legal software needs to evolve.
Time Matters 11 – HotDocs Active Integration (Bug Fix)
The Author
For 15 years I have been working with HotDocs and Time Matters, working to ensure the smooth data-flow between those 2 programs. We have used several methods, including (1) template registration and field mapping, (2) active integration (lookup from HotDocs), and (3) SQL database integration. But realize our surprise on a recent Time Matters 11 upgrade to a long-time client when the Active Integration ceased to work. Rather than getting a Contact list or Matter list when we ran our HotDocs interview, we got a picklist, with NO DATA. Quelle disaster!!
But, luckilly, there is an easy solution. The issue has to do with a failure in TM11 to properly register Time Matters application in the section of the registry for HotDocs. You have the choice of MANUALLY editing the registry. Or, you can save the text below to a TEXT file in NotePad. Call it “TM11-HotDocs10 Registrity Fix.reg”. And then execute it on all workstation.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HotDocs\HotDocs\Answer Sources]
"Time Matters - Contact"="c:\\Program Files\\LexisNexis\\Time Matters 11\\TMHDASC7.DLL"
"Time Matters - Matter"="c:\\Program Files\\LexisNexis\\Time Matters 11\\TMHDASA7.DLL"
Disaster averted. There are of course other issues that come with the upgrade. But this one will make your life much easier.
BTW … Welcome to my new blog. Basha Systems LLC has moved their blog from ExpressionEngine to WordPress. We have also consolidated all our Tips Blogs (for HotDocs, GhostFill and Time Matters) into the main blog. However, for those looking for timps, you can still use a menu item or subscribe to just a category. Cheers, Seth.