The ascend instruction is used with the REPEAT instruction to sort the resulting output. Here’s what the official HotDocs help file states:
The ASCEND instruction sorts lists of answers (gathered using a REPEAT instruction) in alphanumeric order, from 1 to 9, and from A to Z. The DESCEND instruction sorts lists of answers from 9 to 1, and from Z to A.
There are two major uses for the ASCEND instruction: in a computation and in a template.
Consider a lease where you may wish to generate a list of lessors, sorted ASCENDING by last name, then first name (say, a husband and wife on the lease – the last name isn’t quite enough). Your template may look like this:
«REPEAT LESSORS RPT::>LESSORS Name Last TE:>LESSORS Name First TE»
– «LESSORS Name Full CO»
«END REPEAT»
The above template code is generated for you by HotDocs’ REPEAT builder, using the advanced options (1 or 2 level sorts, filters and list format example.
Alternatively, you may wish to create a list of all Plaintiffs in a single variable. This is a very handy and common use in litigation type systems – you use computations to generate a list of parties in the matter in different formats, and output the result to a text variable. Thereafter, you dont have to REPEAT every time you want a pre-set & formatted list of parties – you simply use the text variable you SET.. Your computation to output a list of all Plaintiffs may look something like this:
SET PLF Names All TE TO “” // clear our variable where the result will land
“” //start off the computation with an empty (but necessary) result
REPEAT PLAINTIFFS RPT
FORMAT (“a, b and c”)
ASCEND PLFS Name Last TE
RESULT + PLFS Name Full CO
END REPEAT
SET PLF Names All TE TO RESULT
After this computation is run via your interview process, PLF Names All TE will now hold the value of all plaintiff full names in the matter, sorted alpha by last name, and may appear something like this:
Billy Blogs, John Doe and Marcus Fitzgerald