HotDocs – Document Creation for Documentum, Alfresco and Hadoop

Based on a client need and as part of our Contract Management solution, TSG has developed an integration to HotDocs and has also become a reseller for HotDocs.  HotDocs allows for data to drive the creation of documents and supports simple (ex: form letters) and complex (ex: contracts) document types.  TSG’s integration allows the data and documents as well as a PDF rendition to be stored in either Alfresco, Documentum or Hadoop.  This post will discuss and present a video of the integration.

HotDocs Capabilities

HotDocs provides both an on-premise as well as Software as a Solution (SaaS) model for access to the HotDocs Cloud Services. The HotDocs infrastructure provides:

1. Building of document templates from MS Word documents
2. The insertion of data rules into the document template
3. The accepting of data from external sources
4. An interview process to question for additional data
5. The creation of a document by processing the data with the data rules

The HotDocs overall approach is highlighted below:

Building document templates in HotDocs is fairly simple.  HotDocs supports typical If/Then logic based on variable names for data.  A typical example is shown below:

Variables are defined outside of the template.  Variables can either be populated from the application push or as part of the interview process.

The TSG integration calls HotDocs (either on premise or in the cloud) to pass data and capture the resulting document back into the ECM repository.

TSG HotDocs Integration

TSG’s HotDocs integration focuses on adding the following capabilities to the document creation process.

1. The ability to store accepted data into an ECM repository. In the video below, the data is brought in from Salesforce and stored in the folder meta-data as well as part of the Active Wizard document creation form.
2. The ability to interview for additional data with the data that is stored in the ECM repository. In the video below, the data is stored in an Active Wizard form.  The Active Wizard can store the data, render it into a summary form as well as initiate workflow approval of the finalized document.
3. The ability to call HotDocs from within the repository without the HotDocs interview process and store the resulting document as a version of the document in the ECM repository.

TSG’s HotDocs integration adds the following capabilities to HotDocs users:

• Ability to save data and version both the data and resulting document in a robust ECM repository.
• Ability to provide a data only form for approval before the data is passed to HotDocs for document creation. This is particularly helpful for complex documents where the approver does not want to have to review every page of the completed document.
• The ability for the interview process to contain data capture points for the approval routing itself.
• The ability to version completed documents.
• The ability to compare versions of documents to previous versions (and the default template) leveraging third party tools like Workshare Compare.

Let us know your thoughts below.