Skip to main content

Solutions

Law firms

Tax, audit & accounting firms

Corporations

Governments

Products

Legal

Trade & supply

Tax, audit & accounting

Corporate tax

Risk & fraud

Books

Recommended products

Questions? We are here to help.
Contact us

Purchase

Buy solutions

Buy books

Contact sales

Questions? We are here to help.

Resources

Insights

Events

Product training

Product communities

Developers

Author Online

Template properties and Upload settings

Manage template properties and uniquely identify the template using the settings available in the Upload and test section of the Review tab.
Template name
The template name is a required field that uniquely identifies the template upon server upload and will be shown to the end users when they search for the relevant template. There is no restriction on characters used in a template name, however the inclusion of certain characters will mean that the name needs to be surrounded in single quotes when being referenced in other templates.
note
Escape character \
If you include a single quote as part of the variable Name, the Variable Editor will automatically add a backslash character to escape the quote: \'
Similarly, if the name includes a backslash, the variable editor will prefix this with a further backslash character \\
If you add fields into the template as you type, you must remember to escape quotes and backslashes where necessary.
note
Reserved words
There are a number of reserved words which variable names cannot contain such as AND and NOT.
Below is the full list for reference:
alt, and, answered, as, attach, attribute, authornote, by, capitals, cell, cloaked, collect, collectvalues, committed, datatype, deferred, definite, doctitle, document, else, every, exists, export, expressiontext, false, foreach, format, from, hyperlink, if, ifknownelse, include, is, isatleast, isatmost, islessthan, ismorethan, isnot, known, knowntrue, label, list, lower, mark, nonmutualand, nonmutualor, nonrepeated, not, note, now, occurrence, onlyoninput, onlyonoutput, onlyother, or, other, otherselections, picture, prefix, prescribedselections, proper, punctuation, ref, reference, relevance, repeat, repeatcontext, repeatcounter, select, selectionoptions, sensitive, simplify, spanrelevance, style, sure, template, templaterelevantce, textfile, then, to, today, true, unrepeated, upper, using, value, where, with, xor
Additionally, you cannot use the following symbols as the variable name (but they can be included as part of the variable name if quoted):
+ - * / // , ( ) # ? .
Version
A template version is a saved copy of a template that has been uploaded to Contract Express, usually identified by a version number such as 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0. If no version number is entered, Author Online automatically uses the upload date and time to create a new, unique version.
Additional settings
Generated document name
The generated document name appears on the questionnaire's compiled document page and describes the document that was created. This name can include dynamic information using active text in curly brackets, allowing values such as variables or functions to be inserted, for example: "Contract Lease for {LandlordName} – {today}".
Description
Use this field to provide additional information about the template, which are visible to users when they select the template.
Keyword
Use this option to store keywords that help uniquely identify the template when it is reused for different use cases.
note
The values entered in these fields are automatically saved; no additional action is needed.

Upload and test

To check your progress with template creation, test the template by uploading it and launching the questionnaire. The questionnaire will open in a web browser window.
Upload and test template in Contract Express.
  • Continue with existing document
     – This will allow you to reuse the previous test document within a session, retaining populated answers for iterative testing.
  • Start a new test document
     – This will open a new questionnaire and will not retain previously saved answers.
  • Upload Only
     - Uploads the template, but will not open a browser window to test the questionnaire.
Manage template
The 'Manage Template' option will open a web browser and take you to the template details page within Contract Express. On this page, you have several options for managing your templates. You can share your template with other authors, assign the relevant profile and locale to ensure the correct customisation options and settings are applied.
Managing uploaded template with various options.
Once the template is ready, publish and share it with the end users.
If you need automation logic that isn't available in the new author add-in, switch to the original author add-in and convert your template from content-control markup to character-based markup.
note
  1. More functionality will be added to this add-in every month. Look out for our release announcements!
  2. For more help on other topics, please refer to Contract Express help and support page https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/help/contract-express

This article applies to:

  • Product: Contract Express