Defining the question and answer type
The type of a variable determines the kinds of values that can be entered into the field on the questionnaire and how that information can be used in your master document. For example, when
Contract Express
encounters a date type it will add a field and a calendar popup box on the questionnaire page. When displaying the answer to this date in the generated document you can choose whether to have it display in short form eg 01/01/2008, long form 1st January 2008 or a custom format.The type of variable also determines how you can manipulate that variable in your master document. A variable whose type is set to a number can be used in numeric calculations. For example, it is possible to add two number variables together and put the resultant calculation into a field in the document.
Variables that ask the user to choose from a series of selections are well suited for controlling the inclusion of conditional text. This is because each item of conditional text is based on some pre-configured option, rather than a number or free text.
A variable's type is defined by the Type attribute. See Editing variables for more details. The following is a summary of the supported types:
Type | Text |
|---|---|
Text | Any single row of text |
MultiLine Text | Any multi-line text |
Text Selection | A list of text selections from which one or many can be chosen (see box below) |
File Upload | A path to a document to be uploaded and re-generated |
Yes/No | Yes or No options |
Whole Number | A whole number, including positive and negative numbers but no decimals |
Decimal Number | Any number, including positive and negative whole numbers and decimal numbers |
Date | Any date |
Time | Any time |
Entity | A collection of data values from multiple variable types |
Computable | Derived from an expression. Could be a calculation containing number variables, a concatenation of text variables or a business rule based on multiple text selections with "AND" and "OR" operators |
note
Even if your text selection contains a list of numbers,
Contract Express Author
will treat these as text options - you must refer to them with quotes in Business Rules. If you want to perform numeric calculations on text selection options then you will need to convert them to a number using the ToNumber function.