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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.

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Contract Express