Dynamic Document Creation: Best Practices

Creating dynamic documents can significantly improve efficiency and personalisation in business processes. TemplateTo offers powerful tools for dynamic document creation, including logic blocks and reusable content. This guide explores the best practices for utilising these features.

Using Logic Blocks

Logic blocks allow you to conditionally include or exclude content in your documents. This is especially useful for creating personalised documents where content varies based on specific criteria.

Implementing Conditional Logic

TemplateTo uses the Liquid engine, which supports conditional statements. For example, you can display different messages based on customer status (premium or regular).

Examples:

1. Membership Programmes: For a membership programme, premium members can receive special offers, while regular members get upgrade prompts. This ensures each member sees content relevant to their status.
2. Marketing Emails: In a marketing campaign, send different offers based on the recipient’s previous purchase behaviour, ensuring higher engagement and conversion rates.
3. Legal Documents: For legal services, customise contract clauses based on the client’s jurisdiction or contract type, ensuring compliance and relevance.

Looping Through Data

Another powerful feature is looping through data collections. This is useful for generating tables or lists dynamically. For instance, you can iterate over each item in an order to create a detailed list.

Examples:

1. E-commerce Packing Slips: Automatically generate packing slips that list all items in a customer’s order, ensuring accuracy and saving time.
2. Financial Reports: For accounting firms, dynamically generate financial reports that list all transactions within a specified period, improving efficiency and accuracy.
3. Marketing Analytics: Create comprehensive marketing performance reports by looping through campaign data to provide detailed insights.

Reusable Content

Reusable content blocks ensure consistency and save time by allowing you to define content once and reuse it across multiple templates.

Creating Reusable Content

Define reusable content blocks using Content Blocks in the UI. Include Content Blocks in your main template by using the ContentBlock Element to select the block you want to include and maintain uniformity across documents.

Examples:

1. Company Footers: A company can use the same footer in all their documents, containing contact information and legal disclaimers. Any updates to the footer are made once, and all documents are automatically updated.
2. Marketing Templates: Create a reusable content block for email headers and footers, ensuring brand consistency across all marketing communications.
3. Legal Disclaimers: For legal firms, include standard legal disclaimers and terms in various documents, ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of omissions.

Using Variables in Reusable Content

You can also pass variables to reusable content blocks, making them even more flexible. This allows for dynamic adjustments to the content based on the input provided.

Examples:

1. Personalised Greetings: In marketing emails, pass customer names and personalised messages to reusable content blocks to create customised greetings.
2. Invoice Details: For accounting software, pass invoice numbers, dates, and customer details to a reusable invoice template, ensuring consistency and accuracy.
3. Contract Clauses: For legal documents, pass specific contract terms and conditions based on the client’s requirements, ensuring each document is tailored and precise.

Best Practices for Dynamic Document Creation

1. Plan Your Template Structure

Before creating your templates, plan the structure and identify sections that will use dynamic content. This helps in organising your data and logic blocks effectively.

2. Use Descriptive Variable Names

Use clear and descriptive names for your variables and logic blocks. This makes your templates easier to read and maintain.

3. Test with Sample Data

Always test your templates with sample data to ensure that the dynamic content renders correctly. TemplateTo’s interface allows you to input JSON data for testing purposes.

4. Keep Reusable Content Modular

When creating reusable content, keep it modular and focused on a single purpose. This enhances reusability and reduces complexity.

5. Leverage TemplateTo’s Documentation

TemplateTo offers comprehensive documentation on working with variables, using Liquid, and integrating advanced features. Refer to the TemplateTo Documentation for detailed guidance.

Conclusion

Dynamic document creation with TemplateTo can streamline your document workflows and enhance personalisation. By using logic blocks and reusable content, you can create flexible, efficient, and maintainable templates. Follow the best practices outlined in this guide to maximise the benefits of TemplateTo’s capabilities.

For more information on TemplateTo’s features and abilities see document template builder page.