J
JustSomeGuy
A user is creating a new proposal, using a proposal template. The template
was derived from a successful proposal, but all customer- and Job-specific
information has been omitted from the template to ensure there is no
inappropriate information embedded in the template that could be
inadvertently included in a new proposal.
This, therefore, leaves a lot of blank areas in the proposal template. Some
of these blanks can be filled in through simple autotext entries and/or
through the use of Bill Coan's DataPrompter/Boilerplate program, but other
blanks may require more extensive lookup capabilities.
The idea of a template is to give the user everything they need, in one
place, to create a new document. Therefore, an ideal template arguably not
only provides the desired format, or skeleton, for the new document, but it
also provides lookups, popups, and other data-gathering windows or links, so
that information can be found and brought into the template without having to
launch other programs. This enables the user to stay focused on the immediate
task at hand, rather than getting sidetracked through so many side-routines
that they forget what they were trying to accomplish.
For example, let's say the proposal had a "past performance" section, and
the company has 2500 past projects. Ideally, the user wants the ability to
click in that blank area and have a second window open, in which the user can
conduct a quick ad-hoc search and/or browse through a database, spreadsheet,
or external word table, sorting contents by project type, date, etc. to
ultimately locate and select an appropriate, related kind of project success
story and have it immediately populate that blank area of the proposal.
The question is, are there ways to give a template more convenient external
lookup capabilities, without first completing a six month course in VBasic
and Word Macro syntax?
was derived from a successful proposal, but all customer- and Job-specific
information has been omitted from the template to ensure there is no
inappropriate information embedded in the template that could be
inadvertently included in a new proposal.
This, therefore, leaves a lot of blank areas in the proposal template. Some
of these blanks can be filled in through simple autotext entries and/or
through the use of Bill Coan's DataPrompter/Boilerplate program, but other
blanks may require more extensive lookup capabilities.
The idea of a template is to give the user everything they need, in one
place, to create a new document. Therefore, an ideal template arguably not
only provides the desired format, or skeleton, for the new document, but it
also provides lookups, popups, and other data-gathering windows or links, so
that information can be found and brought into the template without having to
launch other programs. This enables the user to stay focused on the immediate
task at hand, rather than getting sidetracked through so many side-routines
that they forget what they were trying to accomplish.
For example, let's say the proposal had a "past performance" section, and
the company has 2500 past projects. Ideally, the user wants the ability to
click in that blank area and have a second window open, in which the user can
conduct a quick ad-hoc search and/or browse through a database, spreadsheet,
or external word table, sorting contents by project type, date, etc. to
ultimately locate and select an appropriate, related kind of project success
story and have it immediately populate that blank area of the proposal.
The question is, are there ways to give a template more convenient external
lookup capabilities, without first completing a six month course in VBasic
and Word Macro syntax?