“The most important piece of a business document system is the document generation software because you can’t manage,convert or collaborate on a document unless you’ve created it in the first place.”
You need an automated solution for your documents, but it’s tough to know where to start. Should you be looking for a document generation solution? Document creation software? A document management system? Document collaboration tools?Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an easy answer—until now. This white paper addresses all the above questions and more. It breaks down what each term means, shows you how they’re related, and introduces you to some key software programs and vendors in each arena.
Suppose you create policies, statements, employment letters, and other types of documents for your insurance company, bank, law firm, health care agency, government agency, etc. Into these documents you need to place information, which can take the form of items such as dates, contact information, and boilerplate paragraphs of text. And all this information is stored in a database or other data source such as an Excel spreadsheet.
In this situation you’re looking for a document generation solution. Document generation is an automated way of producing documents and reports and is extremely useful for businesses that create embedded software. You create a template and specific information from the data source populates the template when the document is generated.
Document generation is also referred to as document creation, document automation, and mail merge. There’s also document assembly, which is just one part of this process—the actual merging of the data with the template.
A similar term causes a great deal of confusion when searching for “document generation”software online. The terms documentation generator and document generator often appear in search results when you type “document generation,” and while the words are similar, the concepts are not.
A documentation generator is a programming tool that generates software documentation intended for programmers (API documentation)or end users (end user guides), or both. A document generator has a very narrow use case; it’s for when you create software and need documentation about your software applications to show users how they work.
Let’s say your organization has thousands of documents, and you need a system to track, store, organize and otherwise manage them.
This is where document management comes in.A document management system stores and organizes digital documents. It often includes features like workflow and metadata (which may show the date the document was stored and the identity of the user.) So, for example, where you might use document generation software to create your insurance policies, you would store those policies in and access them from a document management system.
Document collaboration software does just what the name implies; it allows more than one person to work on (i.e. edit) a particular document. Typically document collaboration systems include built-in version control, a process that lets users check in and check out documents. This ensures that two people aren’t unknowingly editing a document simultaneously, and it also allows users to retrieve earlier versions.
Document collaboration can be a feature of a document generation system, but not all document generation systems allow for document collaboration.
Lastly, suppose you have a file in one format,such as Microsoft Word (.DOCX), that must be in a different format, such as a PDF. In this case you would use a document converter, which is software that automatically converts from one file format to another. Document converters do not actually create documents; instead, they allow you to modify already existing documents.
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The most important piece of a business document system is the document generation software, because you can’t manage, collaborate on or convert a document unless you’ve created it in the first place. This is why document generation is the heart of all the systems covered here.
In addition, multiple individuals may work together to create the document (document collaboration), but collaboration obviously is not required to create and generate a document. Some document generation solutions have features that allow for collaboration (such as solutions that use the Microsoft Office interface), while others do not and require you to invest in that component separately.
After the document has been created, it may also be transformed into another format. Document conversion, by definition, happens after document creation. And as with document collaboration, it is not necessarily a required step because the document generation solution may have already produced the document in the desired format. In other words, some document generation solutions include built-in document converter tools.
The final piece of the puzzle is document management. This often is a separate solution; document management systems do not typically offer document generation capabilities, and document generation systems do not typically offer document management features.
Now that you have a solid grasp of the different types of document software on the market, let’s look at a few major players in each category. Some of the solutions fall into multiple categories, but we’ve listed them here based on their primary or best-known purpose.
Windward: Windward’s unique and flexible solution is one of the few—if not the only—document generation software programs on the market that lets users design, edit and generate documents completely in Microsoft Word and Excel. This allows business professionals to create letters, policies, contracts, statements and other company documents without relying on IT while still maintaining complete control over the exact document layout desired. Along with document generation, Windward has builtin document collaboration (through the MSOffice interface) and document conversion tools.
Windward is also known for the powerful engine behind the MS Office design interface. The Windward Java or .NET Engine runs on one or more servers as part of your server-based application and can easily produce millions of pages per day. In addition, Windward is known for outstanding customer service. (See side baron page 5 for one customer’s experience with Windward.)
Windward Studios has been in business since 1997 and is based in Boulder, Colorado. Windward has customers spanning 70 countries in industries including consulting, banking,energy, financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, technology, telecommunications and transportation. Plus, Windward has partnered with ISVs, Systems Integrators, ASPs and Resellers to help them deliver exquisite reports and excellent support.
HotDocs: HotDocs is a software platform that automates the process of producing documents and forms. The HotDocs process app queries a user for all the information necessary to generate a document (or set of documents) and then generates the documents, inserting and formatting variable information, inserting the right clauses based on transactional conditions, and inserting correct pronouns and verbs.
HotDocs began as a research project in the 1970's at Brigham Young University Law School. HotDocs Corporation became the property of LexisNexis in in 1999, and in 2009, Capsoft UK bought the HotDocs business from LexisNexis. HotDocs is focused on the banking, legal, insurance, government and publishing industries.
Paris Desktop: Paris Desktop is a document creation system that is a single point of control for the production of personalized documents. From the Paris Desktop Launchpad, users can create a new document type, print a job by merging variable data from a database file, or print copies of Forms. It is designed to print directly to a wide range of supported Xerox devices Paris Desktop is available from XLPrint software, a Xerox alliance partner. XLPrinth s been producing document production and workflow solutions for more than 25 years;XLPrint is headquartered in Surrey, England with offices in Australia and the United States.
Microsoft SharePoint: At its core, Microsoft SharePoint Online is a content and document management service. Users log in through the SharePoint portal where they can checkout, edit, organize and otherwise manage documents. Recently, however, Microsoft has expanded SharePoint’s capabilities; it now includes technologies for designing websites and an offline desktop service.
Dokmee: Dokmee is document management software that can both be run on an intranet with multi-user capabilities or as a web hosted system with access from multiple web browsers. It carries a wide array of features such as an organized folder structure, keyword and full-text searches, unlimited scanning from workstations, index fields and annotations.
BlueDoc: Web-based BlueDoc from BlueProject Software is a robust system designed for multiple users simultaneously. It allows users to define document categories, search on multiple criteria (including full-text and file formats), manage access rights, define workflows, and create and recall document versions.
Perforce Commons: Perforce Commons is a drag-and-drop document collaboration program for business files ranging from Microsoft Word documents to hefty video files. Users drop their files into the software and it automatically stores them, creates back-up copies and assigns versions numbers. The program provides the ability for individuals to view changes before merging files, accept or reject edits within documents, and work in parallel across teams while storing information in the permanent file history.
MediaWiki: MediaWiki is free, open source software that was created for Wikipedia but whose use has been expanded into other wikis. Organizations use the software to allow users to collaborate on Web-based documentation. For example, Stanford University’s IT department offers it to departments and groups that post wikis on the Stanford.edu website.Google Drive: No roundup of document collaboration tools would be complete without mentioning the popular site.
Google Drive: A beefed-up version of Google Docs, it is a place for users to upload, edit, create and share documents (among other things). The web interface offers features such as visibility options, access levels, adding collaborators via name or mailing list, and transferring file ownership.
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Neevia Document Converter: This free online tool allows you to upload individual documents and then output them as PDF or image files. The file is stored as a URL that you can view and share with others. Neevia also offers the option of compressing, merging or resizing PDF files online, and the Document Converter Pro tool allows for batch conversion.
AVS Document Converter: The AVS DocumentConverter is a downloadable product for converting files to and from a wide range of formats, including DOC, PDF, DOCX, RTF, TXT,HTML, TIFF and more. Notable features include the ability to transfer regular text formats to e-pub format in order to create e-books, password and editing restrictions for PDF documents, and automatic file compression.The AVS interface is available in English, French,German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Russian.
Aspose.PDF for .NET: Aspose.Pdf for .NET is a PDF document converter that enables .NET(ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET) applications to read,write and create PDF documents. It supports a wide range of input and output formats and the feature set includes PDF compression options, table creation, support for graph objects, hyperlink functionality, extended security controls, custom font handling, and data integration.
The ideal solution for your business may be one or a combination of any of the above types of document software, and keep in mind that some software packages offer multiple functions. But they all have one thing in common: they are designed to automate document processes, and that automation will save you valuable time and money.
Why the Windward Document Generation Solution?
Unlike other docgen tools, the Windward solution allows your end users to efficiently create and update document templates without taxing developers.
At Windward, we believe that creating documents should be simple and that free-form template design is a must. You deserve attractive, informative and impressive documents, but most of the solutions companies build or are forced to rely on make it overly complex and tedious.
That’s the problem we set out to solve. Windward provides a unique experience using Microsoft Office to format and edit document templates. Behind the scenes, Windward’s sophisticated engine pulls data from multiple sources and merges that data into your documents, creating a fast and hassle-free experience that can make generating documents fun.
Windward delivers a solution that allows IT professionals to create basic templates and business users to customize those templates and create variations to meet their reporting needs.
Unlike other docgen tools, the Windward solution allows your end users to efficiently create and update document templates without taxing developers.
At Windward, we believe that creating documents should be simple and that freeform template design is a must. You deserve attractive, informative and impressive documents, but most of the solutions companies build or are forced to rely on make it overly complex and tedious.
That’s the problem we set out to solve. Windward provides a unique experience using Microsoft Office to format and edit document templates. Behind the scenes, Windward’s sophisticated engine pulls data from multiple sources and merges that data into your documents, creating a fast and hassle-free experience that can make generating documents fun.
Windward delivers a solution that allows IT professionals to create basic templates and business users to customize those templates and create variations to meet their reporting needs.
If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
Document Automation (also known as document assembly) is the design of systems and workflows that assist in the creation of electronic documents. These include logic-based systems that use segments of preexisting text and/or data to assemble a new document.
Document Generation is the process of creating hundreds, thousands, or even millions of personalized and distinct documents for internal or external use from a single template. While Document Generation is a subset of automation, for some products (not all) you can’t get just the Document Generation component of a Document Automation solution.
Reporting Software is a subset of Document Generation. Reporting software can’t do documents. But Document Generation software easily creates reports.
Tags are elements placed in the automation documentation template (DOCX, PPTX, XLSX) that the docgen system acts on when generating a document. These tags can be data to insert, business logic rules to conditionally display or suppress content, and much more. Each vendor has their own term for “tags.”
NOTE:
Going forward, the word docgen will be used to stand for Document Generation system in this guide. When something is template based Document Automation system, the word docauto will be used.
Every modern docgen product uses Microsoft Office as the template designer. While you can find a few very old products that have their own designer, you want to limit your consideration to those built on Office as it is far superior.
Some document generation solutions work with Word, Excel, & PowerPoint while others are Word only. If you need Excel & PowerPoint, then obviously, go with a solution that supports them too. If you only need document automation tools using Word, think carefully if you might want Excel or PowerPoint someday in the future.
Again: if you go with a Word document automation solution, be very sure you won’t ever want Excel or PowerPoint. Ever!
The docgen solutions that have a separate addin or no add-in can usually work with any Word processor that can save as a DOCX file. It all tends to work exactly the same. For a full Word clone, this can work every bit as well.
Google Docs in this case though tends to be problematic because Google Docs does not have the layout and formatting capability of Microsoft Word. Not even close. Your limit here is not the docgen app; it’s Google Docs. For most use cases, Google Docs is not up to the job.
Some docgen solutions include an add-in to help you place & edit the tags in the template. These come in two flavors; one much better.
First, some automated document creation solutions have no add-in to assist in crafting tags. You usually end up with notepad open where you write all the various tags and you copy from there and paste into Word. And for special uses, you type in, from memory or other notes, the additional properties.
This “no add-in” approach is slow, painful, & error prone. If you have 5 templates, each with 5 tags – then no big deal. But if every month you’re creating 100 templates, each with 150 tags, you’re now in hell.
While Windward can legitimately claim to be a "no Add-In" solution for designing on platforms other than Windows - we find that approach so inferior, we state that we cannot be used for this use case.
We prefer to not get your business rather than provide you a significantly inferior approach.
Not only is it slow & expensive, but because it is a death march, designers will not put in the effort to make a business document template shine. They just want to be done.
The second approach (much better) is a second application (usually in a browser) that helps you write tags. You still have to copy & paste between this second app and Word, but the add-in provides all possible choices for tags and helps you write your queries.
Not all the side-by-side add-in approaches are the same. Play with each carefully to see how it works for you; not in simple sample cases, but in the more complex document templates you will need to create.
The third approach (best) is an add-in that becomes part of Word; adding additional tabs to the ribbon. This makes adding and revising tags a breeze because it works on the tag in the template. And while helping to write each tag, it can do so in the context of where it is in the template.
The incorporated add-in approach is by far the best in template based document generation. But by definition, it is limited to Office on Windows.
This add-in is one of the two features (the query wizard below is the other) that determines how much time your team will spend to design document templates, day after day, week after week, year after year. If one approach is 15 seconds longer, and you are going to create 500 templates each with just 35 tags (that’s low), that’s 73 hours.
While all the Document Generation solutions require you write code to call them (docauto is a no-code solution so not an issue), some of them require additional code for each template. This is called “code behind.”
In some cases, this code behind is defining different data specifications, such as you now also need the hire date. For these solutions, you don’t need code for each template, but a fair number of times templates will require additional data, or data ordered differently, and you have a code change.
Even worse, some require code behind for each template. Therefore, each new template based document generation means additional code. This is a giant hit.
Why? First you have programmers involved in template design. That’s expensive and slows the process down. Second, each new template requires rebuilding your application and pushing it through test & staging.
The one advantage to code behind is the developers can build data on the fly as it’s needed, including data generated according to business rules within the code. But in almost all cases, doing so directly in the template, as opposed to in the code behind, is superior.
In other words, you want the template file to be everything.
1. How do you create a doclet?
The best solution is to select content in Word and save that as a doclet. If it's more restrictive than this, will those restrictions stop you from creating very useful doclets?
2. Does it bring the full formatting of the doclet into the document it is dropped into?
This is actually a very hard thing to do in Word if the doclet uses styles that exist in the template with the same name - but different settings.
3. What can be saved?
Just template content? Or can you also save datasources, parameters, and more? This is not as important, but it is still a timesaver.
4. After you drop is it complete? Or do you need to perform additional steps? For example, if a doclet uses a different datasource, is that datasource now also tied to the template?
Not that important, but nice to have.
5. Can doclets in a template be updated?
If a doclet is the company logo and the logo changed, can all the templates using that doclet be updated to the new logo universally?
The dropped doclets come in several flavors. The optimum are linked doclets where the content of the doclet is displayed in your template in full, fully laid out and formatted. And as it is linked, when the doclet itself is revised, that change immediately appears in your template and is used in every generated document.
Once you drop a doclet into your template, you can can adjust it any way you wish from formatting to tags in the content. But if the original doclet is changed, that change is not applied in your template. In some uses this is preferable when you don’t want changes applied to existing templates.
The third approach is there is a tag that will import the doclet. You don’t see the contents of the doclet in your template, but when the template is processed, it will pull the live copy of the doclet. This is valuable when you have a select that will determine which doclet to import. This is useful for cases like you need to pull in content based on the State the recipient of the document lives in.
The optimum of course is to have all three flavors available to use each as appropriate.
Your most common activity creating templates will be writing the queries to select the data. You do this to select blocks of data such as all stocks you hold for a portfolio statement. You also do this for conditional logic in the template such as adding insurance requirements for an offer letter if they reside in California. Or when placing a name in loan papers.
Some docgen products do not have query wizards. With no wizards, then template creation is a developer-only task. And for developers, it will be slower. No wizards mean you can never turn template creation over to business users.
You will do this hundreds of times in complex templates. Thousands of times across all the templates. You want this to be quick & easy. This functionality, more than everything else put together, determines how much time you will spend designing templates, and how pleasant it is.
When you evaluate different document creation automation solutions, have a business user use the system to craft the queries and see how well they do. They’ll be slow & hesitant at first. But it’s key to see if they can learn it and then be successful on their own.
In the case of conditional tags (if, switch, etc.) make sure it also works well on elements returned by other tags (usually the iterative tags). Because in this case, it’s not a query of the data, it’s a condition on data already returned.
Finally, keep in mind that no matter how brilliant the query wizards are, the user will also generally struggle with the structure of the data (the metadata). This can be displayed to the user, but they still need to learn what is where. Reducing what metadata is displayed, providing the descriptions for each node in the metadata, etc., can make the difference between a usable and unusable solution for business users.
If you have a single datasource, then skip this section – you don’t care.
Ok, you have multiple datasources, for example Salesforce & Marketo. And you have documents you want to populate with data from each. In this case you must get a docgen solution that lets you have tags in a single template that are marked for which datasource that tag is to be applied to.
Some automate document generation providers implement this in two passes: First applying all the Salesforce tags and then starting over and applying all the Marketo tags. This works fine if you are not intermixing the data.
Sometimes you need to intermix the data: for example, if your document lists all Account Executives (from Salesforce) and then within the data for an AE it lists the emails they were sent (from Marketo). Then you need a solution that processes all datasources simultaneously.
If you have multiple datasources, you almost certainly will eventually need the best automated document assembly software that processes multiple datasources simultaneously. If it’s not a must-have today, it probably will be a must-have in a year.
Some tags have a start and end location, such as the if and forEach (iterative) tags. Generally, these are used to repeat or conditionally include a row in a table or a paragraph of text. All solutions do this.
But as time goes on and you create more advanced & complex templates, you will find yourself wanting to start the iteration in the middle of a table or an if that removes two cells and adjusts the table correctly.
In addition, you almost certainly will need a forEach (iterative) tag that adds columns in a table, as opposed to rows. You may want a column for each product or each month in a dataset. Finally watch out for any limitations on combinations. At the start you need a single forEach tag. A year later you are nesting five forEach tags within each other as it’s the only way to get what you want.
This is an area where it’s impossible to give guidance on what you may someday need. Your best bet is to select a solution that has no limitations on the start & end location.
For a simple template, this doesn’t matter (much). But as the logic expands in a template, you find that you are adding a lot of control tags. The most common are the iterative (forEach) and conditional (if) tags. But even a moderately complex template will also have numerous query and set tags along with several additional tags.
These tags, if displayed, pollute the template and enlarge the layout in the template. Usually you’ll find the template looks quite different from the final generated report. This makes it difficult to truly imagine the final document from the template. It’s frustrating to have to constantly run test documents to see what you’re going to get.
You’ll be much happier if the designer can at the click of a button hide or show the control tags. Show them when you’re working on the template logic. Hide them when you’re working on the final layout and formatting. This option will save you time and more importantly will make the design experience more pleasant.
The best way to use content across multiple templates is to have that content in a child template that the parent templates all import. These imported templates can be brought in as an explicit filename or as a data query that returns the filename.
Trust me: unless your needs are incredibly simple, you need this. You can work around it even if you repeat the same content in 100 templates, but you’re giving yourself too much extra work when wording changes due to company directives or legislation.
One critical detail on imports: Does the system process tags in the imported child template? If all of your child templates are static text (legal clauses), then this does not matter. But if you need to include anything live (a person’s name, a date, a state of residence), then you need a solution that process tags in the imported child template.
Finally, for Word only, how does it handle style mismatches? If the parent has the Normal style set to Times New Roman 12pt and the child has Normal set to Verdana 10pt, then what should the child paragraphs be styled as? This can be a royal pain because different users never have their styles matching.
Some systems convert the child to the parent formatting. Some retain the child formatting. And some (best solution) give you the option of either. The option is best but if it’s forced one of the two ways, make sure the system you get works that way.
Not having the expected styling on output is guaranteed to get upper management upset.
For the solutions that allow queries in the tags, you want one that also supports complex functions operating on the data. And not just simple functions like SUM() and COUNT() but most of what’s available in Excel. You will use Text and DateTime a lot.
In addition, can you add your own functions? Adding custom functions is often a significant component of providing a simple & easy design experience to business users. It’s also a lot safer. For complex calculations you write it once in the function and test it carefully. No worries about someone screwing it up writing it by hand in a template.
All of the products (I believe) support reading files from BASIC, Digest, Negotiate, & Oauth2. But what about a special Authenticate & Authorize you created in your company for one set of files? Or something special to get to a JSON file from a REST service that is home grown?
First off, make sure the solution supports the standard protocols you use. You should get a yes. And if that’s all you have – fantastic; you can skip to the next section. If you have a home-grown A&A. find out what needs to be done to have the system access it. This is a custom Access Provider. And make sure that the same Access Provider is used for reading data files (XML & JSON), accessing OData, and importing files (templates & pictures).
If you want to create DOCX or XLSX files where an employee can then edit parts of it, this is incredibly valuable. For example, you are generating portfolio statements and the legal disclaimers and actual financial results must not be changed, but there is a paragraph where the financial advisor can write up more summarizing the performance.
In this case, some of the solutions will carry document locking in DOCX & XLSX (PPTX does not have this) over to the output. So, if the template has locked all except one paragraph, then the generated DOCX will be locked except for that one paragraph.
Having the document locking functionality tends to make your lawyers very very happy. It eliminates a source of serious legal liability.
What is provided here is all over the board. And it’s difficult to get specific about what is most useful to you, as opposed to the next person. The best advice here is just look at what they have and try it out when evaluating.
One tool is validating a template. Not running it, but inspecting it and providing information on errors found. A second tool is to generate the document and deliver a list of errors and warnings. For example, if some content is placed off the page, it was rendered but you don’t see it. In this case it’s useful to have a listing of content off the page.
In this category you can include tag settings - what to do if a select fails, returns nothing, etc. Some of these are particularly useful but in other cases, you can find yourself investing more time than it’s worth.
What if you are generating portfolio statements using a Word template? It has descriptive text, a chart showing performance, legal disclaimers, etc. But where it has a table showing the actual numbers, you want to place an embedded spreadsheet with the numbers.
Why? Because this way the recipient can open that spreadsheet and then, using Excel, measure that data any way they want. It’s a much-improved portfolio statement and something that makes the recipient go WOW.
If you want this, verify that the document automation vendors you select not only carries embedded objects to the output, but that the embedded object, if a DOCX/PPTX/XLSX file, has tags in it processed. To make good use of this functionality the embedded object must be treated as a live template, not a static document.
If fully implemented, the output to any format, such as PDF, will include the displayed embedded object.
This is a DOCX -> PDF issue. Do you need to have form fields in the DOCX such as drop down, list or check box become the equivalent thing in PDF output? If so, you need to verify that this feature is supported.
In addition, make sure that the initial content/value in the form field can be set from data. If it’s just static values from the template, that tends to not be sufficient for all use cases.
And a suggestion. When you need an empty or checked box depending on data, don’t use a form field. Use the Wingdings characters and .
This is two XLSX -> XLSX issues. First, verify that a formula like SUM(D5:D5) expands to SUM(D5:D15) for the case where the row 5, inside an iterative loop, becomes rows 5 to 15. It’s very useful to have the formula adjusted (some products just write the literal value) on the output. This way, when someone adjusts say D7 to see what happens, all the formulas now adjust to that difference.
The same for pivot tables. If a pivot table is for D1:H5 and the generated XLSX now has those rows as D1: H125, the pivot tables are adjusted to match. This is necessary to use the pivot tables in the generated XLSX.
If you’re going to generate XLSX for Excel Power Users, this is key.
This is not an issue for docauto, just document generation.
There are three ways to call a docgen engine: Direct calls to a library, calls to a RESTful server on premises, and calls to a hosted (SAAS) RESTful server. Ask if they have what you want.
One note on Hosted solutions: You will be sending data to that system. First, you want to make sure that the vendor is providing adequate security. Second, if your data is not allowed to go outside your country or region (E.U.), find out not just where the default server is, but also the failover server.
If you’re concerned enough about security to be asking these questions, you should probably host the RESTful server yourself. Even if you place it on AWS or Azure, you are controlling access to the server and its location.
If all your data is JSON (or any other type), you don’t have to worry about what else the system can access. With that said, everything is getting more interconnected and odds are sooner or sooner you will have to access other datasource types.
Life is a lot safer if the solutions can use data from SQL, XML, JSON, & OData. (And why OData? 150 other vendor’s datasources, from ACT to Salesforce to Zoho.) Not a deal breaker but it will turn out to be useful.
See if you can create datasets from datasources. This is akin to views in SQL but you are creating them in the template (no DBA needed). And you want them for XML, JSON, & OData too. A good guide to how robust the dataset implementation is–do they basically become another datasource? If so, that’s a full implementation.
Furthermore, it can take time and bandwidth to download the metadata from a datasource. We saw one DB2 database take 28 minutes to download the full metadata (yes – truly!). If you have datasources with large metadata structures, find out if they have a way to read the schema once and reuse that. (This is unlikely to ever be needed for XML or JSON–it’s SQL, OData, & any custom datasources.)
Finally, for XML, make sure it uses the XML schema if one is available.
Check that it renders in the output formats you need. Everyone does PDF, HTML, DOCX, XLSX, & PPTX (last two if they support that template type). Additional output formats might be useful, but odds are you’ll never need them.
Check the accuracy of the PDF output. Everyone is imperfect on this. And in their, and our, defense, Microsoft does not document how Word calculates page layout. It does not specify the calculation between 2 lines of single-spaced text. And it’s impossible to reverse engineer accurately–Word is clearly performing complex calculations, not just using the font metrics.
Everyone does their best. Some come closer than others. Look for a good match but accept it won’t be perfect.
All products have a way to pass parameters to the template to use in the queries. Check that they have all the data types you need (they probably do).
Check that parameters can be set in a select as both a parameter (avoid injection attacks) and as a string substitution if desired. Setting as a parameter is valuable not only to avoid an injection attack, but to handle the cause of passing the name O’Malley.
Does the designer have a way to show the structure of the tags in the document? And clicking on one, go to that tag? There is no need for this in simple templates. but when you get to 30+ tags it becomes useful. And at 80+ it becomes essential.
If you’ll always be under 50 tags, no big deal. But if you start under 50 tags and will grow to 200+ tags in a template, not having this will become a big deal. So think about where you’ll be in 5 years.
If you run a template and it takes forever, or it completes but it’s 2,00 pages long when you expected 2 pages – why? You can ask a DBA and they can track your selects and tell you the problem.
It’s faster & easier if the template add-in has a tool that tells you for each iterative select how many rows of data it returns and how long the query took to complete. From this you can quickly find what is wrong.
Useful, not essential.
This is used once and saves at most 15 minutes - but it is very nice to have. This is irrelevant for the solutions that have code behind – they create code for each template.
For the one-time code to illustrate what code is needed to add to your application to use the docgen system, it’s ideal if they include a generate code feature that provides you sample code.. And in addition, you know the correct way to call the engine.
Nice, not essential.
Fortunately, these are rarely needed. But when needed, they can be a big time saver. There are several different debuggers that may be in a docgen template designer add-in.
As stated above, these are rarely needed so they're in the "useful but not important" category - except that one time you really really need it.
