About Document Content Updater

About this article

This knowledge base article will explain the features and limitations of Document Content Updater, as well as the technical setup, pre-requisites, and supported scenarios.  

What is Document Content Updater

Document Content Updater - hereafter referred to as Updater - is a feature, that on a high level belongs to the core layer of the Templafy product and is a part of the dynamics platform. It is a module that comes handy for especially document-heavy companies and we support every Document that has ever been created with Templafy.

With Updater, users can dynamically personalize the content of their business documents. The most common use case for this could be to dynamically update a document to apply another user profile, another company address, different logo etc. 

By using Updater and switching to another user profile those values in the document will change dynamically. Admin can perform changes in the Datasource, but the Updater is purely triggered by the user. 

How to use the Document Content Updater 

There are three main use cases for the Updater, that we quickly will explain here. 

1. And end-user is changing his mind or made a mistake after filling out the form

Especially if you have a document you worked many days on, you sometimes have to apply a couple of changes after you already have created the document. To apply those changes you update the Dynamics elements by clicking on the update button. 

2. You want to share your document with another member of the company. 

If you create a document with your user profile and send it to a colleague, it may carry some wrong details e. g. the wrong user profile or the wrong office. So if a colleague wants to use the document, the Updater can update all those values accordingly. It is possible to convert a letter that was created for someone else to a letter containing your information. Dynamics will then apply the new user profile and all the needed information including the default letter format. 

3. Get an Update

Updater also checks if anything new happened to the document. Let's say an admin updates the disclaimer in the data source. By using the update button, those changes will be automatically be applied to that document. 

Pre-requisites 

• Updater requires VSTO add-in version 5.3.0.430 or higher
• Updater needs to be enabled from the Settings page in the administration center (requires admin access)

(To know more about Dynamics pipeline, please take a look at the article: Dynamics Version)

• In the Template Designer, toggle the Enable as template and make sure the Enable Document Content Updater is also active, like this:

Supported scenarios with dynamics versions 

• With dynamics version 1.8 Updater for header and footer in Excel is supported
• With dynamics version 1.6 Updater for spreadsheets in Excel is supported 
• With dynamics version 1.4 Updater for slides enabled for Validator is supported
• With dynamics version 1.3 Updater for ColorTheme is supported in both PowerPoint and Word.
• With dynamic version 1.1 Updater for CustomDocumentProperty is supported in Word and PowerPoint.
• With dynamics version 1.1 Updater for TextElement and PageSetup are supported in Word.

How does the Document Content Updater work

Updater is tied to Forms and Data Sources and can only update the dynamic parts of a document. Everything else needs to be updated manually. The Dynamic parts can be changed and is stored in the cloud. Updater itself works on a dataset that is sitting on the machine. That means that we do not take down the template from the server and merge the document, only the dynamic parts, the content controls and form will be updated. 

When a document is DCU enabled and created on a machine the values are stored in the document properties. Additional information can be found in the Advanced Properties under Home>Info>Advanced Properties. 

TemplafyTenantId belongs to our tenant URL: mytenant.templafy.com
TemplafyTemplateId belongs to the Template in the library and the corresponding URL

It will also show if the Template is DCU enabled there: 

What does the document updater updates?

• everything that is part of the document form will be applied
• the creation date of the document will stay the same, but the last updated date will change
• Essentially, everything that was originally set through updater will be changed by the updater. 

Features

• Support for offline
• Support for documents that have been removed from the library

Explanation: Even if the document was already removed from the library, the document updater will still update then the content was synchronized to your machine through Templafy Desktop. The reason why we support it, even when it is deleted in the admin center is, that all configuration is contained in the document. 

Known Limitations

• No Support for Outlook
•  If an admin makes updated to the Template in the admin center, makes a different layout, this will not be managed through the document updater. 

How does it work together with SharePoint 

When you work on your Templates inside an Office on-premise version, the Updater will work and Sharepoint, Sharepoint will basically be the storage System you will receive it from. It is not supported to use Updater with Sharepoint through the browser, it will not work, because the VSTO-add-in is necessary for it to function. As long as you create the Document through the VSTO add-in it will work, no matter where it is stored.