Text Element Binding

About this article

This article is explaining dynamic text element insertion from text element bindings. Text element bindings are used for inserting text elements statically or dynamically using asset IDs inside a document. An Asset ID is a unique identifier that is assigned to assets in Templafy and is often used in a text element binding or for analytics.

Sections in this article:

• What is a text element insertion?
• How to set up a static binding for text element insertion?
• How to set up a dynamic binding for text element insertion?

Prerequisites

What is a text element insertion?

There are two different types of text elements that can be inserted into a document: 

• Static text element: the text element does not contain any dynamic form fields. When dynamically inserting a static text element into a document, the end-user will be prompted with the document form only.
  
  
• Dynamic text element: the text element does contain at least one dynamic form field. When dynamically inserting a dynamic text element into a document, the end-user will be prompted with a form gathering both the document and the text element forms.

Furthermore, there are two different ways of inserting text elements into a document, either by using a static or a dynamic binding:

• Static binding insertion: linking a specific text element to be inserted in the document
  
  
• Dynamic binding insertion: linking a list of text elements where the user can pick which text element should be inserted in the document 

How to set up a static binding for text element insertion?

1. In the Admin Center, find the relevant text element, click the ellipsis, and press Copy asset ID
   
   
   
   
2. Go your Office application and open Templafy task pane in/start your document creation flow
3. Go to the ellipsis menu in the task pane and click on Dynamics Designer
4. Navigate to the Element tab
5. Select TextElement in the first dropdown
6. In Asset Id, paste the asset ID that you copied in step 1
7. Choose the placeholder
   • If you have no Text element Placeholder form field created in the Form tab, the option will be grayed out and a new Placeholder will be generated and added in the Form tab.
   • If you have Text element Placeholder form field created in the Form tab, you will be able to choose between the existing text element placeholder or generate a new one.
8. Click Create
   
   

How to set up a dynamic binding for text element insertion?

1. If not already existing, create a data source in the Resource tab in the Admin Center containing the asset IDs required for your dynamic document. 
2. In Word, go into Dynamics Designer, navigate to the Form tab 
3. Create a Dropdown field linking to the data source containing the asset IDs
4. Navigate to the Element tab
5. Select TextElement in the first drop down
6. In Asset Id, set the binding to {{Form.FormName.DatasourceColumn}}
   • FormName is the Name given to the form during step 3
   • DatasourceColumn is the name of the column containing the asset IDs in your data source
7. Choose the placeholder
   1. If you have no Text element Placeholder form field created in the Form tab, the option will be grayed out and a new Placeholder will be generated and added in the Form tab.
   2. If you have Text element Placeholder form field created in the Form tab, you will be able to choose between the existing text element placeholder or generate a new one.
8. Click Create
   
   

Data source reference for the example above:

Replace on update

If Replace on update is checked, the inserted text element might be replaced when using document content updater. By default, it's unchecked, disabling updates.

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