Word Macros for Automated Document Generation: Seems like a good idea . . .
June 29, 2012
So you have some Word documents that you’d like to turn into automated document generation templates, and you’re thinking Word macros (VBA) might be able to handle the job. Well, depending on the circumstances, it just might. VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is a powerful programming tool and can do just about anything you want in terms of scripting in a Word template . . . so long as you’re willing to expend the programming resources.
Now, here’s the thing: just writing complex conditional logic into some macros in a handful of Word templates really isn’t that big of a deal for a qualified VBA engineer. It’s when a handful of documents turns into a mountain of documents, some of them lengthy and complex, that one engineer turns into two, and two turns into three, and . . . well, you get the idea.
The fact is, somewhere along the way, a harsh reality may become evident: The project is out of control. What you really needed, it turns out, was an entire document generation system, including an answer file management utility, a content management utility, and maybe a nifty scripting utility that would enable content experts—rather than software engineers—to take over the task of building and maintaining the ever growing mountain of templates, a bunch of APIs to make it a reasonable task to integrate your templates into all your other systems, and so forth.
Of course, I’m just scratching the surface of the depth and breadth of the issues you will encounter as you get deeper and deeper into enterprise-grade document production. VBA is just not really built for it. And engineers that haven’t got about a dozen years into designing and building automated document generation systems . . . well, let’s just say they might have a learning curve to get through, as well.
Lucky for you, HotDocs, the pioneer and global leader in document generation systems, has all the things you’ll ever need for your project built into it, right out of the box. And you can get it for a fraction of the price it will end up costing you to try to build it yourself.
To get started, all you need to do is sign up for a free webinar . . .
Now, here’s the thing: just writing complex conditional logic into some macros in a handful of Word templates really isn’t that big of a deal for a qualified VBA engineer. It’s when a handful of documents turns into a mountain of documents, some of them lengthy and complex, that one engineer turns into two, and two turns into three, and . . . well, you get the idea.
The fact is, somewhere along the way, a harsh reality may become evident: The project is out of control. What you really needed, it turns out, was an entire document generation system, including an answer file management utility, a content management utility, and maybe a nifty scripting utility that would enable content experts—rather than software engineers—to take over the task of building and maintaining the ever growing mountain of templates, a bunch of APIs to make it a reasonable task to integrate your templates into all your other systems, and so forth.
Of course, I’m just scratching the surface of the depth and breadth of the issues you will encounter as you get deeper and deeper into enterprise-grade document production. VBA is just not really built for it. And engineers that haven’t got about a dozen years into designing and building automated document generation systems . . . well, let’s just say they might have a learning curve to get through, as well.
Lucky for you, HotDocs, the pioneer and global leader in document generation systems, has all the things you’ll ever need for your project built into it, right out of the box. And you can get it for a fraction of the price it will end up costing you to try to build it yourself.
To get started, all you need to do is sign up for a free webinar . . .
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