How To Topic

Getting External Answer Data During an Interview

The Custom Interview Event webhook enables you to populate HotDocs interviews with answer data retrieved from your own web application.

Prerequisites

This webhook has the following prerequisites:

• An Author template containing an Interview Event dialog element; this is the component which triggers the webhook in interview.
• You must know the Event Name used in the interview event dialog element; this is used when setting the Interview Event Name for the webhook.
• Creating a Webhook – you must have an existing webhook that:
  • Uses the Custom Interview Event type
  • The Interview Event Name property matches the Event Name in the interview event dialog element
• Answer JSON that matches the variable names and structure of the Author template

• An endpoint on your web application that accepts a POST request and returns a set of answer data

Overview

When you create a custom interview event webhook, you specify an endpoint on your web application that accepts a POST request and returns answer data. This answer data must be in the HotDocs answer JSON format. 

The POST request to the endpoint is activated when a user opens an Advance interview and clicks an interview event dialog element that has the same Event Name property as your webhook. When the data is returned to the interview from your endpoint, Advance overlays the answer data into the interview, populating the answer fields for your user.

Your Existing Webhook

This example supposes that you have an existing webhook with the following properties:

• Name – WebhookExample02
• URL – https://localhost/WebhookExampleApp/GetAnswerData
• Event Type – Custom Interview Event (sends request to retrieve answer data when a user clicks the interview event dialog element)
• Interview Event Name – GetAnswerData
• Authentication Method – HMAC
• Active Status – Active
• Untrusted SSL Certificates – No

The URL for the webhook should point to the POST endpoint in your own web application.

The Interview Event Name must match the Event Name property for the interview event dialog in your template.

The correct Request Verb for your webhook should be POST. If you have an existing webhook which uses a GET request verb, it is advised you edit the webhook to use POST.

The GET request verb is now deprecated and is only available for legacy compatibility.

Data Sent from Advance to your Endpoint

When the Custom Interview Event webhook is activated by a user, the webhook sends a POST request to your endpoint. The request contains a JSON string that includes the following data:

• linkedVariable — the name of the linked variable in the interview event dialog element that activated the webhook
• userContextData — the user context data for the template; this includes details about the user that activated the webhook

For example:

{
    "linkedVariable": { "ParameterValue": "EmployeeNameTextVariable" },
    "userContextData": {
        "UserId": "8727d822-7b4a-5f6d-ab56-781f498af6cc", 
        "UserFirstName": "John",
        "UserLastName": "MacDiarmid",
        "UserEmailAddress": "jm@example.com",
        ...
}

You can use this information when constructing the data you will return to Advance. For example, if you need to look up information specific to the user making the request.