Defining a Custom Interview Component

If you need control over the order HotDocs asks questions in an interview, you can create a custom interview component.

There are two parts to using a custom interview in your template:

To create a custom interview component

  1. After automating your template, open Component Manager.
  2. From the Components drop-down list, select Computation Variables and click the New Component button.
  3. Type a name in the Variable name field. (The component can use any name (including INTERVIEW) as long as it's specified in the Interview tab of the Component File Properties dialog box)
  4. Using a series of instructions, specify how you want HotDocs to ask the variables in the template, based on the logic you use in the template. For example, you can create a series of ASK instructions that ask the dialogs, as well as use IF instructions to make variables in the template conditional upon users' answers.
  5. Click OK when you have finished.

Once you have created the custom interview, you must specify a component file property that tells HotDocs to use the computation when it generates the interview.

Tell HotDocs to use the custom interview component when generating the interview

  1. With Component Manager still open, click Component File Properties.
  2. Click the Interview tab and select Use custom interview.
  3. Specify the name of the Computation variable in the Interview component field.

Now, HotDocs will use this computation to generate the interview.

If you are pointing several templates to a shared component file, but you want each template to use its own custom interview, at the Interview tab, clear Use Interview properties stored in the shared component file, select Use custom interview, and then specify the name of the interview computation in the Interview component field.

In a text template, if you select both Generate default interview and Use custom interview, HotDocs always uses the custom interview. That means that HotDocs only asks variables contained in the custom interview. For a form template, if you select both options, HotDocs presents the custom interview first and then includes any variables not in the custom interview, but contained in the default interview, at the end of the interview outline.