At a Glance: Interview Tab (Component File Properties)

You can open the Component File Properties dialog box by first opening Component Manager and clicking the Component File Properties button on the toolbar. Click the Interview tab at the top of the dialog box to access the options for HotDocs interviews.

At the top of the dialog, use the two check boxes A to tell HotDocs to generate a default interview or to use the custom interview you define. If you select Generate default interview. HotDocs then asks the variables and processes the instructions in the template in the order it "reads" them. If you link a variable to a dialog, the dialog is displayed instead. Select Use custom interview; then from the drop-down list B, select the interview component you want to use.  If you want to edit the interview component, or if you haven't selected a component from the drop-down list, click theEdit Component button to the right to edit the component or to create a new one.

You can set further interview options using the following five check boxes C:

•  Automatically disable irrelevant variables and dialogs
  Select this option to automatically disable unused variables in the interview. Use the Default drop-down list to the right to select the default style of irrelevant variables:

When this option is selected you can change the irrelevant variable style of individual variables by editing the variable, then at the Advanced tab select a style from the When irrelevant drop-down list.

• • Gray causes HotDocs to gray any irrelevant variables.

  • Hide causes HotDocs to hide all irrelevant variables.

  • Show causes HotDocs to ask all variables, even if the variable is irrelevant.

• Hide the interview outline
  Select this option to hide the interview outline and force the user to navigate the interview by only using the Previous and Next buttons.

• Hide the end of interview dialog
  Select this option to hide the end of interview dialog. Then, when the user clicks Next at the last dialog in the interview, depending on which End of Interview action the user defined HotDocs either sends the assembled document to the word processor or displays the Document tab. .

• Generate default titles for dialogs
  Select this option to have HotDocs generate default titles for dialogs. The way HotDocs generates default dialog titles is by seeing if the first item in a dialog is dialog element text. If so, HotDocs displays that text as the dialog title in the interview outline. If not, HotDocs displays the prompt from the first variable and appends the word "etc."

• Combine default dialogs

HotDocs presents the end user with “default” dialogs containing variables that you have not (yet) explicitly linked to a dialog component. This property controls whether those default dialogs contain only a single variable each, or whether HotDocs combines all adjacent, unlinked variables into single default dialog.  When a variable is linked to a dialog component, HotDocs no longer presents it in a default dialog.

In the 11.1 release, this feature is valid only for templates published to the desktop environment.

Type the text you want to use as a Resource button label, that the user sees when they hover their mouse cursor over the resource button during the interview, in text field D.

You can set further component file options in the General, Assembly, Hidden Data, HotDocs Server and Answer Upload tabs.