Many times we find ourselves needing to use information that we have or that our clients have given us to create a document. However, we don't want to waste time copying and pasting the information from one place to another, or editing the document.
Once we have the information we need, it would be great if it could be automatically copied and pasted to those places in the document where we want it to appear, wouldn't it?
It is possible! With Parallel you can generate documents automatically with the help of the answers and information that you or your clients complete.
How? Thanks to the field references.
What can you find on this page?
Generate dynamic texts with Parallel's references
Creating dynamic texts means that the information you or your clients fill in a Parallel can be automatically copied to any field description (of the same Parallel).
Thus, you can set up any template so that the answers of the fields you choose are automatically copied into the descriptions of other fields.
⚠️ Note: You cannot include references in field titles.
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This is especially useful for generating legal documents and contracts.
Let's see how it works with the following example:
1. You have a template with a field in which you ask your client the full name of his/her company.
2. Now, you want to use the answer to the company name in another field of the same template.
In other words, you want to automatically copy the answer from this field (your company name) to another place in the template.
3. To do this, we have two options:
Option 1: Go to the Field settings of the field whose answer you want to copy. You will see that at the bottom there is the References setting.
You can choose any word to reference a field reply. In our example we will use the reference "company".
Option 2: From the Contents (table of contents) list of the template, go to the field whose answer you want to associate a reference to and select the Create reference button.
A window like this will open to enter the reference you want:
References are the key word associated to a field.
⚠️ Note: You cannot include spaces, punctuation marks, accents... |
4. Now, if you want to include the answer to this question in the description of another field, go to the Content (table of contents) section of the template:
In the field where you have entered a reference, in our example the "Legal entity name", an option will appear to copy the reference to your clipboard.
Once you have copied the reference to this field, you can paste it in the description of any other field so that, when the reply is completed, it appears in all the fields where you have pasted it.
5. For example, we include the reference of the previous example in the description of another field. It will be automatically inserted between two brackets, like this:
{{ reference }}
👀 Go to the Preview tab to see how it looks like!
You will see that the reference {{ company }} will be replaced by the reply to the other field (to which you have assigned that reference).
If you start entering references in your templates you will see that when it comes to copying and pasting plain text, the references are automatically pasted between these symbols.
{{ reference }}
However, there are two special cases:
🔢 References in number type fields - You will see that if you want to use a reference to a numerical answer in some other field in the template, when you copy the reference from that field and paste it into another field, the reference will appear between the brackets and, in addition, it will add:
| number
🗓 References in date fields - You will see that if you want to use a reference to a date in some other field in the template, when you copy the reference from that field and paste it into another field, the reference will appear in brackets and, in addition, it will also add:
| date
👉 Tips for using references:
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Formulas with references
Now that you have learned how to generate dynamic text, we encourage you to continue learning and enhance your processes with the following guides:
Basic formulas with text responses: Choose if you want your references to be copied and pasted with uppercase, lowercase, etc...
Formulas for questions with multiple answers: If for a question there is more than one answer, automatically configure how these answers will be displayed (together, separated, listed...).
Formulas for questions with conditions: Learn how to copy and paste references that change depending on external variables.
Formulas for numerical fields: You can copy and paste numbers in different formats and choose formulas to make calculations with them.