Populating Word Template with Clarity Data

[Bill Brown]

I am working to pull a selection of data from Clarity in order to populate MS Word templates. The ultimate goal is to ease the load of creating project approval documents (that require significant data, much of which already exists in Clarity) for any given project. How do I port the data from Clarity to Word to provide a document at the click-of-a-button?

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Portfolio Analyst
State of Michigan
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[DALE STOCKMAN]

I might consider using JasperSoft to design a report, using it's ability to export to PDF or Word.  My preference would be a PDF, where I could then upload it to Adobe Docusign for gathering signatures.

 

We aren't using Clarity/JasperSoft in this way, but we have this and Adobe Docusign is used here for other documents (e.g. POs, Invoices) – would be natural for us to consider for forms out of Clarity.

 

Dale

 

[Will Lloyd]

I agree with Dale that you could use JasperSoft to port the data out, though if you use a Mail Merge in MS Word, all you really need is a table with consistently labelled fields that map to the <<...>> fields in the Word document. Since the Modern UX allows you to save filtered views, you wouldn't have to kick out to Advanced Reporting at all; just download the displayed content to an XLS file. Might be fun to try...

[David Morton]

I raised this question a while ago, so there is some discussion on this thread about that whole area you might find useful;
https://community.broadcom.com/enterprisesoftware/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=8474e66b-87e5-4cf4-bbef-5eed2cdbfa4e&CommunityKey=7f0cbca3-5f93-4d44-a369-1a8ce98f5578&tab=digestviewer#bm8474e66b-87e5-4cf4-bbef-5eed2cdbfa4e

In the end, all we produced were (e.g.) Word documents with embedded VBA macros which pull (via XOG) data from the application and then add it "programmatically" to the document. In my experience (which was starting from nothing in terms of MS-tools automation) this was a lot easier to do with Excel than Word (I found Word to be very "fiddly" with regard to preserving formats and so on, Excel was a lot more "stable" - this could all be down to my ignorance though).

I would support the view that if the "report tools" you already have available can produce this output simply (or close to this output) then use that rather than fighting the MS-tools just because some business user has said "document" to you. ;-)