How to use Smart Layouts

This article applies to:Available in these QorusDocs Editions:

Enterprise+, Proposal Pro, QPilot Essential

Have you ever found it challenging to find those “needles in a haystack” when looking for the best experiences to feature in your proposal? And how about the time it takes to feature those experiences or the bios of your experts in a professionally formatted way? If you’re like many proposal writers, these are some of the most time-consuming parts of putting together a quality proposal. Fortunately for you, you have QorusDocs and its Smart Layouts feature to make this a breeze.

Smart Layouts are a way to help you easily filter and select a group of records, such as bios or experiences, and then insert them into your proposal using a pre-formatted layout in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. 

Please note that before you can use Smart Layouts, there’s a configuration that needs to be performed either by an Admin user or by the QorusDocs Professional Services team. 

In this article, we’ll cover the following: 

1. Access your Smart Layout Content Source

2. Select records

3. Search and filter records

4. Use the Advanced Filtering

5. Save your search, filters, and advanced filter preferences as a Favorite

6. Pick a layout template

7. Remember Pursuit Selections

8. Manage your record selections

10. Download a list of records as a CSV file

11. Create a formatted document or presentation containing the records you selected

1. Access your Smart Layout Content Source

If you have access to a Smart Layouts Content Source, you’ll find it in the Search pane in your QorusDocs Hub or in any of the QorusDocs Add-ins: 

Unlike other content sources, clicking on a Smart Layout Content Source will pop up a new window on your screen: 

TIP: You can adjust the column widths in the Smart Layouts grid by hovering your mouse over the column’s edge and when the drag handle appears, by clicking and holding down your left mouse button to resize the columns (similar to resizing columns in Pursuits). QorusDocs will remember your personal adjustments for this content source going forward.  

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2. Select records

Here, you can select records using the checkboxes on the left:

TIP: You can adjust the column widths in the Smart Layouts grid by hovering your mouse over the column’s edge and when the drag handle appears, by clicking and holding down your left mouse button to resize the columns (similar to resizing columns in Pursuits). QorusDocs will remember your personal adjustments for this content source going forward. 

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3. Search and filter records

You can also use the Search (top left) to locate the records you need by typing a search term and/or using the search filters.  

Alternatively, instead of using the ‘Library’ and ‘Modified’ filters, you can use the Advanced Filtering to filter records based on condition statements. This is a powerful way to zone in on the exact records you need even faster.  

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4. Use the Advanced Filtering

You can find the Advanced Filtering option here:  

This will bring up a new window on your screen:

• Advanced Filtering on a single condition

Click ‘Select field’ to pick a field to filter on: 

Then set the filtering rule for that field. The rules available in the drop-down menu will depend on the field type you’ve selected: 

And finally, set the value and click ‘Apply’:

• Advanced Filtering on multiple conditions

The power of Advanced Filtering is the ability to filter on multiple conditions and determine rules between the conditions themselves. 

• Working with Conditions

To add a new condition, click on ‘Add Condition’, and then enter the new condition on the next line: 

• Working with AND/OR Operators

By default, QorusDocs will have the filter operator set to ‘AND’. This means that both conditions need to be true for the records to be returned by the filter. 

If instead you would like to broaden the search and return all records where either one of the conditions are true, then you can set this to ‘OR’ by clicking on ‘OR’. 

You can also combine ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators for more complex filtering with Groups. For example, let’s say you have ‘Date’, ‘Industry’ and ‘Region’ as available fields in your Advanced Filtering options and you want QorusDocs to return all records where: 

• The ‘Date’ is on or after 1st September 2025.
• The ‘Industry’ is ‘Construction’.
• The ‘Region’ is either ‘North America’ or ‘Asia’. 

In Advanced Filtering, you could achieve this with two groups. The first group will contain both conditions that need to be true (‘AND’) for the ‘Date’ and ‘Industry’ filters and the second group will contain two possible conditions for the ‘Region’ filter, only one of which needs to be true (‘OR’).

• Working with Groups

There’s no need to create the first group since QorusDocs does this for you. Simply add the ‘Date’ and ‘Industry’ conditions using the steps described above and ensure the operator is set to ‘AND’.

Next, we’ll add another group by clicking on ‘Add Group’ for our second group:

Then add the two possible conditions for ‘Region’ and make sure the operator is set to ‘OR’. When you’re ready click ‘Apply’:

IMPORTANT: 

Each Group in the Advanced Filter must evaluate to ‘True’ in order to return results. Using our example, QorusDocs will return records where group 1 is true (both the date and industry conditions are met) AND where group 2 is true (one of the Region conditions is met). 

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5. Save your search, filters, and advanced filter preferences as a Favorite

If there are certain records that you search for frequently, you can ‘save’ your all your search preferences by clicking on the ‘star’ icon and then on ‘+Favorite’: 

This works in a similar way to ‘Favorites’ as described in this article here. In the window that pops up next, give your favorite a name and optionally a description, then click on ‘Create’: 

Now the next time I want to run this same search, with all the Advanced Filtering options you created, you can click on the ‘star’ icon and on the name of the favorite to execute the search:

It will also appear in your Favorites under ‘Favorite Search’:

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6. Pick a layout template

Once you have selected the records you’d like to use, you can proceed to the ‘My selections’ tab where you can pick a layout template. The layout template determines the appearance and formatting of the records you’ve selected. You can see a preview of each layout template in the drop-down menu: 

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7. Remember Pursuit Selections

When you work on a Pursuit in QorusDocs and use Smart Layouts to select content—such as experiences, bios, or case studies you want to feature—your selections are automatically saved to that specific Pursuit when you click “Close & Save.” The next time you open the same Pursuit, your previous Smart Layout selections will reload under “Pursuit selections,” showing exactly what you saved. 

These selections are stored at the Pursuit level and shared with your entire team. If one team member chooses records from the Smart Layout Content Source and saves them, every other member of that Pursuit will see the same view, including columns, filters, and sorting, when accessing the Pursuit. This ensures that everyone on the team remains aligned and uses consistent proof points throughout the proposal process.

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8. Manage your record selections

While using Smart Layout Content Sources, you can reorder your records by dragging them up and down using the grab handles:

You can also change your mind and delete any records you no longer need: 

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9. Download a list of records as a CSV file

If you would like to download a csv file that contains the list of records you’ve selected, click on ‘Download CSV’: 

In the CSV file, you’ll find all the same fields as those visible on your screen, except for images which appear as links in the CSV file (clicking on an image link will open the image in your browser): 

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10. Create a formatted document or presentation containing the records you selected 

To create a new document or presentation with the records and the layout template you’ve selected, click on ‘Create’. 

This will bring up a new screen, which is very similar to the screen you usually see when you’re creating new documents and presentations using any template in QorusDocs. 

Here you can specify whether you’d like to save it to a Pursuit and select the Pursuit from the list or search for it. This is optional and is ideal if you’re planning on using the formatted list of records you selected for a particular bid or proposal project.  

You will be required to give the new document or presentation a name (mandatory):

And you can specify if you’d like to save the new document you’re creating to an online location where saving has been enabled for you. This is optional and is the right choice if you’d like to save your formatted list of records as a new document or presentation to a library for future re-use:

When you’re ready, click ‘Create’:

QorusDocs will format the records using the Smart Layout template you chose and then you’ll be able to ‘Download’ or ‘Open’ the newly created document or presentation (these options will depend on whether you saved it to a Pursuit or to an online location at the previous step): 

And here’s the new document that QorusDocs created using the records and the layout we selected in our example for this article: 

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