July 2019: Content Smart Fields

We're excited to announce the arrival of a brand new smart field type with this release: the all-new Content Smart Field. 

Content Smart Fields are now available in Word and in PowerPoint, and a bit like the Cart allows you to assemble slides from multiple PowerPoint presentations to create a new slide deck, Content Smart Fields allow you to select and insert multiple documents or presentations from a pre-defined set of search results into a template, in order to merge them and create a brand new file. 

This allows Template Designers to guide users towards finding relevant content and insert that content during the document creation process - saving users the time and hassle of having to first know where to search and which content to use for a particular document section, locating that content, and then inserting it, after the new doc has been created.  

Here's how it works: 

• How to design a Content Smart Field and add it to a template
• What the end-user experience is like for someone creating a new doc from a template that contains Content Smart Fields

Please note that the new Content smart field is an advanced Design feature available to Premium customers only. Click here to learn about Qorus Premium and pricing.

You should also know that before you can Design smart fields and rules in your content and templates, you need to belong to either the Qorus Admin or Qorus Designer user role.

Design a Content Smart Field and add it to a template

With your template open, go to the Design tab and add a new Smart Field. You should get a screen that looks a bit like this: 

1. Type: From the drop-down menu, select ‘Content’ as the Smart Field Type

2. Content Source: Next, specify within which content source the end-user can find relevant content

3. Default Search Settings - search box: The experience for end-users is a bit like that of a Saved Search. Here you can specify a default search term for the initial search Qorus Content Hub will run against your selected Content Source. End-users can change this and type another search term if they would like. 

4. Default Search Settings - filter: Here you can restrict the search results to match specific search filter criteria. End-users can't change the search filters you specify here. 

5. Allow user to manually refine: Checking this box provides makes it possible for users to further refine a set of search results, by using the remaining search filters that have not already been selected by the template designer in the 'Default Search Settings'. 

You can insert a Content Smart Field into a document in the same way you would any other Smart Field, and it will show up in the document as (provided your delimiters are the default '<' and '>' signs): <the name of your content smart field>

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Creating a new document from a template with Content Smart Fields

For end-users making use of a template that contains Content Smart Fields, when they click on 'Create', they will see a form a bit like the one below: 

In this example, we have a Proposal template that contains three Content Smart Fields: Solutions and Services Section, Product Features Section and Implementation Approach.

1. Click ‘View Available Content’ to run the search associated with the Content Smart Field
2. This opens the Search pane on the right, displaying the search results returned based on the Default Search Settings specified in the template
3. Just as with a regular search, clicking on a search result expands it and reveals the options available for working with the content. To add content to be merged with the template, click on ‘Insert’.
4. Use the search box and/or filters to narrow the search (filters only work if ‘allow user to manually refine’ is specified by the template designer)
5. Re-order content by clicking and dragging content items up and down. There's also a 'remove' button available to the right of each item in case something got added by mistake. 

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