XpressDox Document Assembly » Document Assembly

Document Assembly Expert Rates XpressDox Highly

Chris — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:11:02 +0000

From a TechnoLawyer Exclusive article published on June 15, 2010.

TECHNOFEATURE: REVIEW: XPRESSDOX DOCUSSEMBLY By Seth G. Rowland, Esq.

Synopsis

Document assembly conjures up thoughts of expensive software that often becomes shelfware once lawyers realize that they cannot figure it out without professional help. Document assembly consultant Seth Rowland has helped many firms that decided to invest in professional help. But in this TechnoFeature article, Seth reviews XpressDox, a new document assembly program that sells for $150 and promises ease of use regardless of your skill level. Who better to test this claim than Seth? Read his review to see what this expert thinks of this new expert system.

Introduction

I have been working with document assembly software on a full–time basis for a long time—since 1996. During that period, I have had the opportunity to review (and program in) large number of systems that assemble documents with user-entered data or merged data sources.

The document assembly platforms I’ve used include HotDocs, GhostFill/AmicusAssembly, Dealbuilder/ContractExpress, Exari, MasterDraft, and SmartWords/Xyrite. I have used merge technology in practice management systems, including Time Matters, Amicus Attorney, AdvologixPM, Salesforce.com, PracticeMaster and ProLaw to create merge templates. And I have worked with VBA and macro automation in Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, WordPerfect, MultiMate, and IBM DisplayWrite. I have reengineered and rebuilt document workflow systems originally built in Lotus Notes, PowerTXT, ThinkDocs, Visual Workform, and CAPS Author. And I have reviewed numerous client–server and Web–based document assembly engines, including Pathagoras, DL Drafting Libraries, Rapidocs/Directlaw, ActiveWords, Intelledox, ProDoc, LawOnTheWeb, and Lawgic.

Thanks to this review, I recently added O2Smart’s XpressDox Docussembly to the above list.

Criteria for Evaluation

As a lawyer and a programmer, I constantly look for the perfect balance among power, ease of use, and return on investment. It is critical that a document assembly system handle complex logic. Lawyers are complex, their needs are complex, and their documents are complex. Lawyers command high fees due to their ability to handle this complexity and reduce it to simple manageable decisions for their clients.

Raw Power. A good document assembly system must have the power to handle complexity, including nested logic, repeating data, and calculations. It must also integrate with other programs that attorneys use to enter and manage their data.

Ease of Use. At the same time, the program must be easy for the developer and easy for the end user who will be answering the questions. It must present a simple and manageable interview to the user. It must be dynamic, which means that it should ask only the relevant questions, and group them together based on subject.

Return on Investment (ROI). The software must be suitable for the task. Otherwise, you will find yourself a year or two later either rebuilding your templates in a new system or never achieving your original automation goals. In addition to the price of the software, the cost includes the hardware required to run the software, the time spent by internal and external developers building the system, and the time to train end–users to use the system. These costs must be balanced against the efficiencies gained through the use of the system.

XpressDox Price and ROI

Let’s start with price. XpressDox starts at $150 per user. In volume the price drops to $79 per user. This price is for a full version of XpressDox. There is no additional fee for a developer version, and no lesser fee for a run-time only version. What you get for the fee is a docussembly system—that’s their word for document assembly.

XpressDox was designed by Peter Tuffin, a former senior programmer at Korbitec, the developers of GhostFill. In designing this system, Peter drew on the lessons learned as a power user and integrator of GhostFill, a document assembly system no longer marketed in the United States. He understood the need to make the program simple so that users could start creating templates immediately. At the same time, the program needed to be powerful enough to meet the needs of programmers to assemble multiple templates, link to databases, and calculate values based on data entered.

Given the modest $150 price, it’s worth buying a license to try it out. You will find that XpressDox has sufficient power to meet your document assembly needs. You’ll have to decide whether you like the way it handles document assembly and whether or not you need to deploy document assembly over the Internet, a feature not currently supported by XpressDox.

Installation of XpressDox

For this review I downloaded the trial software from the XpressDox Web site. The program has two versions: One for Microsoft® Office Word 2007 and another for earlier versions of Word. The installer includes a free Microsoft® Office Word add-in that enables you to output Word documents directly to PDF format without Adobe Acrobat.

I installed the software on a Windows Vista 64 PC, with a quad–core processor and 8 GB of RAM using Microsoft® Office 2007. The installation took five minutes. When I restarted Word, there was a new ribbon titled XpressDox with all the features on it. If you use XpressDox as single user, you can accept the default settings. Otherwise, you should click on the Settings icon and set up a network location for all your standard folders, clauses, and help files. You should also configure your data sources which can include connectors to Access, Excel, SQL Server, MySQL, Outlook, and practically any data source. All these configurations can be saved to a central configuration file which can then be imported into any subsequent installations.

My First Template

I generally read the manual first, but this time I didn’t. The software ships with a sample templates folder. Here is a sample template:

<> <> <>, <> <>

Dear
<><>:

RE: <>

Type this in a Word document and apply text formatting. Then click the Save Template button. It’s that easy. Now, click on Run Template and choose the document you just saved.
That’s it.

Next Steps

After I took my baby steps, I looked closer at the sample templates and read the 39 page user guide. I discovered the power of the scripting language. XpressDox is a fully powered document assembly language. It supports all the data entry field types required for document assembly, including text, dates, numbers, currency, checkboxes, and memo fields (including text-formatted memo fields), as well as multiple choice. There is a full panoply of variable formatting functions for all data-types.

When it comes to the interview, no conditional scripting is required. If a variable is used in the template, it appears in the interview. If a variable is contained only within a conditional text block, that text does not appear unless the precondition is met.

The system requires no separate component file, library or data dictionary to assemble. Everything is in the template. That is both a strength and a weakness. Take for example, the following:

<><>.
<><><>< Initials)>> <>

This block of text creates a node called Mailer with a repeating set of Carbon Copy addressees. It defines an alternate prompt for the variable CC_Name and CC_Initials.

On first impression, the coding of templates appears too complex for the casual developer. I strongly recommend that you review the sample templates and read the manual before you venture into complex templates. The functions are quite logical, but they require you to become conversant in a different language.

XpressDox is chock full of functions, like “Caption,” “ExtractInitials,” and “FormatDate” for sophisticated document assembly. These functions, including sample code and wizards, can be accessed from the Template Author’s Toolkit. There is a feature, currently in beta, to make this process even simpler — it enables you to access both commands and data elements as you type the opening brackets.

When you choose a command, a wizard appears to guide you on the options for the command. Without these wizards, it is difficult to get the correct syntax for these functions.

XpressDox includes template management and workflow functions. You can use RunTemplates to dynamically run multiple templates in a single assembly. You can launch a word macro with the simple command <>. You can define a BaseTemplate that is merged into the template, or you can use InsertDocument to bring in a clause or subtemplate. And in so doing, you can use ReplaceField to map fields from the source template into the inserted template, if necessary.

Further, you can manipulate the outputs of a document assembly, defining the name of the output file and the answer file, and specifying where these files are stored.

If you have a data source such as a practice management system, SQL Server, an Access database, or even an Excel file, text file or xml file, you can link to it during assembly. You can either select the record during assembly, or use criteria in the interview to bring in the entire record set. The details of establishing the connection are too complex for this review, but one feature is worth noting: The database connection includes an option to RefreshSave, which enables you to preview the data in the document assembly interview, make changes, and then write back those changes to the database.

Where to use XpressDox

XpressDox is a bargain. Starting at $150 per user, it is less than half the price of its nearest competitor, and substantially less than other competitors. At that price, it is for everyone, ranging from casual coders looking to handle simple merge templates to developers who mean business about document assembly.

XpressDox supports simple document assembly. You can learn the basics of the program in 15 minutes and produce templates with variables, repeats, and conditional logic. XpressDox handles dialog scripting automatically. If you spend a little more time, you can create computations, format outputs, and even add some color to the intake interview.

At the same time, in the hands of a specialist, you can build complex user interviews, connect XpressDox templates to multiple data sources, work with clauses and master templates, use XLST functions, and develop multi-template workflow.

Areas for Improvement

XpressDox is still a new product. It is rough around the edges. The user interview is functional, but it lacks some of the polish found in other document assembly products.

While the scripting language supports interview customizations (including tabs, colors, prompts, help text, labels, and repeats), the program lacks a cohesive interview designer. Improvements in certain layout issues, such as support for multiple fields on a single line, the ability to dictate the order of variables, and alternate ways to represent true/false variables, would make the program more usable.

Further, the system currently lacks a Preview window. What this means is that you need to run multiple test assemblies to debug errors in template coding. With a preview you could try one set of answers and check whether the result is as you intended. As templates get longer, it becomes harder to identify the source of template errors.

Perhaps the most glaring omission in the offering is the lack of support for PDF or graphical forms. The software works with Word XML. Until support is added for PDF, you will be limited to text-based templates. You will have the choice of reproducing the form as a table in Word, or using a graphic as a watermark on each page and positioning the text as appropriate.

Overall Rating

On a scale of 1-5, with 5 as the highest, I give XpressDox a TechnoScore score of 4. The program’s strength is its powerful document assembly markup language, support for complex functions, and its ability to infer the relevance of variables in presenting the user interview. Its weakness lies in its lack of support for PDF templates, the lack of a comprehensive fill-point editor, and the rigidity of the dialog builder. In time, the TechnoScore will increase as the company makes the script editor more intuitive and the dialog-builder more flexible.

Response from XpressDox

We invited O2Smart to respond to this TechnoFeature. Chairman Chris Pearson emailed us the following:

As always, Seth’s review is objective and insightful. As Seth points out, XpressDox is a young product. However, given the large number of document assembly products on the market we are indeed pleased and excited to have received such a favourable Technoscore. Of course we also realize that there is still work to be done in order to address the shortcomings raised by Seth, and we are working hard to improve those aspects.

Of particular note is that we will be releasing the XpressDox Web-server version on 1 October 2010. In short this will allow users to run XpressDox Desktop as a Web version, or to run templates stored on an intranet or on the Internet, and even to launch templates from a Web site or Web application.

We’d like to thank Seth for taking time to evaluate XpressDox so thoroughly. We’d also like to thank Technolawyer for publishing the review.

About Seth Rowland

Seth Rowland, Esq. was named TechnoLawyer Consultant of the Year in 2002 for his contributions to Technolawyer on the subject of document assembly and law practice automation. He is a nationally known technologist whose company, Basha Systems LLC, has helped many law firms build customized practice management and workflow solutions. Please feel free to visit his blog for the latest on document assembly and practice management.

Enabling disruption

Peter — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:42:54 +0000

In his book “The End of Lawyers?” Richard Susskind refers to document assembly software as a “disruptive technology” because it challenges the way law firms are accustomed to doing business. He goes on to say that it is one of the few technologies that will fundamentally challenge or overhaul the legal profession in years to come, since it will facilitate the automatic production of legal documents. But despite the fact that it is relatively inexpensive, and increases productivity dramatically, law firms haven’t rushed out to buy document assembly software. In fact, the majority of lawyers don’t even know that document assembly software exists.

So why hasn’t document assembly become mainstream?

Seth Rowland of Bashasys in New York summed it up nicely when he said that most users are content to use software in the most basic way. Another school of thought is that while document assembly software is relatively inexpensive, creating template libraries is not. So law firms may simply be afraid of the cost. On top of that, lawyers often favor their own contract documents over a standard precedent created by someone else, so they simply continue creating their own documents from scratch. Lawyers also don’t think about document productivity much, because they aren’t the ones doing the actual work: They request a document to be drafted, and voilà, the document appears a short while later. Therefore many lawyers don’t see the need for document assembly software.

An essential tool

It’s not that document assembly isn’t an essential tool for law firms. For example, the often used cut-and-paste method of creating documents is risky, because information from a previous version might be forgotten in the new document, which may change the interpretation. Also, to draft every document from scratch wastes time. It also means that mistakes can creep in, whereas with a document template, only the information that has changed needs to be reviewed. Document assembly is also one of the few remaining ways lawyers can increase fees without putting in more hours, since information – both document and data – is re-used.

Productivity lost

In the early years of document assembly, before Word Perfect and MS Word became popular, the software used for creating document templates was far easier to use than it is today. As a result, users created their own templates, and didn’t need to wait for the IT department, or the document developer, to build templates for them. The result was a massive boost in productivity that lasted until Y2K. That’s when Windows took hold and new, more sophisticated, document assembly systems were designed that were more difficult to learn and use. This meant that supervisors were needed to create and change templates, and so productivity slowed as law firms grappled with educating their users in the use of these new Windows applications.

While there still are some projects that require the services of a document developer, most document templates at law firms can be created by users themselves. Whilst there is a good case for having some document templates in a centralized template library, standard letters and other often-used documents for example, it doesn’t make commercial sense for law firms to ban template creation by users.

XpressDox makes sense

This is where XpressDox comes into its own. In short, XpressDox can be as simple or advanced as you require, so despite it being one of the most powerful document assembly systems on the market, XpressDox is the easiest to learn and use. This means that smaller firms can be up and running in a matter of minutes. And for larger firms that require power and sophistication, XpressDox has all the commands and functions necessary to create advanced document templates. For even more power, XpressDox links to almost any database, including ODBC, SQL Server, MS Outlook and MS Excel. And if that still isn’t enough, XpressDox can be integrated into your accounting or practice management application.

Document assembly: A disruptive technology?

Peter — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:30:59 +0000

International legal futurist, author and technology consultant Richard Susskind says there are several challenges facing the legal profession today. In his book The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services he describes document assembly as a disruptive technology, a term borrowed from Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School.

Richard refers to technologies that have potential to transform companies, industries and markets into drastically different entities. In the context of law firms, "Disruptive technologies, encompassing systems, techniques, and applications, could individually and collectively constitute a grave threat to conventional legal businesses," he says.

Some examples outlined in the book include online legal guidance, automated document assembly, the electronic law marketplace, e-learning and even legal open sourcing, whereby large amounts of legal information are available online for direct use by consumers.

Perhaps if you haven’t yet embraced document assembly in your firm, it’s time you did.

New document assembly system launched

Peter — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:52:41 +0000

Recent press release as posted in Charles Christian’s Legal Technology Insider:

New document assembly system launched

O2Smart has launched a new document assembly product called XpressDox. According to director Chris Pearson, formerly with GhostFill, “It’s taken a long time but document assembly is gaining acceptance as law firms realize knowledge re-use in the form of templates has a payback period of a couple of months.”

XpressDox is XML-based and installs as an add-in to Word 2003 and later. However Pearson says a major advantage is XpressDox caters for users of all skill levels, so even basic Microsoft Word users “can be up and running in a matter of minutes.” Live working copies of the software are available in a trial basis.

Shopping center lease in 30 seconds!

Peter — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:57:30 +0000

“Imagine doing a 35-page shopping center lease in 30 seconds rather than 45 minutes!” suggests Dale Marvin, President of Intelligent Words, a document automation company that specializes in lease automation. “And it will be right,” he adds.

What makes this possible is a little known technology called document assembly. And although document assembly software has been around for many years, its benefits have only been experienced by a few.

To find out more about lease automation visit Intelligent Words.

Why don’t you experience the benefits of document assembly for yourself? Download your free trial of XpressDox Docussembly™ document assembly software right now.

Protecting your template investment

Peter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:41:03 +0000

A number of the larger firms I have encountered tell me that they don’t need document assembly because they have automated all of their documents using Microsoft® VBA. However VBA is a programming environment, which means that documents can only be edited by someone familiar with it. The obvious risk for a firm is that the programmer leaves and their replacement takes some time to learn how the documents were created. Often it is simply easier for a new developer to create document templates from scratch.

But with document assembly, understanding what a previous template creator did is much simpler. This ensures that documents live on after a template creator has left the firm. It also means that you won’t need to employ expensive programmers to manage your template library.

Those firms who already have some or all of their document templates developed in VBA may take time to migrate them to a document assembly system such as XpressDox Docussembly™. In practice however, the two systems can easily run in parallel as the template platform is migrated.

…and then there’s Document Assembly

Peter — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:33:31 +0000

The majority of law firms use document assembly simply to insert fillpoints into documents. Of course that makes sense, since for most legal document templates this is all that’s needed, and in fact simple fillpoints, or ‘stop codes’ as they were called back in the day also bring the biggest gain in productivity from document assembly.

But there are also those who don’t think document assembly is necessary. For example, there is a perception in the profession that Microsoft® Office Word can create templates just fine on its own. In fact, many of the document assembly vendors themselves believe that document assembly software is only required for complex documents.

Personally, I disagree.

The first reason I say this is because document assembly software is inexpensive. At just a few cents (US) per user per day, the gain in productivity from document assembly makes the decision to purchase it a no-brainer. Even basic document assembly pays for itself in no time.

For example, document templates can be created by legal secretaries themselves, without the need to wait for the IT department or a super-user to create them. This saves time and reduces expenses.

Big productivity gains

Template libraries can be created easily, which means that document templates can be found without users having to wade through folder after folder on their hard disk. Letterheads are simplified through the use of a single letterhead for the entire firm, and document formatting is standardized.

Another benefit of document assembly is that accuracy is improved, since the bulk of content on most documents doesn’t change. Typically, users cut and paste information from one contract to the next, but the problem with this is that from time to time sensitive information from the previous contract is forgotten in the document, which is not only embarrassing, but can potentially invalidate a legal agreement.

For this reason alone, law firms would be well advised to insist on the use of document assembly!

One potential problem with implementating document assembly is that most large law firms attempt to enforce a central template library for all users in the firm, preventing them from creating their own templates.

In my opinion, this is counter-productive. While there is clearly a need to do this for some templates such as letterheads, facsimile cover sheets and certain other often-used contract or agreement forms, by far the biggest gain in productivity comes from users having the ability to create their own templates. It’s not simply that this is faster; it is also because law firm partners prefer to use their own content, since they know it better.

It is a known fact that most centralized template libraries don’t get used much in practice for this very reason.

Room to grow

Then there is an argument that junior partners should be using templates created by their more experienced senior colleagues, and this makes sense. It does however mean that a template which is going to be used by others needs to be more rigid, which takes much longer to create. In my experience there is a need for both: A central template library, as well as local templates created by the users themselves.

Some document assembly systems require more training than others, and some systems available on the market today are difficult to implement. Having said this, there are a number of new document assembly systems which pride themselves on ease of use.

One caution, however, is that some of the new ‘easy-to-use’ systems are only easy to use because they don’t do much!

So a good document assembly system should be ‘quick-start’, but allow the user to create more sophisticated templates as they become more proficient with document assembly software.

Don’t lose out

But although basic document assembly brings the biggest productivity gain for law firms, there are some documents that lend themselves to more complex automation. So document assembly functions such as conditional logic ( such as if…then, and keeping or deleting blocks of text), calculations, lookup lists, etc., are also needed.

Of course, document assembly goes much further than that, with the ability to import data from data sources such as Excel spreadsheets, Outlook contacts, and SQL databases. This allows more advanced users create their own document solutions.

Examples of such systems are Litigation, Debt Recovery, and Property Transfers or Mortgage registrations. In fact, document assembly can even integrate with bespoke software systems such as your legal accounting system.

Put simply, document assembly can be whatever you want it to be.

However, going back to what I said earlier, although document assembly systems can handle almost any complex document task, the biggest gain in productivity comes from basic document assembly usage. When secretaries are empowered to produce their own templates, you’ll be amazed at how much better they cope with their work load. You’ll also find that they produce documents faster, which improves customer service.

An industry ‘guru’ recently wrote that document assembly is the next big wave for law firms. Those firms that use it will prosper and those that don’t will lose out.

Why? Because firms that re-use documents will be able to do so at a lower cost than those firms that don’t. Firms using document assembly will also produce documents faster, offering a better customer service, and the re-use of existing documents and information will allow them to increase billing.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?

The XpressDox Cookbook

Peter — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:32:18 +0000

The official XpressDox Docussembly™ Cookbook contains various recipes for different aspects of XpressDox document assembly software. It is intended to complement the User Reference.

This reference is comprehensive in that it covers all of the XpressDox commands and functions, but does so to a limited depth. The Cookbook is designed to give in-depth coverage of certain commonly used aspects.

Although the articles in the Cookbook are not arranged in any particular order, one topic that should come first is moving around in XpressDox. It would probably be helpful to visit that post early on.

The Cookbook is likely to be under construction for quite some time, if not always. We will especially take time to add to it when users report having trouble with any particular concept, or have requirements which are covered by XpressDox but are not apparent at first glance.

Don’t have XpressDox Docussembly™ yet? Click here to download your FREE! trial today.

Getting started with XpressDox

Peter — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:05:16 +0000

If you’re new to XpressDox Docussembly™, or to document assembly software, you may benefit from downloading and reading this quick start guide.

In it we briefly describe what is document assembly, how to create and run a sample template, the Template Author’s Toolkit, and more. You’ll find out how easy it is to use XpressDox Docussembly™ software to meet your document assembly needs.

Don’t have XpressDox Docussembly™ yet? Simply supply us with your contact details below and download your FREE! trial today.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

What is document assembly?

Peter — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:15:05 +0000

Many people are familiar with word processing software such as Microsoft® Office Word for example. While these applications help users produce professional documents they are not efficient tools for doing this repetitively, where only certain information changes each time a document is produced.

Document assembly software adds value to word processing through the concept of a template, which has the variable parts of a document identified (or marked up) differently from the static parts.

Simple and complex documents

In this way, when a template is subsequently used (or run), the user is asked only for the variable data, which is then inserted into the template at the correct places, producing a completed document.

This process works for both simple and complex documents, even to the point where document assembly is integrated with other of your applications and databases.

XpressDox Docussembly™ document assembly software is an ideal tool for your document assembly needs: Simple and complex. You’re welcome to try XpressDox for yourself and see how easy it is to use. To download XpressDox Docussembly™ simply fill in your contact details below.

cforms contact form by delicious:days