Rock U - Documents - Merge Documents

Transcribed Video Content

Let's talk about merge documents. Merge documents are a powerful way that you can take a listing of entities, and merge it into a document either a Word document or an HTML document. Most commonly this is done with people. So you'll take a group of people, you'll merge them into a Word document or an HTML document, but sometimes groups. But realize you can use merge documents with any entity within Rock. So, let's take a look at how that's done. The first thing we need to do is we need to go out and we need get a list of things that we want to merge. So, this case, I'm just gonna do a simple person search for Decker. And so, maybe I want to merge, all the Deckers in. And so I can either choose to pick a couple of them or if I don't choose any and just hit the merge document, it'll pick them all. So at the bottom of every grid should be the ability to export to Excel but also to do a merge to a document. So let's go ahead and pick that. Now when I come in here it tells reminds me how many peep how many rows I did select. I can choose to show some of those rows. It only show me the top 15. And if I want, can see the merge fields that are hooked into this. And this will help me create my merge document, when that time comes. Okay. So the big thing is to pick which merge document or merge template I want to use. So I'm gonna choose just a sample letter. Okay. And we hit merge. And then down here in Word, it'll show me my merged doc. Okay. And I can see, , the date is today's date that it has, Alex. And if I keep scrolling down, there's Cindy. If I keep scrolling down, there's Noah and Ted. Okay. So that's pretty cool. Now, that's a letter. I could choose to do name tags. Let's see what that one looks . Now, in this case, notice that each person doesn't get their own page. In this case, each person gets their own cell and this allows us to do several records on a single document. Now, you can get really creative with this. Out of the box, we show you a couple. One is a sample certificate. So you could upload a a merge doc that does a certificate for completion of a class, or ministry. So there's a a nice certificate. In all these cases, I'm showing word, but it can actually be, any HTML you you provide too. There's also plug ins in the store if you wanna get some different, formats. Now notice too that, maybe I'm doing envelope. There is this combined family members. And if you click on the tool tip, it'll tell you exactly what it's gonna combine and the the formatting of of how to to put that onto your document. So I'm gonna go ahead and click that, hit merge. And now you can see that we have envelopes. Okay. So that's how you do merge documents. Let's let's see how do you edit and administrate this. So if I want to add a new merge document, I would go under general settings, merge templates. And here you'll kind of notice the ones that we've we're playing with. So let's go ahead and select one of these. And you'll just see that there's a a few different, properties you put on there. So if I want to create new one, can go under samples, hit a new merge template. So I just give it a name and a description and then the type is gonna be either HTML or Word document in this case. And then basically all I have do is upload the template. There are categories here and of course I'd pick samples but I could change the category. Now, this field here kind of tells you you can actually have a merge template that's personal to just you. So as administrator, I can come in here and make a merge template that won't show to everybody but will only show to this specific person. And I'll show you, another place where you can go ahead and and have your staff, be able to do the same thing without having to come into this admin area. Note that merge templates can also be secured. So if you only wanna have certain staff be able to see these, that's certainly an option. And again, remember whenever you use security, sometimes you secure things so people can't get to things and then sometimes you secure things so people don't have to see things or don't have to get to things. So in this case, you might, secure certain templates that really is it would just be clutter to most people. Okay. So where do you do a personal template? So that's gonna be under my settings, merge templates. Pretty much the same thing. In this case though, we're just gonna show you a list of the merge templates that you're allowed to see and this is gonna show you that they're global. But I could go ahead and add a personal one. Now, most of your staff won't be able to actually pick a different person. They're just gonna have their own name here. But since I'm administrator, I can I can do that? I can change that. So your individuals can go ahead and do this same concept right here. So merge templates are pretty easy to use. Let's see how easy they are to create. So let's open up our merge letter that we looked at before. And if you're familiar with merging documents in Word, that that's kind of a pain. You have to go create these little merge fields and you have to drop those merge fields in the right place within your Word document and we have really simplified that. So you you don't have to use any of the Word merge fields. Basically, what you're gonna do is you're gonna take Lava, which is Rock's templating engine and you're just gonna type it right into your doc. Okay? And I've highlighted here the Lava that customizes this document. Now, there's some videos on Lava, you want to go check those out. But in using merge documents, it's super easy. So up here, I'm just putting in today's date in a specific format and this format is documented so you don't have to remember it. And then I'm just every row is gonna have, this variable called row and then the properties of that row are are gonna be shown in that one, helper. So we'll see nickname, last name. And then down in here, I'm just going and getting, their address. And then again, here putting nickname. Now, when we do the mailing labels, it's just as easy. We just add one more bit of lava and that's this next command. Now, this next command is only available inside of the word merge documents that basically says, hey, just move to the next row instead of putting one row per page. That's kind of the default. This is just basically saying, go to the next row and it comes over here. Go to the next row. Go to next row to go to the next row. Now, when this runs out of rows, it will go to the next page. So that's how you do merge documents in Rock. It's super simple and very powerful.