Is it possible to have a data subset populate as a table in a Word Document (template) without using a plugin, but by using the OOTO Word Doc from Template smart service? If so, how do you configure that in the template?
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It's doable using WordML injection, which takes a bit of experimentation and somewhat more insight into the back-end workings of Word files than normal. I created a working version of this years ago and I uploaded my (21.1) cleaned-up export of this a few weeks ago in this thread. It contains all the needed expression rules as well as a process model with a demonstrative implementation of the doc generation.
Thanks Mike! We just installed the Dynamic Document plugin, but I will check out your solution as well since it would eliminate the need to maintain a plugin.
Honestly, if you can get the Dynamic Document plugin working for your use case, I would seriously consider just using that, as it will allow for a more maintained and potentially more robust implementation. The one thing I'm not sure it can do, which mine can, is to create a grid with a dynamic number of columns. But on the other hand I'd warn that my version has proven unreliable at creating grids that behave properly if you want to take the Word file and turn it into a PDF. So just FYI.
As a side note, honestly it's not a realistic expectation to have a system that uses no plug-ins, because there is a lot of really useful and/or irreplacable functionality that's only available via various plugins (people functions, excel tools, PDF tools, etc), and there's almost never any real maintenance burden or other reason to avoid using them.
Thanks for the additional insight. We won't need to create a grid with a dynamic number of columns so that wouldn't be a problem and I do think we'll want to convert the Word doc to a PDF so maybe the plugin is the best option.
My app has a pretty small footprint so there should be no overhead in trying both if you feel like it, in whatever order - I've never learned the advanced syntax behind the dynamic document plugin so I'm not much of a resource there
To add quick, if your end goal is a PDF document, we've had more consistent results utilizing HTML over Word with the HTML Doc From Template node, then converting to PDF from there.
Thanks Chris!