Organizing Docs with ActiveDocs

Manufacturer: Keylogix

Web site: www.activedocs.com/product/try/default.asp

Estimated price: $239 per single-user license

ActiveDocs from Keylogix is document automation software that works with Office XP. This program helps you generate documents (such as contracts, proposals, and form letters), pulling in data from outside data sources easily. ActiveDocs enables you to modify templates without having to become a programmer. It also automates formatting chores to speed up your work.

When you open an Office application, such as Word, ActiveDocs displays the ActiveDocs toolbar. The tools included here are explained in ActiveDocs for Tablet PC Help (as shown in Figure 14-8), which also includes a tutorial to get you up to speed on how to create catalogs, folders, and categories, and the various icons you can use to automate template design.

Figure 14-8: You can link to data, group similar fields together, and prompt the users of templates to make entries in ink by using these authoring tools.

Now I’m not going to kid you: This is not simple software as many of the others in this chapter are. This is serious document template design stuff with linked data fields and sophisticated tools. However, it does offer support for ink-only fields; and when you consider the possibilities of how customer surveys or petitions might be filled out on a Tablet PC (including a handwritten signature), a good form design tool is a handy thing to have around.