primedocs can integrate four different types of template:

• Word

• Outlook

• Excel

• PowerPoint

In addition, primedocs can list further document type, such as pdf files, which are simply opened with their respective application when double-clicked upon.

Let’s start with Word and then move on through the other template types.

Word templates

primedocs in Word is an exceptionally powerful document automation tool, and we will be discussing this aspect of primedocs a little later on. But first, it is important to understand that Word templates in primedocs do not follow the regular Word template structure - as this would not allow the felixibility that primedocs needs. Instead, we have a three-level hierarchy:

Style template

Right at the top, we have the style template, which defines (as the name suggests) the document styles. primedocs reads the required document styles from this template and makes the styles listed here available to all templates which are based upon that particular Style template.

Layout template

The Layout template contains the header and footer common to the Content templates below it. So if you have, say, a set of documents such as contracts, and they vary in content, but all have the same logo, cover page, table of contents and cosing page, you could define these elements in the Laout template, and then in the content template simply add what makes each document uinique.

And now here’s the thing: If you ever need to modify the header or footer, say for moving a logo to another place, you only need to do this once - in the Layout template - and it will be automatically passed down to every Content template which is based upon this specific Layout template. This can save an enornous amount of maintenance time.

Content template

On the lowest and most individual level, we have a content template, which builds upon the Style and the Layout templates, and then adds the rest of the document content required for each document the user needs to be able to create.

You can think of this as a pyramid, if it helps.

Now, which elements you define in the Layout template and which in the Content template is a question of your planning. You could, in theory, define everything in the Content template and almost nothing in the Layout template - or even have an empty Layout template. But of course any changes you make will then have to be replicated across all Content templates. It is certainly a better idea to use this three-tier hierarchy to place all “lowest common denominator” document attributes such as headers and footers into the Layout template - and only those elements which are specific to each document in the actual Content template.

So together, these three template types define each document you can make available to the user.

Special case: Theme templates

But wait - there is a fourth template type as well. This is the template which contains the document fonts and colours, and this is attached to your User Profile. You will find this theme file (or these theme files) in the Styles category in the admin view you will be working in anyway as a layouter.

If you switch to the Organization tab of the primesoft tab, and then to “Organization units” in the left navigation, you will see the following, provided you have the necessary access rights, as this requires the Org. units administrator access rights, because this is where you aan build new organisational units. But as a layouter, you typically do not need to do this, but can use the theme templates that have already been made availabel for each existing organisational unit.

At the right end of the ribbon, you can see the buttons for creating the colour and the font theme. You can edit these directly in XML.

Outlook templates

Outlook and Word are technically closely related, and you will notice several similarities when you start working with Outlook templates. In Outlook, the templates are structured a little differently, however.

We have the following, which are always present:

Mail theme template

This contains the mail styles and the colour theme, embedded into the Outlook file as you would normally embed the colour and the font themes (Options → Colors; Options → Fonts - both of which can be saved as a package, or a new theme here).

E-mail template

This contains all the content that should be pre-filled in when a new e-Mail is opened, not including the signature, which is a separate element.

Signature templates

These contain the signatures - usually one for the internal and one for the external signature.

The following are optional, and may or may not be present:

Disclaimer template

This contains the company disclaimer, which may for instance be present only below the signature in external e-mails, if so desired.

Campaign template

This file contains the campaign banner for each campaign. - so you can have multiple campaigns running in parallel and you can schedule when which campaigns become active and when they stop being selectable by the end users.

PowerPoint templates

PowerPoint templates, like Word templates, follow a three-tier logic, but the logic is not the same as Word, due to the different logical structure of Word and PowerPoint files.

The three teirs for PowerPoint are as follows:

Master

This file contains just the slide layouts and appears empty if you open it. These layouts are inherited by the tiers below.

Slide set

This contains content slides used to generate slide previews in the insert slide dialogue - so it will need to contain a filled in slide for every available layout.

Content template

Using the layouts defined above, this file contains those slides which should be in place as content when the presentation opens.

Excel templates

Excel templates currently have a simple one-file structure which broadly corresponds to the Excel template logic in Microsoft Office.

Other files

primedocs has two special types of file which don’t function directly as Microsoft Office files:

Image Gallery

This allows you to create an image gallery which you can later link to the primedocs Add-In in PowerPoint, to allow the insertion of images directly into a presentation. You can also create multiple image galleries for different presentation types. The image galleries allow you to group images by categories, as if they were stored in topical folders. More on how to create theese in the appropriate section.

Chart Template

This allows you to import chart templates (*.crtx files) into primedocs.

Third-party applications

You can even import documents intp primedocs which are not Microsoft Office documents such as pdf files, for instance. In the case of such documents, primesoft merely provides access to these files and opens them with the associated application, just as Windows would if you were opening them from the Windows File Explorer. But of course using the centralised document access system provided by primedocs!

Here are the two ways you can make a file available in this section:

External document

Here you can create a placeholder and then import a file directly, save it and the make it available to users. Double-clicking on this file then opens it using the associated application.

External file for distribution

This allows you to make a file accessible to users without allowing them to open it directly from primedocs. This could be because you want to distribute a setup file, a device driver or other file which isn’t intended to be opened directly, but copied into a specific folder. This automatically packages the file into a ZIP file, which is opened when the user double-clicks on it.