CiviCRM has always had a system for managing and using document templates. This is a wonderful feature, especially since "tokens" can be used to integrate the data of contacts etc. in the sense of serial letters and thus create personalised documents. Unfortunately, the templates are difficult to work with unless you want to create a very simple layout, and there are some functional limitations. The reason is that the underlying technology is actually not very suitable for the purpose: the templates are defined in HTML and CSS, which is just right for e-mails - but not for templates that are meant to be converted into pdf documents.
Fortunately, our extension CiviOffice is now finally getting ready for production and offers an alternative approach to the field of document templates. The extension makes it possible to upload files in the common docx format into CiviCRM and to use them as templates in various workflows. Document creation is so far possible for contacts (individually and for several from a search result), integration with other objects such as contributions and event registrations is planned to be implemented.
The tool provides two completely new functions that were previously not possible or only possible with great difficulty: In interaction with the donation receipt extension, cover letters can now be created together with the donation certificates. This eliminates the need for time-consuming sorting, especially for larger quantities of donation receipts. Furthermore, personalised e-mail attachments can be created with CiviOffice and the MailBatch extension.
CiviOffice does not yet have an online editor to modify the templates before use - for example, to add a personal message. Since a considerable development effort is to be expected for this, we have included "Live Snippets" as a temporary replacement - individually definable tokens that can be filled with text when generating documents.
In addition to the integration into other workflows, our next planned feature is that CiviOffice should be able to convert HTML elements into docx's own OOXML format. For example, simple formatting should be possible within tokens (such as bold print, lists), and simple logic constructs can also be built in this way. The latter is especially helpful because Smarty syntax cannot be used in CiviOffice, unlike in the conventional template system of CiviCRM. In the long term, it should be possible to connect other services besides the local document storage, e.g. GoogleDrive, Nextcloud or Sharepoint.
CiviOffice is currently available in version 0.7 (GitHub). The documentation can be found here. Special thanks for the support of the development go to Deutsche Stiftung Engagement und Ehrenamt, Bürgerstiftung Hamburg, the Internationale Jugendgemeinschaftsdienste (IJGD) and Vermittlungsagentur Boss. We are still looking for supporters for the pilot phase and further development, please contact us if you are interested.
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Muchas gracias por la informacion