This article shows you how to add document automation to your Hivelight workflows.
We do this by using the Hivelight variables feature and pairing Hivelight with SmarterDrafter, a leading document automation solution that has integrations with a lot of practice management and document management systems.
This article shows how to do this with a Hivelight-SmarterDrafter-Clio stack. But this will work with other practice managment solutions like ActionStep, Smokeball and others.
The end result is that the tasks in your Hivelight workflows will be populated with SmarterDrafter links that, when clicked, will generate the specific documents needed for that task and save them to the correct matter in your practice managment or document management system.
To further enhance the experience, we can also add dynamic links that take the use straight to the documents folder in the matter.
Adding SmarterDrafter links to your workflow tasks
We'll start by showing how to create the SmarterDrafter links that you will add to the tasks in your Hivelight workflows.
The links you need to add have the following format:
https://app.rulestar.com/forms/[document alias]?matterId={{matter.clio.id}}&source=clio&sendDocument=true
You'll notice that this link is set up to work with Clio.
We have the {{matter.clio.id}} variable. When you apply the workflow to a matter, this variable will be replaced with the associated Clio matter id.
'source=clio' tells SmarterDrafter that the associated practice management system is Clio.
'sendDocument=true' tells SmarterDrafter to automatically save the completed document to the matter in the selected practice management system (being Clio in this example).
The '[document alias]' part needs to be replaced with the alias for the document you want to generate for this task.
You can find the alias as follows:
Open Smarter Drafter
Go to 'Build'
Open the desired form/document
Open 'settings' for that document
You see the alias under 'Form Alias'. If the field is blank, you can enter your own alias.
In the above example the alias is 'letter_of_demand'.
So, the link we add to our Hivelight workflow task is:
To add this to a task in a Hivelight workflow, do the following:
Open the desired workflow in Hivelight
Click on the options button next to the workflow name (3 vertical dots) and select 'Edit workflow'
Find the task that requires the creation of a document and click on 'Edit task'
In the Description field type some text (e.g. "Generate letter of demand"), highlight the text, click on the link icon (🔗), paste in the document link and hit 'enter' on your keyboard.
Publish the workflow.
Now, you can apply that workflow to any of your matters. When you click on the link in the relevant task it will open to Smarter Drafter. Hivelight will tell Smarter Drafter which document to generate (based on the alias you put in the link), which client the document is associated with, and which matter in Clio to save it to. When you complete the document interview in SmarterDrafter the document will save to the matter in Clio.
Adding a document folder link to your workflows
To make this even smoother, you can populate your workflow tasks with a dynamic link to the documents folder in your practice management or document management system. In this example we are working with Clio as above.
When you go to the document folder in a matter in Clio (or orther browser based PMS) copy the url from the address bar. It will have a format similar to this:
Simply replace the numbers section of the link with {{matter.clio.id}} as follows:
To add this to a task in a Hivelight workflow, do the following:
Open the desired workflow in Hivelight
Click on the options button next to the workflow name (3 vertical dots) and select 'Edit workflow'
Find the task that you want to add the link to and click on 'Edit task'
In the Description field type some text (e.g. "Documents (Clio)"), highlight the text, click on the link icon (🔗), paste in the link and hit 'enter' on your keyboard.
Publish the workflow.
Now when you apply that workflow to a matter you'll have a link in that task that will take you straight to the document folder in your practice management system.
If you have previous version of a roadmap that are on active matters, and you want to update them with this new functionality, clio on any uncommenced milestone in that matter and update to the new version (instructions here)