Quick rundown
For a client matter I was working on, I needed to summarise a wide range of specific information collection and sharing provisions and present them in a standardised way. It was too early to know how people would want to use the data and I wanted it to be re-usable and available in different formats so I made an online tool to help collect the data, present it, and make it available in different formats. This made my task much more efficient and didn’t lock me into a particular format (the prospect of being locked into Microsoft Word had been daunting).
Once the summary for a provision was entered into the online form, the data would (without further involvement from me):
- populate a standardised table on a webpage (essentially one page/post per provision);
- populate a similar, standardised Microsoft Word template (which would be emailed to me); and
- create a new row in a Google spreadsheet.
Entering the data in this way gave me much more flexibility than simply entering the summaries into a Microsoft Word document and had the added bonus of making it all presentable and searchable online.
To achieve this, I simply took a knowledge base tool I’d already been working on, repurposed it a bit, added an online form (with a post content template to produce a page/post per form submission), and connected it via Zapier to a couple of additional web services.
Some pics
Submit a provision
Homepage view
Summary of a single provision (each provision has its own page like this)
(Please ignore the inconsistent typography. I know that needs fixing 🙂 )
