Repeating Sections and Document Generation

Hello,

Currently the repeating sections for NWC is a very new feature, We are working on releasing the document generation support for NWC Objects (which includes repeating section data) however we weren't able to release that capability yet. 

@EuanGamble Euan are you able to advise? 

@Jake I appreciate the info. Is there an approximate timeline on the release of this functionality?

@EuanGamble Thank you for looking into this!

Hi @EuanGamble , 

This feature still doesn't appear to be released. I just gave it a try and there are no options to tag 'collections' (or multi valued) data. Do you know when this is expected to be released? It's a showstopper for us.

cheers

Grant

As far as I can tell, repeating section data isn't treated like an object, it appears as a collection.

Hi @tctctc,

The ability to create a table from Collection variables is coming soon! The dev team will be picking this feature up next, with an expected Q2CY2021 delivery.

The high level plan is to enhance the existing Generate Document action, where the Document Tagger will offer Repeating row tags and allow Collection variable tags to be copied. We'll be sure to create documentation with clear steps of how templates must be configured.

I will endeavour to update this thread when we are nearer to launch. Let me know if you have any other questions on this.

Thanks,

Kate

I managed to get this working, but it's not exactly straightforward.

I started by creating a textarea (A) within each repeating section, which would be populated with a character delimited list of each answer of that instance. Create another textarea (B) which is populated with a delimited list of all iterations of (A), but be sure to use a different delimiting character - for example: 

A) answer1a|answer2a|answer3a ~
A) answer1b|answer2b|answer3b ~
B) answer1a|answer2a|answer3a ~answer1b|answer2b|answer3b ~

Inject (B) into a cell into an individual cell in an Excel sheet. 

Use Excel formulae to firstly cut (B) into individual rows using something like this:
=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE($B$4," ~",REPT(" ",LEN($B$4))),($A5-1)*LEN($B$4)+1,LEN($B$4)))

Then use Excel formulae to cut each row into individual answers:
=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE($B5,"|",REPT(" ",LEN($B5))),(C$4-1)*LEN($B5)+1,LEN($B5)))

This will create a fully populated table from just one, delimited string. You can then hide the workings by making the text white, or the columns/rows small.

Finally, use this file as a template and add to a larger PDF if required, using Document Generation.

Hope this helps!