Create Your First Text Merge

Decisions includes a number of built-in text merge fields like “Capitalize,” “Lower,” and “Insert Current Date.” These merge fields can be used to dynamically manipulate strings or insert data from other sources into a Text Merge.

Text merge extensions allow you to write custom text merge logic to accomplish any type of merge you would like. This example will show how to create simple Text Merge definition.

Example

Begin with navigating to the Designer Folder. To create new Text Merge click All > Create Text Merge > Create Text from the Folder’s Action menu.

Name Text Merge and click Create to continue.

The Text Merge Designer window opens… In the main workspace we can create a simple text like we would in a Rich Text Box with all the Format Text tools.

There is a ToolBox in the right panel where we have an option to Add and define any Inputs into our Text Merge. Click Add to add a new input…

In the resulting pop-up window we give our new input a Name and define its Type. In this example we define the Type as String. When we are finished defining our input we click Ok to save and close this pop-up window.

Our new input is now available to use in the left panel under Data category. We can use these inputs as variables in our Text Merge. As well we can see Calculated Fields category in the left panel. If we expand this category we will see all methods available to apply to our Text Merge.

To demonstrate how it works we type some text into workspace area, drag our input string, and drag Capitalize method to capitalize all characters in our input string.

With our Capitalize method selected in the workspace we locate Settings in the ToolBox, click Text dropdown option and select our Input String variable.

To see how it works we click Preview link from the top panel of Text Merge Designer…

Because our Input is a variable with no values so far we are prompted to give it a value first…

We define its value and click Ok to continue.

Now we can see the resulting window with our input string and the method applied to it. We can click Close to close preview, or…

We can choose one of the Save options available for us at the top of this preview window.

We click Save As Doc to save our text to a Microsoft Word document. We give it a name and pick the location we want to save it to and click save.

Our Text Merge designer informs us that the file was saved. Click Ok to close this Info pop-up window.

Additional Resources

• Using Text Merge in Flow