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Generate Documentation using your own template

Cloudockit generates detailed documentation of everything you have in your Cloud Environment, and also includes rich Visio diagrams. Wouldn’t it be nice to control the output document that Cloudockit generates, change your logo, add text, remove sections or even change colors? You can do it all. Let’s see how.

There are two methods to customize the template. The method you choose depends on the type of customization you want to achieve:

  • Method 1 enables you to change the color, logo and styles but not the actual content of the template
  • Method 2 also allows you to change the actual content of the template (like removing some sections or changing boilerplate text)

Method 1

Create a Word document containing your cover page: a good place to put your logo, then add a background color if you need.

Adjust the Word styles to suit your needs (H1, H2, Normal, etc.)

Specify this Word document in the My Designs or Company Designs of the Documents page.

Important: make sure you don’t have any bookmark left by checking the following.

From the Insert tab, click the Bookmark button and empty the list of bookmarks (make sur the Hidden bookmarks checkbox is checked):

Method 2

We need to provide you with a base template with specific placeholders. Simply contact us at support@cloudockit.com.  Once you open the document, you need to ensure that you can see the Developer Tab (I don’t see it):

As you can see in the Executive Summary section, the document is built with many Content Controls that are dynamically filled by Cloudockit when it generates the documentation. If you want to change the template, you can do as follows:  Change the look and feel of the document

As the template is a Word document, the best way to change the look and feel of the document is to edit the Heading styles.  In order to do that, right-click on the Heading and click on modify:

Then, you can change the color or styles as you want. You can also change the First Page of the document. For instance, you can change the colors and the logo:

REMOVE CONTENT

If you do not need a specific section of content in a section, you can just remove it. For instance, if you do not need the Web Site Diagnostics section, you can use the navigation pane and delete it

If in this specific section, you want to remove only one line in the table, you can also do that.

ADD CONTENT

You can also add content to the document. For example, if you don’t like the boilerplate text that is used in the document, you can edit it: The last step before saving the updated Template is to update the Table of Contents. You must go on the Table of Content and right-click and select update.

WARNINGS

Changing the Template can result in a generated document that is corrupt, so please ensure you read this:

  • Always update the Table of Contents before saving the document
  • Proceed to small changes and try to generate the document. Be careful you haven’t made any changes that corrupt the document
  • Do not modify the structure of the document (like removing Content Control that are Placeholders)
  • Once you change the template, you will not get the new template stuffs so our advice is to keep the personalization minimal so that you can easily redo it if we provide a new template. **

This step is really mandatory as Cloudockit is using the Table of Contents to remove empty sections. If you do not do that, you may have a corrupted document. Also, note that you cannot change the Table of Contents like not displaying all the Heading levels otherwise it will corrupt the document.

How to Use Your New Template

Now that the hard work is finished, it is time to use the template to generate a new document. To do that, click on the Settings button of the Cloudockit Portal and go to the Documents tab. Then, click on the Reports detailed pane, and under My Templates, upload your template.

Then click on the Generate button.

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