Back to the Basics: What is a HotDocs Interview?

Many of the posts on this blog assume you already have a basic understanding of the fundamental working parts of HotDocs. However, these “Back to the Basics” posts are specifically designed for those of you who are new to HotDocs, to discuss the basic features that you need to know about.

A HotDocs interview is a question-and-answer form used to gather the information you need to create a document. An interview looks like this:

As you create a HotDocs template in HotDocs Developer, the program automatically creates a corresponding interview. For example, if you create a variable for “Employee Name”, a question asking for that information is added to the interview, just like this:

You can then use the HotDocs component manager to customize exactly how the interview looks, making it easier for the end user to fill out. As you can see in the first screenshot above, you can combine related questions together in one section (called a “dialog”)change the title of each section of questions (in this case, “Employee Information”), and use different options for how the answers will be filled in, including fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice, drop-down menus, and more. You can also give help prompts at the bottom of the screen that give the user more information on how to answer the questions.

After an interview is completely filled out, a ready-to-use document is produced instantly. You can also save the answers that you have used previously and reuse them again in the future.