From the very start RediDraft, like FastDraft before it, helps you organize your content to maximize reuse and ease of maintenance over time. There aren’t any templates like you find in other systems. The highest level of organization is the library. The RediDraft library lets you group like content together. For example, if you are a law firm and one of your practice areas is estate planning you can group all of the language related to that into an Estate and Trust library to easily allow your estate planning subject matter experts to manage it. If another practice area is real estate you could do the same allowing your real estate subject matter experts to manage the real estate related library.

The next layer of organization is the Form Volume and this is where RediDraft really starts to shine. You have complete flexibility in how you organize your Form Volumes. The Form Volumes contain components containing many paragraphs or all the way down to fragments of a single word or part of a word. There are no arbitrary limits placed on you around organization. You could have one Form Volume for introductory language options for wills for example and others with language related to the various sections. Group them together or separate them out any way you want because RediDraft will pull them together as needed to create exactly what you want every single time.

The current version of RediDraft uses Microsoft Word to manage the Form Volumes. The next release gives you more options. You can use Word, WordPerfect or any word processor capable of saving docx files. You can use the full complement of styling and formatting available in the word processor and automatically apply it to the generated document. Additionally, you can use the new RediDraft markdown editor instead of using an external Word processor and still apply your preferred formatting choices.

One of the most complex examples of Form Volume organization I have seen is by a law firm in the upper mid-west. They created a form volume within a library that acts as a menu system for the library. Then the other Form Volumes have the text for wills, trusts, powers of attorney, etc. They also have Form Volumes with text explaining each of the documents so their client can easily understand the entire estate plan.

By defining secondary documents, the user chooses the appropriate components from the menu, completes the variable information and RediDraft automaticaly generates the entire estate plan ready for printing and placing into a binder for review and signature by their client. It’s truly impressive and there is absolutely no other document automation solution out there able to do this.

But a RediDraft library has so much more. Variable definitions let the subject matter experts guide the drafter through the process of gathering the needed variable information. Jan DeSalvo called these powerful variables and she was right. They are extremely powerful but they are also easy to create, manage, and use.

Another area where RediDraft shines is with Smart Models. Think of Smart Models like templates from simpler systems but on steroids. You can create a Smart Model using the same tools used to draft a document. You pick your Form Volume components, define whatever logic you wish and save it for use by others to draft. It gives you the ability to extend the normal variable completion into a full blown interview system to guide the drafter every step of the way in the creation of a document draft. You can also create a Smart Model from any previously assembled document. You can pull from multiple assembled documents if you wish. Just like Form Volumes, RediDraft Smart Models let you be you … any way you want.

With RediDraft you have to work really hard to paint yourself into a corner. You can organize and reorganize any part of your library and RediDraft will make sure everything still works the way it should. This flexibility encourages an incremental approach to managing libraries and their contents. As you gain experience with RediDraft, like FastDraft before it, you can take advantage of newly learned skills without worrying about breaking things. This is one of the reasons I think many FastDraft users never moved on. They had a tool that provided them almost infinite flexibility while retaining the ability to know with absolute certainty exactly what went into drafting any document or package of documents.

RediDraft is advanced document automation and not everyone needs it. RediDraft has a flat learning curve to get started. If you use RediDraft to do the same things you find in lessor systems you are up and running with a couple of hours of learning … at most. But once you know the basics, the learning curve gets steeper with the more advanced features of RediDraft. Part of the reason for this is RediDraft lets you retain all of the features you might want to use in Microsoft Word. Word can be used to apply styles and formatting during the automation process. The RediDraft approach is far superior to using Word templates because it completely separates the content from the presentation. The subject matter expert can concentrate on the text, logic and workflow around the boilerplate without having to worry about how any of that affects the styling and formatting of the final output.

There are a lot of solutions out there if you just need the basics. If one of those solutions meet your current needs you should opt for that over RediDraft. When your needs change and you need the advanced capabilities RediDraft offers we can work with you during the conversion process to get you trained and productive as quickly as possible.

In all honesty, training has been an area I’ve neglected these last 12+ years. You have to remember, in 2010 just like in 2004 I thought I was providing a temporary solution to existing users that would naturally fade away over time. With the next release that all changes.

Coinciding with the release of the next version of RediDraft is a series of video tutorials to get a new user up and running quickly. The next step beyond that is one-on-one or group training using your specific content. You pull together what you are trying to use and during the training we go through the entire process step by step of converting your boiler plate into components grouped in Form Volumes together. It’s possible a service to offload the initial conversion could be offered in the near future. But the preferred path would be to train one or more users while doing the conversion. The organization behind RediDraft is just too small to take on recurring management of RediDraft libraries for a client. The goal is and will remain to have one or more subject matter experts become proficient enough to maintain the libraries going forward.