Using Project Variables

Creating conditional document areas and text input areas.

Project Variables are a powerful tool that allows you to customize documents in unique ways. There are two main uses for project variables: to input a custom field into a document or to determine what appears in a document conditionally.

You can find project variables under the Governance section of the settings menu.

Inserting a value into a Document

The simplest use case is to use a project variable to add a field into a project. The field can be a text field, a number field, or date field. Once on the project variables screen, you would create a new variable by giving it a description, a field name, and a type. You can also specify if you want that field to be required for all projects and if it should have a minimum or maximum length.

In the above example, you would be allowing the user to type in their Flavor of Ice Cream choice. After you click submit, you can go to a project, see the field in the Project Overview screen with a place to type in your flavor of ice cream.

In this case, I'm feeling some strawberry. To get this to appear in a document, you can use the project_variables merge field. Back in the settings menu, we defined the field name as flavor_input, so my merge tag to insert the value of that field into a document would be

In Word, you can create a merge field using that variable that exports the value of the text field

You can use this same method to insert any text, number, or date information into your document!

Conditionally Showing Sections of a Document

Instead of inputting data, you wanted users to select a flavor from a list of options. Depending on which option is selected, you can insert different things into your document.

First, you would create your list of options.

Note that the type of field doesn't matter as it will display the predefined list in a single-select fashion. Now in the Project Overview, you will see your listed options.

After you submit, you can now generate a document that can show different things depending on how you have laid out your document.

Here is an example of merge fields in a Word document that would export based on this variable. 

You can see it laid out here in the Word document, along with the output.

You can put any text between the if-endIf pair of the selected variable, including tables, other Project Variables, payment terms, and even other nested if-endIf Project Variable sets.

You can use Project Variables to drive lots of flexibility into your documents!

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Expand Product Descriptions with Project Variables

We’ve added the ability to add Project Variables to Product, giving you the ability to define custom fields to capture use-case specific information about your products. You can create the field under Project Variables in settings, and then pre-populate it with standard content per product in Settings before adding the Product to a Project.