Tip #164 - How To Use Appointment Merge Codes

There are many types of documents that are created in SmartAdvocate which require the user to enter appointment details, such as date, time, location, type, etc. Some examples would be: Letters to clients, reminding them of various appointments (Depositions, IMEs, Court appearances, etc.). Most of these types of documents are generated using document templates. You can increase productivity in your firm by automatically inserting specific information about an appointment into your document. This can be done using merge codes.

Let’s look at a simple IME reminder letter as an example.

In the sample letter above, the appointment details are inserted in the Reminder Letter. This information would have been entered on the Case Calendar in SmartAdvocate.

A sample Document Template used to generate the Reminder Letter would look like this (the appointment merge codes highlighted here for illustration):

In this example, we are using the merge codes for open appointments only (there are other appointment merge codes – generally grouped together - that will allow you to select from all appointments, next appointment, next case trial appointment, etc.). When the template is selected to generate your document, you will be allowed to select the date of the appointment that you want inserted into your finished document. In this example, we are using one of the open appointment merge codes, so the merge pane displays a list of open appointments for us to choose from.