Intermediate clause author tutorial

Next up we can add another similar tool tip – the action button.

To show you how this works in practice, let’s take a look at the termination clause. The clause that we initially created was made up of three paragraphs, but now the template author is asking us to one take this initial paragraph 5.3 and turn it into its own individual clause entitled “Survival” and secondly we need to take these individual bullets and turn them into optional subclauses that can be included on an ad hoc basis.

This is exactly where an action button comes into play. So, let’s do just that. We’re going to go back into our ClauseBase menu and we are going to go to the termination clause, which as you can see still features the original paragraph 5.3. We’re going to cut that out of the content body and save the new termination clause and then we’re going to create a new library clause inside of the term and termination folder which we are going to call “survival”. We’re going to also include the content title. We’ll copy that from the file name and then finally we’ll paste the paragraph that we took from article 5 into the content body. We can then optionally also turn paragraph 3 into paragraph 1. It doesn’t really make any difference, but this is a little bit cleaner.

As soon as we click “Save and insert” our new survival clause has been created and then it’s just a matter of taking these three bullets and kind of performing the same exercise on them – turning them all into individual subclauses.

Creating individual subclauses

We’re going to cut all three bullets out of article 5. We’ll again save our changes and then we’re going to create a new library clause, but before we create a library clause we’re going to go inside of the “Term and termination” folder and we’re going to create a subfolder “Termination events”. Why that is important you’ll see later on when we create the action button.

We’ll create a new regular folder inside of the term in termination folder which we will call “Termination events” and then we’re going to place our new clause into this termination events folder.

We’re going into the content body first because we know that we have three bullets and just want to check which one is first, that is obviously the termination for disloyalty dishonesty or fraud so we’re going to cut the two remaining bullets out and give this a file name “termination for dishonesty, disloyalty and fraud”, no content title needed, the content body is fine as it is, and so we can “save and insert”.

Now, do note that, of course, if you have a clause selected and then create a new library clause it’s automatically going to be inserted at the same level, which is not what we want. We want this to be a sub-clause of 5.2, so we move that right two times just so we make sure that it is an actual sub-clause and then we repeat the exercise. So, we create a new library clause inside of the termination events folder again. We’ll go into the content body first and check which one is up next. We’re going to cut the last bullet out of there and then see that this is the “determination for demonstrably poor delivery of services” so we’ll call this termination for poor delivery or poor delivery of services, doesn’t really matter all that much. No content title needed and the content body is fine as is. So, again we save and insert and then we can also optionally indent it one level to the right ideally and then we just have the final sub-clause to take care of. Again, new clause in the termination events folder, we’re going to go into the content body first, paste the clause in question unreasonable refusal by the consultant to carry out the services. So, we’re going to call this “termination for unreasonable refusal to carry out services” no content title needed again, content body is fine as is, so we’re going to click “Save & insert” and again, we can indent it one level to the right additionally. 

Setting up the action button

Now we have our individual subclauses, but of course we still need to create the action button that would allow us to activate these subclauses at will. Since the action button serves to enrich an existing clause and add subclauses to that clause, that means that we’re going to attach the action button to our original termination clause article 5. To attach an action button to that clause, we just open it up in edit mode, so we double click it and then we go to “More” and select “Action button” and then we create a new action button.

We can just fill out all the information that needs to be filled out. In this case, the button caption just says what is going to be portrayed, what’s the text going to be that’s on the button. In our case, that’s just going to be “termination events”. The button position is either above or below the subclauses. I personally prefer above, but you’re free to do with that as you please. 

Then you can see that the action in question for which the action button gets its name is manifold, there are lots of different things that we can do with the action in question. 

1️⃣ First of all, we can ask ClauseBase to execute a certain search in the search menu based on, for example, a certain keyword, a certain attribute, a certain location, a certain link. All that material we can define what sort of search needs to happen as a user clicks the button. That’s not really what we’re going for right now.

2️⃣ Secondly, we have the option to let our users immediately go into a certain folder in the browse menu as we click the action button. 

3️⃣ Finally, we can also manually and individually attach certain clauses to the action button that would allow users to just select from a list, much as the alternatives icon also does. 

For this tutorial, we’re just going to go to the selected folder. As you will remember, ClauseBase allows us to choose a folder to browse. We specifically created a termination events folder just for this purpose. So, we’ll select the “termination events” folder and ClauseBase just asks us what do we do with button visibility, do you want to always show the button or hide it when at least one subclause exists. My personal preference is to just always show it.

That concludes the setup of our action button. If we click “Save in library” you will see that the clause 5.2, or clause 5 in general, now features a green button which is our action button. If we just close all of these individual clauses for a second, except for the termination clause, then you can see as we click this action button,  the individual subclauses included in the termination events folder are automatically portrayed. If we just remove those from the document for a second, then we could conceivably click the action button be transported to the browse folder and just indicate “YES”, I would like this to be a subclause here. Then you can also optionally indent it one level to the right even more just to make sure that it is a subclause of 5.2 and not just the subclause of 5. So it’s not on the level of 5.2 but it’s on a one level lower and you can essentially continue doing the same thing to make sure that all of the subclauses are included. 

Then we’ll move that one level to the right like so, but of course there is one minor issue that then still pops up and you can already kind of see it here in the list of clauses that we have activated currently. Because we created these individual subclauses, we have also created a lot of flexibility on how, or rather, in which order these clauses can appear and that messes up that messes our punctuation up a little bit. 

Punctuation with alternative clauses – AND/OR functions

So how do we solve that problem? Well, we allow ClauseBase to make the choice for us as to which punctuation mark needs to appear. To do that, we just remove all the punctuation at the end of each sentence from each individual subclause and we simply indicate to ClauseBase in our article 5.2. If we go back into the content body, we simply indicate what kind of enumeration that we are creating and your grammar sheet contains more information on that. 

But for now, we want to essentially say either bullet 1 or bullet 2 or bullet 3 and in that case we just write “*OR” and watch what happens when we click “Save in library” immediately the correct punctuation is added to these individual subclauses. We can do the same for *AND if that’s something that we would want to do, and then instead of the word “or” it says “and”. We could also do that for AND/OR and then similar thing is displayed, but of course we need to just do “or” for now. So the way that these punctuation marks are displayed is also something that you can define centrally in your styling menu, but if we now switch the order of these subclauses around a little bit, you can see that the punctuation jumps along with it as necessary.

✅ That concludes the setup of our action button.