Asset

Assets are the mechanism through which expressions refer to resources within ContactsLaw. They can be used in document templates, processes, description specifications and many other areas of the software. Each asset has a name (which distinguishes it from other assets) and a type (which determines the data that can be accessed through it).

Assets are also hierarchical, e.g. an address asset belongs to a particular contact asset. This avoids the need to separately specify how to obtain the address. Relationships between assets may be mandatory (e.g. between addresses and contacts) or optional (e.g. between contacts and matters).

Assets can resolve to multiple resources; for example, if a contact asset maps to a role on a matter, and there are 3 contacts in that role, then the asset will be resolved 3 times. Whenever an expression refers to an asset, it may yield zero, one or multiple values (functions are provided to deal with this). Mechanisms such as repetition blocks (in document templates) can be used to manage complex hierarchies of assets that resolve to multiple resources.

Types

Types of assets include:

• Contact
  • Address
  • Communication
  • Member
  • Business
• Matter
  • Invoice
    • Invoice Item
  • Time Record
    • Time Record Line Item
• Document
  • Image
  • Fragment
• Transaction
  • Transaction Line Item
  • Account
• Workgroup
• Custom Field

Custom Assets

In addition to assets which refer to resources in ContactsLaw, you can also define custom assets with an arbitrary set of properties. You specify the default value of each property within the template/process itself. You can override these values in a template configuration or when you generate a document or start a process.

For example: You may want users to be able to quickly change the formatting for all date/time values in a template. You add a configuration asset with a property named DateFormat, which you then refer to in any expression which formats a date value. You may set the value of this property to a particular date format (e.g. one that includes the day of the week); but you can quickly cause all dates to be formatted differently, simply by changing this single property.

An advanced use case for custom assets is generating a document from an interactive form. By defining a custom asset in the template, and mapping its properties onto the form's controls, you retain the ability to generate the document manually.

Properties

Each type of asset has a different set of properties, to which expressions can refer.

For example, some of the properties available on contact assets include FirstName, LastName and BirthDate.

Properties can have different types of values, such as:

• Text (plain or with Markdown formatting)
• Number
• Date/time
• Boolean (yes/no)

You may need to use functions to convert between different types of values, e.g. to format a date value so it includes the name of the month.

A subset of the properties can also be updated by processes. (Some properties cannot be set by users, or cannot be meaningfully updated.)

Relationships

Many types of assets also define relationships to other assets, which are used in processes to retrieve, create or update related resources.

For example, matters define a relationship with their parties, and members define a relationship with their documents (such as a staff photo).

Each relationship has the following properties:

• Name (e.g. "Party on matter")
• The types of assets that can participate in the relationship (e.g. contacts)
• Whether the relationship is further described using a role, custom field or other discriminators

Relationships are only relevant when the related resources are subject to change; otherwise, they are determined by the asset hierarchy and mappings (such as in document templates).