External Database Connections: TimeMatters(r)
TimeMatters(r) is a popular time, bill and practice management program among attorneys. There are others (Amicus Attorney, ACT, TimeSlips, PCLaw are others) These programs manage a large variety of important information about clients and customers, adversary parties, dates, etc. They are quite powerful in what it can do, but at their core, they are database programs. As such, they contain information that you might want to use in your document assembly and other word processing functions. Unfortunately, some are quite 'possessive' of their data and will not allow you to directly share the data with Word unless you purchase a special driver. And even then, you need to know how to create merge and linking fields to make the two systems tie together.
But there are indirect avenues to your data. The steps to get to it are not complex. Further, you need only perform them once. (The only reason why you would repeat the setup steps is to refine what you have, to add more fields to the exported database, or to remove extraneous ones from the export file, but you will rarely, if ever, have to start all over.)
As suggested above, you should review the literature associated TimeMatters export function in your TimeMatters documentation to familiarize yourself with creating an export template. It is the accurate creation of this template in TimeMatters that will cause TM to share the desired data with Word (and therefore with Pathagoras). But, in the interest of providing at least some useful information on this page, here are the steps that we believe should work
A. Create an export template. (While the merge template is typically generated in TimeMatters for final work product (simple templates via TimeMatters 'clipboard' functions), when used with Pathagoras, the template is used only for the purpose of causing TimeMatters to export a datafile. That datafile will be used later by Pathagoras to fill in the blanks of a Pathagorized document. Follow these 9 steps--I assure you that it will all make sense in the end):
- Activate TimeMatters and click on either Matters or Contacts to indicate the table which contains the desired data. (If, as most people do, some data is in Matters and other data is in Contacts, don’t fret. You will be allowed to link the Matters to the Contacts, or the Contacts to the Matters, in a later step.
- Press 'Process' from the list of menu choices along the top of the screen, and then select Export Records' from the dropdown list.
- If you didn’t earlier tag a record, choose Tag Current Record (it doesn’t matter for this step. This is a trial run only to create a template.)
- Choose 'Create a New Export Template' from the next screen (assuming you don’t already have one. If you have one that exports the fields you want for the InstantDatabase, skip all of this and go to Part II.
- From the next page:
i. Select 'ASCII -- Comma delimited' as the type of file to be exported.
ii. Check 'Include Field Labels as First Record in Export
iii. Provide a name for the export record.
C:\TMW5\Temp\PathagorasData.txt' is a great name
- f. If not all the data you want exists in the ‘base’ file (‘Matters’ or ‘Contacts’), click "Linked Matter Record" or "Linked Contact Record."
- If Export Custom Form' option presents, say <No>.
- When the Export Fields screen appears, move those fields at the left that you want to use with InstantDatabase into the column at the right. Press Next. If you linked to the matter or contract records in Step E above, select the additional fields you need. (NOTE: It is tempting just to click Add All.' Please don’t, but rather be selective as to the fields you really need. The speed of the matching process is Step II can be severely degraded if you have too many fields in the list.) Click the Next button.
- Click 'Do not launch application' at the next screen. Give the export template a proper name. 'Pathagoras' sounds nice
Now you are done with the setup. You won’t have to do that again. (Some clients wish to create an export template setup for both the Contacts and the Matters list. If you do also, repeat the above steps on the ‘other’ data collection.)
B. Transfer data into flat file.
- a. While in TM, open the Contact or the Matter list (the one for which you created the form).
- Select the name of the client(s) for whom you want to export data. (Select by putting an [X] in the box to the left of the name.
- Click the Process menu and then select Export Records.
- From the list, double click on the 'Pathagoras' entry.
The above steps has now caused TimeMatters into thinking that you are generating a merge document. It first spits out the requested data into a file called 'PathData.txt' (or whatever you indicated in step e(iii) above). It is ‘ripe for the picking’ by Pathagoras and the InstantDatabase.system.
Now you are done with the setup. You won’t have to do that again. Another step is called for in the manual called Create of Open Merge Form File. If you are creating a file that you intend to complete solely with TimeMatters, go ahead and create it following the TimeMatters manual. But it is not the intent of these instructions to show you how to create a simple form. We want to show you document assembly.