The Smart Spreadsheet Add-in is available for all licensed users of Microsoft Excel (see supported versions in our Technical Requirements page under the Software Dependencies section). Installation will be performed through the Office Add-in Store, which will be available in the coming weeks. It helps you create and administrate your excel templates using dynamic content placeholders (tags) that will then be populated with real data later on, upon generation. Let's start with the definition of helpful concepts when trying to implement Smart Spreadsheet.

A Template is a document with a xlsx extension created in Excel with the Smart Spreadsheet Add-in tool. A Template has a Data Source Model defined by the User. A Template contains Tags placed in the Excel spreadsheet cells. The maximum number of tags in a Template is 500. Please refer to

the Governor Limits page for the full list.

A Generated Document is a Excel file generated by the Generation Server based on a defined template. The maximum number of lines of a Generated Excel is 10,000.

The Data Source Model is defined for a Template and stored in the meta-data of the Excel file. Users don’t need to set the Data Source Model again when they open an already existing document. The User can replace a Data Source Model of a Template, however they will receive a warning message and tags may not be the same once changed. The Data Source Model must be a valid JSON file. The Data Source Model must contain all these definitions:

• Column definitions
• Field definitions
• Row template definitions
• View definitions
  • Component definitions

The data type of column and field definitions are limited to:

• Percentage
• String
• Integer
• Business
• Monetary
• Long
• Currency
• Boolean
• Local_Date
• Datetime
• BigDecimal
• Unit_Of_Mesure
• Locale
• URL

Every data type has a unique and specific display.

The Template creation is based on tags. A Tag has two related parts:

• A visible one in the text of the cell
• A hidden one in the meta-data of the template file

The user must not alter the visible part of a tag directly inside the cell at risk of breaking the consistency of the two parts of the tag. Rather, the tags must be edited using the Add-In.

A tag is a concatenation of text:

• “#”: Tag always starts with hash
• Type: The type of the tag (Field, Table…)
• “_”: An underscore
• Id: The unique id of the tag
• “_”: An underscore
• Name: The name of the tag, free text (alphanumeric). It can’t be empty and must not contain spaces.

Sample of tags:

• #Field_A4_CustomerName
• #Col_B7_ProductName

To be able to select and edit a tag the user must click the cell containing the tag. Selecting a Table Header will allow the user to edit the table.

Selecting the Column Tag will allow the user to edit the column.