Setting Up the CARET Legal HotDocs Integration

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CARET Legal Enterprise Advance and Enterprise Insights subscription plans have a custom integration with HotDocs Advance Document Automation, which pushes CARET Legal data fields into document templates you create in HotDocs Author.

Important: If you already use HotDocs, and your templates were created with HotDocs Developer / used in HotDocs Classic, you will need to import your existing templates into your new HotDocs Advance tenancy by following these instructions.

How to connect HotDocs with CARET Legal

There are six steps to enabling and validating the HotDocs / CARET Legal Integration:

  1. Create new API Root Credentials in HotDocs Advance
  2. Enable the HotDocs Integration within CARET Legal
  3. Download HotDocs Author to your local computer
  4. Create your HotDocs document templates
  5. Create mapping files in CARET Legal
  6. Testing the HotDocs Integration

Step 1: Create New API Root Credentials in HotDocs Advance

  1. In a web browser, navigate to the URL contained in your Welcome to HotDocs kit, adding "/auth" to the end of that address.


    In this example, you would enter https://MyFirmTenancy.hotdocsadvance.com/auth
  2. Log in with the Admin-level account contained in your Welcome to HotDocs kit (above) - If this is your first time logging in, you will be asked to update your password.
  3. After successfully logging in, navigate to Manage New API Credentials on the top menu, and select Create New API Credentials.
  4. Make sure all fields match this image (with the exception of Secret, where you will enter your own password/security key/secret phrase), then click Create.

  5. After clicking Create, on the page that follows click Activate Client. You should be directed to the following screen. Note: Write down the value beside UniqueName - you will need this later in the setup process.

  6. Click add a service principal. Fill in the form as shown below, making sure the IsActive box is checked. Be sure to write down the Principal Name and Password, you will need these later in the setup process.

  7. Click Create. You should now have written down a UniqueName, PrincipalName, and Password.

Step 2: Enable the HotDocs Integration Within CARET Legal

  1. Log in to CARET Legal with an Administrator-level account
  2. Click on Firm Settings in the upper-right-hand corner
  3. In the left-hand menu, select Documents & Notes, then click HotDocs
  4. The following form appears:

    Host = Your HD Advance Tenancy URL (from the Welcome to HotDocs kit, https://MyFirmTenancy.hotdocsadvance.com in our example)
    Client Name = UniqueName you recorded (nigel7NF3H9AM in our example)
    Principal Username – PrincipalName you recorded (CARET_Legal in our example)
    Principal Password – The Password you recorded (8EQJWEQ2BBVBVAZY in our example)

Step 3: Download HotDocs Author

Note: To use HotDocs Author to create document templates, you must use Microsoft Word, as Author integrates only with Microsoft Word for document creation.

  1. Download HotDocs Author and install by following the instructions located here.

Step 4: Create Templates in Word / HotDocs Author

To learn about HotDocs Author, building templates, creating interviews and dialogues, and all things HotDocs document automation, visit the HotDocs Knowledge Base.

To use your HotDocs Advance templates with CARET Legal, you will need to create a Workgroup called "CARET Legal" and upload all HotDocs templates that you want to use with the CARET Legal integration into that Workgroup.

Step 5: Create HotDocs Mapping Files in CARET Legal

  1. Log in to CARET Legal using an Administrator-level account
  2. From the left-hand menu, select Documents and Notes, click HotDocs, and make sure the Templates tab is highlighted. You should see any HotDocs Advance document templates you have created for use in CARET Legal on this screen..
  3. For the template you wish to populate with CARET Legal data, click on the Generate Mapping File button to the right of the template name. This will download an Excel file containing the HotDocs Advance field names contained in the HotDocs template you selected.


  4. Under the Zola column, enter the corresponding CARET Legal data field that you want to appear in the selected HotDocs template.

  5. To identify the specific CARET Legal database field (and the correct format of the field) to put in the mapping file above, you need to navigate to the Merge Fields list within the Matters section of CARET Legal.

    Open CARET Legal, click Matters from the left-hand menu, and select any matter from the list, then click the Documents tab.

  6. Click on the Merge Fields button, which will bring up all Matter fields that can be mapped to HotDocs within CARET Legal (including Custom Fields). Copy the value under the Merge Fields column exactly and then paste it into the Excel spreadsheet. It must have the double opening and closing curly brace characters in order to be properly recognized as a data field within the mapping file.

  7. Once you have completed entering in the desired data field names into the mapping file, you will need to upload the completed file to CARET Legal by navigating to Firm Settings using an Administrator-level account, then selecting Documents & Notes from the left-hand menu. selecting HotDocs, clicking on the Mappings tab, and then selecting the template associated with the mapping file you have created from the drop-down menu. The Choose File dialogue will ask you to select the location of the mapping file. Click NEXT, and the mapping file will be uploaded to CARET Legal.

  8. Should you need to change any mapping in the future, you can simply edit the data fields from within CARET Legal by navigating back to the HotDocs Integration Mappings tab, finding the template name of the mapping file you want to update, then clicking on the pencil icon to the far right of the template name.

  9. This will bring up the Update HotDocs Mapping window, where you can edit the original mappings that you uploaded via Excel.

Step 6: Testing the HotDocs Integration

  1. Browse to and select a Matter, then click on the Documents tab, then the Document Templates tab, and click the HotDocs button. From the template list, click on the Start Interview button on the far right side.

  2. The HotDocs Integration will open. Complete the HotDocs Interview from within the Integration, filling out / selecting any required fields. Once completed, click on the Finish button in the bottom-right of the HotDocs Interview window, and save the document as a CARET document. 

  3. You can now open the document to validate that the correct CARET Legal data fields have mapped over to HotDocs via the HotDocs Integration.

If you need further assistance with your HotDocs Integration, or would like to explore having HotDocs document templates being created for your firm, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Technical Account Manager.

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