Mappings: Forms, Properties, and Template Tokens

A requester fills out an intake form, and a fully drafted contract appears in the repository with the governing law, the contract value, and the party name already in the document. They never touched the template. For that to work, every answer on the form has to reach the right token in the Word document, and the chain that carries it has one link in the middle that most people miss: the contract property.

This article traces that chain end to end so you can wire a form to a template and know where a value goes wrong when it shows up blank.

A template token does not read from a form field directly. The value travels through a contract property in the middle:

Each link does one job:

• Form field captures what the requester types or selects.
• Contract property is where the value lands on the generated contract. It is the single source of truth: it feeds the document, drives filtering and reporting in the repository, and stays editable by the contract owner afterward.
• Template token is the markup in the .docx that Pactly replaces with the value at generation time.

The property in the middle is deliberate. Because the value lands on a property first, the same answer can fill the document, be searchable in the repository, and be amended later, all from one place. (For the form-side half of this chain, see Field Mappings and Naming.)

Pactly resolves each template token by property key, not by field. A variable or value map that carries a .property reference draws from whichever property holds that key, and that property was filled by the form field mapped to it. So a text variable like `{{governingLaw}}` reads the Governing Law property, which the form’s governing-law field wrote to:

form field  →  Governing Law property  →  {{governingLaw}} in the document

If a token has no value at generation time, Pactly does not fail. It renders the placeholder marker `[●]` (a bullet in brackets) in the output and logs a warning. A contract that comes out with `[●]` where a name should be almost always means a broken link in this chain: an unmapped field, a property key that does not match, or a typo in the token.

A plain variable writes the value through unchanged. But a dropdown answer is often a short label that should render as longer, formatted text. A requester picks Net 30; the document should read “payment is due within thirty (30) days of invoice.” That translation is a value map: a lookup table on the template that pairs each choice label (what the requester selects) with a replace value (what appears in the document). It is referenced in the .docx with the vm tag:

Payment terms: {{vm PaymentTerms}}.

When the form is submitted, Pactly matches the selected label against the value map’s choices and substitutes the matching replace value. The match is by exact label, so the option text on the form field, the property’s option list, and the value map’s choice label must all read identically. A value map can also be tied to a property, so the selection flows form field → property → vm tag. A selection that matches no choice label resolves to `[●]` like any other unmapped value.

Wiring a form to a template is two-sided: map the field to a property on the form, and point the token at the same property on the template. The form half is done in the form builder; the template half is done in the Word add-in where the template is authored.

A field can reach a template by more than one route. The routes have a defined order, and when two apply to the same value, the property-based one wins:

If you maintain an older form, migrate its direct mappings to property-based ones so the value is also recorded on the contract and stays editable.

When a generated contract shows `[●]` or a clause is missing, walk the chain in order:

1. Is the form field mapped to a property? No mapping, no value.
2. Does the property key match what the token expects? The token resolves by property key, so a renamed or mismatched key breaks the link.
3. For a dropdown, do the labels match exactly? A value map matches the selected label against its choices character for character. Any drift produces `[●]`.
4. Is the token spelled correctly? A typo in the variable id (`{{governinglaw}}` vs `{{governingLaw}}`) is never validated until a document is generated, so it surfaces only as `[●]` in the output.

Nothing in this chain is validated before generation, so the generated Draft is your test harness. Generate one contract from the form and read the output before sharing the form widely.

• Templates Overview
• Variables & Tokens Reference (token syntax and the [●] marker)
• Field Mappings and Naming (the form side of the chain)
• Contract Properties
• Form Actions (the generate action that links a form to a template)