Link Tag Tutorial

This tutorial illustrates how to link a piece of content to a website or an artifact in Blueprint. Therefore, when you are viewing a generated document, you can click the links to view the full details about the artifact.

Suppose you want a piece of content, such as an image or a bit of text, to contain a link to a website. If the URL is static (ie. doesn't change), you can simply create the hyperlink in the template via the appropriate Word, Excel or PowerPoint command.

But what if the URL is stored in your data source and is dynamic? You need a way to call upon that up-to-date URL when the report is generated without having to manually check the link each time.

This is where the link tag comes in handy. The link tag tells the report that when the template is run to go to the data source, grab the desired URL, and insert the link into the report. To use the link tag, you simply put the link tag before and the endLink tag after the content to be linked.

Tutorial

  1. Find SampleLinks.xml in the Datasource
    This is sample data created for the purpose of creating links for this tutorial. The LinkTag feature must obtain the url’s from a data source.
  2. Select the Link tag from the tag icon located under the Blueprint tab on your menu.
    A link tag appears. To the right of the semi colon outside of the tag box write what you want to appear on your document for users to click on. For the purpose of this example we will write Google because that is where the link will send us. You can modify the phrase or word to the right of the semicolon so users will know your link exists. This is shown below
    <link:Google
    All link tags must end with an end Link tag to operate. To the right of your phrase or word place your end Link tag beside it.
    <link: Google :link>
  3. Inserting the url The link now must be added through your data source to complete the tag. To do this click once on the link tag (the one on the left not the end link tag) and go to the data tree located under the Blueprint tab on your menu. This should highlight the Data tree once the link tag is selected.
  4. Ensure the correct data source is selected under Datasource, for this example you need the Sample Links datasource.
  5. Once the Datasource is correctly selected you can click Data tree. The Data tree drops down a window with the data source groups. The “link” group contains the url so it must be selected to complete the link tag. Click the link.
  6. Save and choose an output and the link will be fully functional.