"Works For” and “Works For Matter Handler” in Precedents

We are exposing to the users a checkbox on their User Settings so they can choose if they want to always have the ”work for matter handler” optionchecked. This will be handy for file openers who always create the initial letters on behalf of the fee earner on the file they have just created.
In the precedents we have the following code in place for the “from address” (as well as telephone, fax etc):
DOCVARIABLE “~Usr.WorksFor.Branch.Address” \* MERGEFORMAT
This gets the works for of the user, and ignores the fact that the user has “works for matter handler” set to true.
Is there an alternative docvariable we can use that takes into account that they have the “works for matter handler” checked? We need to account for users who want to use their WorksFor and users who use WorksForMatterHandler.

You need to use the Fee Earner object instead of the user object. The users objects 'works for' will always be the fee earner it is set to.
The 'works for matter handler' is used during initial document merging to set the Fee Earner object for the merge the field code ~Fee.Branch.Address should provide what you want. Unfortunately it is only used during the initial merge a subsequent re-link fields will overwrite it. If that is a problem then the only option would be to use a scripted field.
I will let our QA team know that it only works during the initial merge so they can decide whether this is the intended behaviour or not.

I've done some testing, and it looks as though using the Fee earner will do the job. When worksformatterhandler is set to true it uses the Fee Earner of the file selected, and when it is unchecked the fee earner it uses is the one selected in the worksFor. I'll do some more testing with out BA's to ensure all is well with this solution.


We're not too concerned with the refresh/relink fields problem because we are going to remove that functionality from the Office Menu. Our users are having some trouble with the documents with regards to text going missing, because they overwrite the text within a merge field and on save this reverts back to the value of the merge field. We are putting in some VB script to strip out the merge fields after the precedent is created. This means that the document ispurelytext after it is created and when it is saved nothing updates.