Introductory training videos for SIs and SSIs

This screencast covers: 

1. Logging on to Lawmaker 

2. Viewing projects on the dashboard 

3. Opening a project and viewing all document versions 

4. Opening and closing document in the Editor 

Logging on 

1. To log on to Lawmaker, you will need your username and password.   

2. The first time you log on, you will need to reset your password and set up Multi-factor Authentication (MFA).  To do this you will need to install an authenticator app on your mobile phone.   

3. Once you have set yourself up to use Lawmaker, whenever you log on in future, you will only need to supply your username and password and a code from your authentication app 

4. Contact your Lawmaker User Champion if you are struggling to log in. 

Dashboard 

1. When you log into Lawmaker or when you click on the Home button, you will be taken to the dashboard.  This is where all the different projects that you have permission to view are displayed. 

2. You can toggle between list view or tile view 

3. You can search for a project by typing into the ‘Search’ input field.  You can search by any word that appears in the project title. The project title is based on the title of the documents in the project. 

4. There is an option to view ‘Favourites’ which are projects you have ‘pinned’.  Projects that you create will have a pin in them by default so that they are always identified as a favourite.  You can add/remove pins on projects by clicking on the drawing pin on the project tile, or to the left of the project in list view and when you select to view ‘favourites’ these projects will always appear. 

5. To open a project and view the document versions within it, click on the ‘Open’ button or on the project title. 

Projects tab 

1. When you open a project, you will be taken to the ‘Projects’ tab and this is where all document versions that you have permission to view will be displayed 

2. Documents can appear in different folders which can be expanded or collapsed as you please. 

3. The green tiles on the left hand side are working document versions and can be edited. 

4. The grey tiles on the right hand side are significant versions which are read only.   

5. Significant versions are created whenever a document is shared with another organisation, you mark a document as submitted to the national archives,  and when you mark a document as having been signed. 

6. Working versions might have some snapshot versions linked to them which you can view by toggling the triangle button on the left hand side.   

7. These represent versions of the working version from a particular point in time and are either created automatically, for example when you generate a PDF; or 

8. are manually created if you decide to save a snapshot when in the Editor.   

9. Snapshots are read only when opened in the Editor, but it is possible to copy a provision within them to paste into your working document if you want to revert back to a previous version of a provision for example. 

10. To open a document in the Editor, either to continue editing, or to view the document as a read-only document, click on the button to the left of the Actions’ drop down 

11. If the document is editable (green tile), the button will be a pen and paper icon 

12. If the document is read only (grey tile), the button will be a document icon 

Editor 

1. The Editor will open in a new tab and load your selected document 

2. I will come onto using the Editor in a separate screencast.   

3. To ensure you close the document properly, always use the ‘Close document’ button that appears above this left hand structure view.  If the Structure view is collapsed, the button changes into a blue cross. 

This screencast includes: 

1. Creating a new SI/SSI 

2. Inserting provisions (including definitions and combined numbering) 

3. Deleting provisions  

4. Copy/cut & paste 

5. Promote/demote 

6. Wrap/Unwrap 

7. Drag & drop  

Creating a new SI/SSI  

1. To create a new SI/SSI project, click on the +New button at the top of your dashboard 

2. Select the Type of document you want to produce and the Sub-type 

3. Supply a title for your SI and the type of procedure it will be subject to.   

4. Both of these can be updated later if anything changes 

5. Click on ‘Create’ when ready 

6. The Editor will open in a separate browser tab, containing the document template for the SI/SSI you have chose to create 

7. This document will be available in read/write format to all other users in the same organisation as you 

8. In my example, I selected a draft SI Regulations so I have the draft procedural rubric in the header of the document and ‘DRAFT’ appears in the banner. 

9. The Editor is made up of  

10. A Structure view on the left hand side which shows you the structure of your document as you build it up, which you can expand or collapse 

11. The Editor view which is where you type and insert provisions 

12. The right-hand panel which contains various tools which we will come to later 

13. The upper tool bar which displays various menus containing editing functions which we will look at later, and finally 

14. The breadcrumb which tells you the full context of an element where your cursor is placed.  

15. Editing the preface will be handled in a separate screencast.  This screencast will focus on drafting the provisions in your SI/SSI 

Inserting provisions 

1. To insert provisions into your document, place your cursor in the ‘body’ element and click ‘Enter’ to bring up the insert menu. 

2. The insert menu will display all the elements you can insert into your document at this location.  

3. I’m going to insert a regulation. 

4. The cursor is ready for me to start typing into the heading element of the regulation 

5. If you look at the Structure View, you will see the inserted regulation 

6. If you look at the breadcrumb, you will see the full context of the element my cursor is in 

7. To continue adding content to the regulation I can tab or click with my mouse button to move the cursor into the ‘text’ element ready for me to start typing. 

8. I can continue to add further provisions into my SI/SSI, by clicking ‘Enter’ and selecting the next appropriate element.   

9. Here I will insert a paragraph.   

10. I can continue by adding sub-paragraphs. 

11. To insert a paragraph with combined numbering, I must insert another paragraph into my empty paragraph which will automatically combine the numbering for me. 

12. I can insert definitions which contain an inline element placeholder for the defined term.  To add text before or after the defined term, I will use the arrow keys to move my cursor into the correct location before typing.   

Deleting provisions 

1. The key to successfully deleting provisions is to use the breadcrumb or the structure view to select the provision before deleting.   

2. To delete this regulation, I can either click on ‘regulation’ in the breadcrumb 

3. Or click on the regulation in the structure view  

4. The provision will be highlighted in the Editor so that you can make sure you have selected the correct provision 

5. Use the ‘delete’ key or backspace to delete the selected provision.  

Copy/cut & paste 

1. The breadcrumb and structure view also comes in handy when you need to copy or cut a provision and paste it into the same document or another one.   

2. First select the provision you want to copy or cut using the breadcrumb or structure view 

3. Then use right-click and select ‘copy element’ or ‘cut provision’ or use the universal keyboard short cut Ctrl + C or Ctrl + X.   

4. Finally, place your cursor at the location you want to paste the provision and use the keyboard shortcut ctrl + v. 

Promote/demote 

1. Sometimes it might be necessary to convert a sub-paragraph into a paragraph or vice versa and we call this promote and demote. 

2. First I will demonstrate ‘promote’ 

3. Place your cursor in the provision you want to promote, and right-click and select ‘promote element’ 

4. In this example the provision is promoted first to being closing words for the list of paragraphs, and when I promoted it again, it became a paragraph higher up 

5. Now I will demonstrate a ‘demote’ using the same provision 

6. As my cursor is already in the provision I want to promote, I will right-click and this time select ‘demote element’ 

Wrap/unwrap 

1. As the SI/SSI begins to build up, you might decide some grouping elements are required. 

2. Grouping elements are things like parts, chapters, sections and sub-sections.   

3. We use the term ‘wrap’ when inserting them as in XML terms they are wrapping around the provisions that they contain.  

4. With that in mind, the first step will be to highlight the provisions you want to wrap in a grouping element.   

5. The best way to select multiple sibling provisions is to use Ctrl + left click on the mouse in the Structure View to select more than one provision at a time.   

6. Here I have selected 3 regulations that I want to wrap inside a Part. 

7. In the Editor, right-click on the selected provisions and select “wrap element”.   

8. Here are the grouping levels that you can use.  I will select “Part” 

9. The part is inserted and displayed in the Editor here. 

10. I can see that it has been successfully inserted as the structure view shows the regulations are now inside the part 

11. And the breadcrumb shows part in the hierarchy. 

12. You can continue adding grouping levels inside Parts using the same method, for example to further wrap the provisions inside Chapters or Sections or Sub-sections. 

13. Conversely, if you have a grouping element that you no longer need, you need to remove them by ‘unwrapping’ them.  

14. To unwrap a grouping element, place your cursor in the selected grouping element in the Editor and right-click and select “Unwrap element”.   

15. This will remove the grouping element the correct way from your document.   A common mistake when users first use Lawmaker is to delete the grouping element.  This will not correctly remove the element and will be highlighted as a validation error in the right-hand panel.  More on that in another screencast. 

16. You can insert and remove grouping elements inside schedules in exactly the same way. 

Moving provisions around using the Structure view 

1. It’s possible to move provisions around the document using the Structure View 

2. You can move whole grouping levels, individual regulations or individual lower-level paragraphs.   

3. First select the provision you wish to move.  If it has child elements you need to make sure the provision is collapsed in the structure view before you use drag & drop.   

4. Next press and hold the left mouse button and then move it to the desired location.   

5. The green provisions indicate where you are allowed to move the provision to.   

This screencast includes:

1. Inserting and managing footnotes

2. Inserting textual amendments (quoted structures)

3. Inserting and managing cross references

4. Inserting and managing J-refs

 Inserting and managing footnotes

1. To insert a footnote, place your cursor where you want the footnote inserted and right-click and select “Insert footnotes”.  Alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Alt+F

2. This will insert an asterisk surrounded by brackets and highlighted in yellow.

3. Click on the asterisk to add text to the footnote

4. Although the asterisk appears inline in the Editor, when a PDF is generated it will automatically be rendered at the bottom of the page that the footnote marker appears on, with the correct numbering using letters.

5. Place your cursor in the ‘text’ element and start typing. 

6. To close the footnote up so that it’s no longer visible, click on the asterisk again.

7. If you no longer want a footnote, place your cursor in the footnote, and select ‘footnote from the breadcrumb and delete it using ‘backspace’ or ‘delete’ button.

8. To move a footnote elsewhere, select the footnote using the breadcrumb and select ‘cut’ from the right-click menu or keyboard short cut and place your cursor in the new location and use Ctrl+v to paste it.

Inserting textual amendments (quoted structures)

1. To insert a textual amendment, place your cursor in the provision it should be inserted into and right-click and select ‘Insert quoted structure’ or use the keyboard short cut “Ctrl+Q”

2. The document type will default to the type of document you are editing.  You can change this which helps get the correct style and formatting of the provisions you are inserting into the quoted structure.

3. Select the starting element from the list in the drop-down.

4. The Indent level is set to ‘none’ which is the default indent applied to textual amendments in the PDF.  If you have a particularly wide table for instance, you might want to overwrite the indent level to -1 which essentially sets the quoted structure indent to the width of the page.  Most of the time though, you can leave it at ‘none’

5. The start and end quote default to the usual style but you have the option of changing it or removing them if they are not required.

6. And finally, the following text is the punctuation that appears after the end quotation.  Usually a full stop, but you can put whatever you like in there.

7. When you are ready, you can click on ‘Insert’

8. A quoted structure is inserted into your document, it is presented with a dotted line around it to make it obvious what it is.

9. Add text to your starting element and continue adding structure to the quoted structure using the same method of clicking ‘Enter’ and selecting the next appropriate Element from the insert menu.

10. To move the cursor outside of the quoted structure, to continue drafting the SI/SSI, either use tab to move the cursor out of the quoted structure and from there you can click ‘Enter’ and it will give you the appropriate element options outside of your quoted structure

11. It’s possible to cut and paste a quoted structure from one provision to another by selecting ‘quoted structure’ from the breadcrumb and placing your cursor in the desired provision and clicking on ctrl+v to paste it in its new location

12. Like provisions in the rest of the document, you can use drag & drop in the structure view to change the order they appear

Inserting and managing cross references

1. There are two ways to create cross references in your document

   1. The first is using the ‘tag x-ref’ function, and

   2. The second is to manually create an x-ref using the structure view

2. To use the ‘tag x-ref’ function, you should first type the cross reference, and then run ‘tag x-ref’ to automatically mark it up as a cross reference. 

3. Right-click and select ‘tag x-ref’, click on the ‘tag x-ref’ button in the upper tool bar or the keyboard shortcut Alt+t

4. Tag x-ref works by pattern recognition.  If Lawmaker thinks it has identified a cross reference, it will attempt to search for the corresponding provision inside the document. 

   1. If it is successful, it will mark up the cross reference and it will be presented in orange text.

   2. If it cannot find the corresponding provision, it will highlight the cross reference grey.

5. However, it’s not perfect and sometimes it mis-identifies cross references, particularly when they are cross references to enacted legislation.  The best thing to do in this case is to ‘ignore x-ref’ by placing your cursor in the x-ref, right-clicking and selecting “Ignore x-ref”.  This means that everytime you run tag x-ref or update x-ref, it will always be ignored.

6. The other way to create cross references is using the structure view.

7. Navigate to the target provision in the structure view by using the toggle to expand the levels visible if necessary.

8. Right click on the appropriate x-ref, click on Select ‘X-ref to copy’ and select the appropriate format of the x-ref from the sub-menu

9. Next, place your cursor in the Editor where you would like the cross reference to appear and use keyboard short cut Ctrl + V to paste the cross reference.  The cross reference will appear in orange text to let you know that it is a valid x-ref

10. You will need to use manual x-refs using the structure view for provisions appearing in textual amendments, those provisions within quoted structures.

11. As provision move around the document, the cross references will need updating. This is an automatic process that is triggered when you select ‘Update x-ref’ from the upper tool bar or using right-click in the Editor

12. Either highlight the text containing the x-ref you want to update, or you can place your cursor in a provision and run ‘Update x-ref’.

13. If you have not highlighted your text, the system will check whether you want to run update x-ref on the current provision (which is the regulation or schedule that your cursor is within) or the whole document.  

14. As well as checking for valid and invalid x-refs again, it will also identify where it thinks a target provision has changed for example, if it was a paragraph and now it’s a sub-paragraph and vice versa.  In these cases, the x-ref will be highlighted orange and be referred to as ‘promote-demote’

15. To help you identify any invalid or promote-demote cross references in your document, the “Review” right-hand panel will identify them and when you click on the tile, will jump to the cross reference in your document.

16. To see where the provision is pointing to, you need to place your cursor in the cross-reference and click on the ‘Attributes’ right-hand panel.  The href will give you a clue on where the cross reference is pointing.

17. If you think it’s wrong, the best thing to do is to remove the x-ref by placing your cursor in the x-ref, right-clicking and selecting ‘remove x-ref’ then re-run ‘tag x-ref’ again or manual insert one using the structure view

18. Another shortcut useful to know when creating cross-references is copying existing references in your document and pasting them elsewhere into your document.  You can even paste it on top of existing x-refs and they will be replaced by the copied x-ref

Using J-refs

1. It is possible to use unique references to refer to provisions that never change, unless you manually change them and these are called J-refs

2. You can insert J-refs against regulations and schedules.  They appear in the left hand margin and can optionally be included in the PDF.

3. To insert a J-ref you must place your cursor in the regulation or schedule that you want to assign a Jref to and either use ‘Insert > Insert/update J-ref’ in the upper too bar, or right-click and select ‘Insert J-ref’.

4. Supply your own reference and click insert.

5. To remove a J-ref just leave the field empty.

6. To remove all J-refs, for example at the end of the drafting process, select ‘Tools > Delete all J-refs’ from the upper toolbar.

7. To view them in your generated PDF, select the “View J-refs” option under the ‘Extras’ section and your PDF will include them in the left-hand margin.

This screencast includes:

1. Numbering modes

2. Renumbering provisions and locked nums

 Renumbering

1. There are 2 numbering options in Lawmaker.  

2. Auto-renumber turned on; and 

3. Auto-renumber turned off.  

4. When Auto-renumber is turned on means that provisions at paragraph level and below will automatically renumber as you insert them throughout your document.  Regulations and the grouping elements, such as parts and chapters will not renumber automatically due to the way document locking works.

5. You can toggle your numbering mode using the ‘Tools menu and selecting “Turn on/off auto-renumbering”

6. By default all new documents start with auto-renumbering turned off, but once you’ve changed it, it will stay that way until you change it.

7. To let you know what numbering mode is set in your document, whenever you open the document or change the numbering mode, a green toastie will appear in the top left to let you know what your document numbering mode has been set to.  It will eventually disappear after 30 seconds.

8. Let’s see what happens when Auto-renumber is turned off

9. If I insert a new paragraph at the end of a series of paragraph, it will be numbered sequentially.  

10. If I , insert a paragraph between existing paragraphs, it will be auto-assigned a number using the amending numbering rule e.g. inserting between paragraph (1) and (2) will result in paragraph (1A); and inserting before paragraph (1) will result in paragraph (A1)

11. Now let’s see what happens with Auto-numbering turned on

12. IF I insert a paragraph anywhere in the sequence, all the paragraphs around it will be renumbered accordingly.

13. If I insert a new regulation however, or a new part in the middle of a series, you will see how it is assigned a number again.

 Renumbering provisions

1. To renumber your provisions if you have been drafting with auto-renumber turned off, or to renumber the regulations and grouping elements, you will need to use the ‘Renumber’ button available in the upper toolbar and in your right-click menus

2. You can choose to highlight a sub-set of provisions to renumber, or, if you click on ‘renumber without making a selection it will ask you if you want to renumber the current provision or the whole document.

3. The current provision is the regulation or schedule that your cursor is in.

4. If you select the ‘whole document’ you need to make sure nobody else is currently editing the same document as the renumber action will require locks on the whole document to perform. 

5. Renumbering will not affect provisions inside quoted structures (textual amendments).  You will need to renumber the quoted structure as a separate action using the same function.  Just place your cursor inside the quoted structure before you trigger renumber.  

Locked nums

1. You will see when you insert a quoted structure for textual amendments, that if the starting element is a numbered element, it’s num element is surrounded by a dotted border.  

2. This indicates that the num is locked.  

3. Locked nums will not be overwritten when you perform a renumber.  

4. As renumber works by checking the sibling provision’s number before it, you do not need to lock the nums of sibling provisions after the first locked num.  For example, if the locked num of a regulation is 2A, the sibling regulation will automatically be numbered 2B.  

5. To manually add or remove number locks, right-click and select ‘Add/remove number lock’.  

Projects tab

1. The project tab allows you to perform different actions on your document versions

2. You can Share a document with another organisation.  To do this, click on the ‘Action’ drop down on the version you wish to share and select “Share version”.  You will need to select the organisation you wish to share with and click on ‘Share’.  This will create a significant version on the right-hand side of the ‘Projects’ tab which is read only and visible to you, but also visible to all users in the organisation you shared it with.  It will also be read only for them.

3. If someone shared a document with you, you will also see it in the right-hand side of the projects, in read only format.  To make edits to it, you will need to create a duplicate version.  To do this, click on the ‘Actions’ drop-down on the version you wish to Duplicate and select ‘Duplicate version’

4. This will create a green working version of the document that appears in the left-hand side of the ‘Projects’ tab and is only visible to you and all users in the same organisation as you.  The other organisation will not be able to see your working version.  Likewise, you will not be able to see their working versions.  Duplicate version can be used in a similar way that you might use ‘Save as’ in Word to create new versions of a document and gives you flexibility when managing your drafts.

5. You can rename document versions by clicking on the edit button to the right of the description in the green tile.  It has to be a unique name.

6. If you have created a version by mistake, it’s possible to delete this document by clicking on the ‘Actions’ drop down and selecting ‘Delete version’.  You cannot delete the last document in the project.  If you no longer needed the project, you have to delete the project from the dashboard