Rulestar Glossary

Rulestar is a powerful application with lots of features. This dictionary of key terms will help you get acquainted with the platform.

Back End	Everything other than embedded forms, including the Builder as well as document templates.
Builder	All of the tools made available online through rulestar.com for building products and managing your account (ie, everything other than document templates and forms running in the front-end).
Checkbox Field	A type of multiple-choice field where options can be chosen independently. All options are displayed on screen in either a vertical or horizontal layout.
Child Form	A Form with answers programmed into certain fields to restrict the use of that form to certain situations. The fields and sections of a Child form are based on its Parent.
Company	External users of the application (i.e. anyone without their own Rulestar login who will only access forms through the Front-End) are grouped into Companies. Allows for additional levels of permissioning, customised styling and other settings.
Conditional Content	Content that may or may not be in a particular generated document depending upon the answers to the form. Conditional content is placed into content controls within the document template, names are applied to those content controls, and logic is then attached to those names in the builder through Named Ranges.
Content Control	An element within MS Word that defines a contiguous range of content within the document template. A content control can contain many pages of content or as little as a single character. Content controls can be added through the developer tab in MS Word.
Developer Tab	The set of tools available under the "Developer" heading in the ribbon at the top of MS Word. The developer tab is typically not shown by default but can be activated in the MS Word options.
Discount Code	A code that can be given to users of a retail form to attain a discount on the programmed price of a document. Discount codes are particular to a Company and come in various formats.
Document	The written output produced from a submission. The documents for each submission are produced in MS Word and PDF format.
E-Commerce	Making forms publicly available, typically with payment being required in order for the form to be submitted (although we still use the term "e-commerce" even where a form is made publicly available for free).
Embed	Placing a form created in Rulestar into another website. This is done by copying a script (or embed code) from the Rulestar application and pasting that code into the host website. This makes the form appear to be part of the host website.
Embed Code	The code obtained through the Rulestar application for embedding a form in a host website.
End-User	The person who fills out an embedded form. Depending upon your use case, this could be an employee within your organisation or one of your customers.
Field	A question, or a rich text field, in a form. Forms are made of fields, and fields can be divided into sections.
Field Label	The question wording for a field that will appear to the end-user when using the form from the front end.
Form	The smart online forms built through Rulestar, which are then embedded into websites for access by end-users. End-users submit forms to trigger the generation and delivery of customised documents.
Front End	Embedded forms made available for use by end-users.
Graphical Logic Builder	A simple point-and-click graphical interface you can use to easily create logical rules.
Group	A set of users whom all have identical permissions can be aggregated into a Group.
Guidance	Guidance is given to an end-user in a form to help the user complete the form. When we use the term "guidance", we typically mean guidance provided in rich text fields, although guidance can be provided in supporting text as well.
Intake Form	A Form where certain fields and sections have been hidden from the end-user to make it easier to complete. Submissions from Intake Forms can be used to pre-populate their Parent Form. Intake Forms can be sent to end-users via email or embedded into a website.
Label	The term "label" could refer to a Field Label or an Option Label, depending on context.
Merge Field	A place (marked by placeholder text) in a document template where the answer to a particular field in the form will be pasted into the generated document in place of the placeholder text.
Named Range	The set of names applied to content controls within a document template and the logical rules associated with those names.
Option	The multiple-choice options that end-users can choose when answering checkbox, radio button and select list questions in a form.
Option Set	A pre-defined set of options that can be used in Radio, Select and Checkbox fields. Option sets can be edited directly via Settings or saved from Forms.
Parent Form	Any Form which has either Children or Intake Forms.
Payment Gateway	A form of 'checkout' that prevents users from receiving their document until payment is made.
Radio Button Field	A type of multiple-choice field with mutually exclusive options. All options are displayed on the screen at once in either a vertical or horizontal layout.
Range	A range of conditional content within a document template to which a content control has been applied.
Reference Code	Each element (Field, Section, Option etc) of a Form has a unique reference code that identifies it. Reference codes can be used to create Tokens, in logical rules and calculations.
Replacement Rule	A customisable find-and-replace rule that can be triggered under certain conditions based on logical rules. If the conditions are met, the replacement rule runs after a document is assembled.
Retail User	An end-user who uses a form that has been embedded publicly. Forms embedded publicly are typically used for e-commerce (but we still use the term "retail user" even when a form is made publicly available for free).
Rich Text Field	A type of field in the form used to provide guidance to end-users. A rich text field can contain text, graphics, videos and more.
Section	A particular group of fields within a form. By grouping fields into sections, logic can be applied once at the section level, rather than having to be repeated for every field within the section.
Select List	A type of multiple-choice field with mutually exclusive options. Options are revealed only when a user clicks a dropdown panel.
Submission	The combination of answers to a form submitted (or saved) by an end-user. Saving an incomplete form produces a saved submission that can then be resumed later. Completing a submission will trigger the document generation and delivery process.
Supporting Text	The short helpful hints that sit immediately below inputs in the form telling users what type of content to enter into the input.
Template	The source document in MS Word format that is connected to a form in the form settings for the purpose of automatically generating customized documents from a form submission.
Token	A placeholder that will be filled with the answer to a referenced field.
Unversioned	The state of a form before it is given either Draft or Published status.
Version	A form may be in one of two versions: Draft or Published. The ability to edit certain properties of a form is restricted by version. Forms progress from Unversioned status to Draft to Published.