You can upload a customized stylesheet to suit your company’s branding and layout standards. This can be used as the basis for publishing your specifications from Lattira Spec and NBS Chorus. This article explains how to customize the placeholders, styles and lists.


We recommend using the 'Default stylesheets templates' provided as the basis for your stylesheet because they already contain the styles, lists and placeholders that Chorus needs for publishing specifications. 


The link to download the templates can be found in this article: 01 Download the 'Default stylesheets templates'.


Please note: 
Custom stylesheets are available with 'Pro' (and above) subscriptions. 
Uploading and managing stylesheets is restricted to 'Organization administrators'.


How the templates are structured

The 'Default stylesheet templates' in MS Word are split into four sections:


Cover page

Contains ‘placeholders’. The cover page can be modified to show, e.g., the company logo or project images. The placeholders can be moved or copied to a secondary page about the project details. This page can be removed entirely if not wanted.

Table of contents

This is driven by the styling of the contents page, so changes are not recommended unless you are an advanced MS Word user.

 

For Australia and UK-based specifications, it shows the page on which each section or system begins.

 

For Canadian-based specifications, it has been developed to show the number of pages in each section. See also Refreshing the Table of Contents and editing a Canadian MS Word specification.

Content

This contains a {{content}} placeholder, which is critical to the specification publishing. It also shows some sample content to demonstrate what the specification will look like when you modify the styles and lists. The sample content is removed during the publishing process, so you do not need to remove it from your stylesheet template. 


Please note - the layout of the specification content is fixed, so any placement changes made won't show on the published specification.

Back page

This is the final page at the end of the document. 


The 'Default stylesheet templates' include a platform logo, which you could replace with your own company logo.


Placeholders

'Placeholders' is the term given to Microsoft Word content control boxes into which specific information is placed when publishing the specification.

 

One placeholder {{content}} is essential for the specification to be successfully published. The other placeholders can be removed to suit what you want to show in your published specification.

 

List of placeholders included in the 'Default stylesheet templates'

{{content}}

Required

{{organization}}

Optional

{{projectClient}}

Optional

{{projectCode}}

Optional

{{projectDescription}}

Optional

{{projectTitle}}

Optional

{{publicationNumber}}

Optional

{{publicationRevision}}

Optional

{{publicationStatus}}

Optional

{{publicationTitle}}

Optional

For more information about entering publication details, please see Entering publication details and saving to the publish history.


Additional placeholders which you can add to your stylesheet template

There are two placeholders which are not in the 'Default stylesheet templates' provided that can be added to your stylesheets. The 'reinserting placeholders' section below explains how to add placeholders. 

{{filename}}

Optional
{{mainContractor}}
Optional
{{projectBudgetCost}}Optional
{{projectCategory}}Optional
{{projectLocation}}Optional
{{projectNature}}Optional
{{projectProcurement}}Optional
{{projectWorkStage}}Optional

{{publicationNotes}}

Optional

{{targetConstructionDate}}

Optional


Note: Including the filename placeholder displays the filename on the document, excluding the file extension for the chosen format (.docx or .pdf). This guarantees the filename is correct if you download the alternative format from the 'Publish history' grid.


Changing the style of placeholders

To change the font, text size and colour of placeholders (excluding {{content}}), select the placeholder and use the controls in the MS Word Font menu. 


For example, if you italicise your {{projectCode}} placeholder, the project code will be printed in italics in the final document.

The style of the {{content}} placeholder is managed by the styles and lists described below.


Important! Do not change the text (including case) of the placeholders. The specification platform will not write the information to the placeholder if it is changed.


Moving placeholders

Placeholders can be copied, cut and pasted to move them around the document. They can be re-positioned using the tab key and alignment controls. 



You can move the placeholders anywhere in the document, but please ensure that you put them in spaces large enough to take the expected content. For example, please don’t put the {{content}} tag into the header or footer.


Deleting placeholders

Placeholders can be removed when you do not want to include that information in the published specification. For example, if you do not want to publish the name of the organization, then you can delete the {{organization}} placeholder. You should only remove optional placeholders; do not remove the {{content}}.


Inserting placeholders

It is simple to insert placeholders into your stylesheet. The placeholders table above lists the placeholders that are available to add. This section explains two methods for adding them.

 

Simple method

  • Copy another placeholder to the desired location.
  • Change the placeholder title by editing the text. Please be careful when entering the title; it must be entered as listed above, with the correct spelling and letter case, and must be surrounded by double curly brackets {{ }}.
    For example, exactly like {{publicationNotes}} and not something different like {{Publication note}}.

 

Advanced method

Placeholders are text control boxes. To insert a placeholder from scratch:

  • Enable the Developer menu in MS Word.
    • In MS Word, go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon and select the 'Develop' option on the right-hand side.
  • In your stylesheet template, place your cursor where you want to insert the placeholder.
  • Click on the Developer menu
    • Select ‘Rich Text Content Control’ or ‘Plain Text Content Control’ (both are supported)
      • Rich text - contains text that the user can optionally format (e.g. bold, italic, etc.).
      • Plain text - holds plain text that the user cannot format.
    • Click on the control and change the title.
      • Please be careful when entering the title. The title must be entered with the correct spelling and letter case, and must be surrounded by double curly brackets {{}}.


Placeholders in tables

Placeholders can be presented as a table. For example:


Styles

The paragraph/ character styles which can be modified in a stylesheet template are found in the MS Word style gallery, prefixed with ‘chorus-'.

 

To open the Style gallery in MS Word, select Home > Styles > More Styles (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + S).



Each field in the specification has been mapped to a corresponding style. This means that you can control, for example, the colour/font/size of the clause code, clause title, rows, links, etc.

 

To help, there is sample content on page two of the 'Default stylesheet template'. When you modify the styles, you will see that this content is updated/ reflects the changes. The sample content will be removed and replaced by the output upon publishing the specification.


How to change a style

It is important to change styles by modifying the style in the style gallery.

  1. Select the sample content that you want to change, e.g. clause/section title
    OR
    Choose the appropriate style that you want to change in the style gallery.
  2. Select the drop-down menu and click on 'Modify'.
  3. Change your styles using the controls on the 'Modify Style' dialog.



Top tip 1: to reduce the number of styles shown in the style gallery, change the MS Word option to only present styles in the current document.

1. In the MS Word Style gallery, select 'Options…'.
2. Choose 'In current document' from the 'Select styles to show' drop-down.
3. Choose 'Alphabetically' in the 'Select how list is sorted' drop-down.


Where possible, we have reused Word’s default styles, such as 'Header, Footer & Hyperlink'.

The most powerful of these is the 'Normal' style. It is the style from which most other styles are derived.

 

For example, if you want to use the same font throughout the document, use the 'Styles' window to update the font of the Normal style:

 

 

Select the down arrow next to the Normal style. From the menu, select Modify.


Top tip 2: to quickly change the fonts across your whole stylesheet, update the 'Theme Fonts'. It is best to do this first before changing individual styles in the styles gallery.

1. In the Word ribbon menu, go to the 'Design' tab.
2. On the right end of the 'Design' tab, select 'Fonts'.
3. Open the 'Fonts' menu and select 'Customize'.
4. Select your fonts.
5. The heading font set here is the default for all heading styles in your stylesheet.
6. The body font set here is the default font for all other styles in your document.


Corporate fonts

The 'Default stylesheet templates' have been set to 'embed fonts in file'. This means that if you apply a corporate font to your stylesheet, then this will be applied within the template.


Please note:
Corporate fonts will only appear when publishing the specification to MS Word/ If publishing to .PDF the corporate fonts will be stripped out.


Changing the date on the cover page

The date on the cover page can be reformatted to suit your preference.

To reformat it, right-click on the date > Edit field > select from the Field Properties ‘Date Format’ list.


Other things to customize

The core parts of the template, which ensure that the specification will publish successfully, are the {{content}} placeholder, text styles, tables and lists. Beyond those, you can use the other MS Word functionality to customize the presentation of your specification.


This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but just some of the things that can be changed:

  • Additional pages – you could insert additional pages into your spec. For example, insert a document sign-off sheet with a table showing who authored, reviewed and approved the specification.
  • Additional fields – you could insert the filename fields into the document.
  • Images – insert images, e.g. to illustrate the project on the cover page.
  • Logos – insert company logos into the header/ footer.
  • Page colours – perhaps you want some pages to have a background colour to reflect your brand standards.
  • Page layout and margins – perhaps you prefer a specification that is landscape with narrow margins.
  • Page size – the page size of the Canadian 'Default stylesheet template has been set to 8 ½ x 11 and the Australian and UK template is A4.