"Pathagoras On Cloud"

You can sign up for a 30 day free trial by proceding directly to the Pathagoras On Cloud website. Or you can continue reading our incredibly interesting discription of this new SaaS tool below.

What it is.

    Pathagoras On Cloud is a different kind of cloud based document automation solution. Just like its big sister, Pathagoras On Cloud allows you to create, save, assemble and personalize documents with ultimate ease, but instead of using a using just an earth-bound computer, now you can perform document assembly using your browser. We have transferred the same 'plain text' model that has proven so successful 'on earth' to a new region.

    Just like 'on-earth,' automation mark-ups are incredibly easy to accomplish:

•  Variables are created with simple brackets. E.g., [Client Name] is a variable; [Customer Address] is a variable. It just doesn't get any easier than that.

• Conditional text blocks are denoted with simple 'curly braces'.
  
      {This is an 'optional' parargraph. When Pathagoras On Cloud encounters it during processing, it will  pause and ask if you want to keep it. or delete it.}

• Interviews are created with plain text markups and easy to understand commands.

With Pathagoras On Cloud, you can generate highly personalized documents to meet the needs of your clients or customer from anywhere in the world. An Internet connection is all you need.

What it isn’t.

    Pathagoras On Cloud is not a portal into marketing legal forms to your clients. You cannot point a client or other consumer to it, have them answer questions, get a final product and pay you for the service. Pathagoras On Earth and Pathagoras On Cloud are oriented toward use by the professional who subscribes to the program. It is designed to help you create documents for your clients, customers and patients. It is not a replacement for you. (There are other programs out there that do that. That's just not us.)

    It is also not like those products that require extraordinary programming skills to get them to work. (Hey, those are good programs, but at what cost, either monetary or time?) Rather, Pathagoras On Cloud is the same easy to use, easy to setup, program that you appreciated on earth, just repackaged for use 'On Cloud'.

How it works.

1. Create your documents (or upload existing documents to your Pathagoras On Cloud site).

   •  Documents can range from 'boilerplate' snippets (signature lines, certifications, letterhead, case captions) to letters and simple forms to complex contracts, trusts and pleadings. There is no restriction.

   • You can save your files into any number of folders and sub-folders. Your folder structure can, and probably should, be similar to that which you have ‘on earth,’ but even that is not a requirement. We also offer sync tools to keep you cloud and earth files identical.

   • Your documents will be stored on a hyper-secure Amazon servers in the US.

2.  When you are ready to produce a document, hop onto any a web browser and log into your account. The first thing you will see will be your folder structure for your source documents.

3. Locate the folder from which you want to create your document. You now have two options:

   • You can select multiple files from a collection of building block text. Select items 1, 5, 50 etc., from the documents shown. 

   • You can select a single file which itself contains all of the possible document content. (This is frequently referred to as a 'template'.  A simple double-click will open it for processing if you want to avoid the 'Assembly' screens. 

4. Click the 'Assemble' button. Pathagoras cobbles together all documents selected into a single form.  (Actually, you are shown 2 'Assemble' buttons. The first allows you to perform all subsequent editing in your browser. The second allows you to download the resulting document for editing 'on earth.' (NOTE: If you have a complex document -- one with Repeat blocks and nested Options and Optional blocks -- these document cannot yet be processed in the cloud. For these, just tell Pathagoras to open the document on your desktop. If you are at your desktop at the time, Pathagoras will open Word and display the assembled document on your desktop. If not, it will email the document to you (or another) for later processing.)

5. If there is conditional text (i.e., Options and Optional text blocks) that needs to be processed, those options and questions will be presented.  Once answered (or if there is no conditional text), you would proceed directly to replacing variables in the document.

6. After your conditional text decisions have been made, press the Instant Database button. (You can also press Alt-D, just like on earth.)

   • If this is the first document prepared for the client, press the 'Scan' button to tell Pathagoras to search the document for plain text, bracketed variables and display them onto the replacement screen.

   • If this is the second, third, etc., document prepared for the client (i.e., an Instant Database record already exists), recall the IDB record for that client or customer.

   • Fill in values for any new variables and modify the values of any existing variables as appropriate.

   • Click the Next button and the replacements are made. (Sound familiar? These are the same steps followed when using Pathagoras On Earth.)

7. Review the document to insure accuracy.

8. Now you have several more choices. You can print the document; you can email the document to a recipient (including yourself); you may save it in the cloud or save it on your local computer or network.

 What it can do.

Pathagoras on Cloud can do most of what its earth-bound counterpart can.

• It can assemble multiple building blocks into a single document, preserving formatting and automatic paragraph numberings and other styles as it does so.

• It can 'assemble' from a template. Even if a template is the bespoke document, it is easy to add additional text from your keyboard, from your boilerplate text folder and from any other source.

• It can disassembly documents just like on earth. Just highlight a snippet of the larger document you want to break out into a document of its own (think headers, signature blocks, notary jurats and blocks of text that you want available at your fingertips as boilerplate. Right click and save. Instantly a new document is added for use in any other document.

• It can process AskOptions/Optional blocks (interviews).

• It can process robust <<*Options/Optional*. . . blocks>> as well as {simple Options/Optional} blocks. 

• It can handle variables, options and optional text blocks tied together with !groupnames!

• It allows you to quickly insert ‘boilerplate text’ (think DropDown Lists in the POE version.) Right now, there is only one 'boilerplate' folder, but not to worry. Sub-folders are allowed, and when you do a search for boilerplate text, those sub-folders are searched. THIS IS SOOOOOO COOL!!

• Consistent with the above, it can call in remote documents using a simple <<docname>> reference. If 'docname' is in either the current folder or in the 'boilerplate' folder, it will be found and inserted. (Here is a practical example: You have multiple letters in your letters folder. Instead of inserting the letterhead and signature block into each letter, you reference them by simple <<docname>> calls. So your letter might look like this:

<<ltrhead>>
                                                        [Date of Letter] 

Dear [Salutation]:

     Thank you for your purchase of [quantity] widgets.

     They will be shipped via [UPS/Parcel Post/FedEx] within 10 days.

<<sigline>>

The angle brackets used are plain text 'greater than' and 'lesser than' markers easily found on your keyboard, not hard to insert 'chevrons.'

• In addition to putting simple '<<calls>>' into your bespoke documents, and being able to insert boilerplate text from the DropDown List equivalent, you will be able to call in a block of text simply by typing its name and pressing Alt-G. There is no faster way on the planet or in the cloud to insert desired text on the fly than that! 

• Color coded text can be easily processed. Mark up a document so that colors indicate optional text (i.e., text that you want to keep in some cases, and delete in others). Put color coded 'prompts' at the document top. When you process the document, Pathagoras On Cloud will present the prompts and ask which colors you want to keep and which to delete. No other program (except Pathagoras On Earth) can do this!

• All of the above will work on ALL documents, even those that don't have a single Pathagoras markup inside. That's because there is no such thing as a Pathagoras document. That's what plain text underpinnings allow. So, if you want, you can upload your current bespoke documents to the site without a single Pathagoras revision. You can manipulate them, add additional 'boilerplate' content (or make the documents you uploaded the boilerplate content!). Just like on earth, Pathagoras On Cloud works with whatever you give it.

  (Of course, we do recommend that you add bracketed variables and conditional text to make your documents more automated. Our comment here is intended to point out that our cloud platform works with your current content because nothing is ever converted. Pathagoras On Cloud is true plain text and WYSIWYG. It's just like we have always been with Pathagoras On Earth.)

Want it cannot (yet) do:

    It cannot yet process <<*Repeat*>> blocks. The work around currently is to have individual clauses that reflect the repeat result called in using options or a <<docname>> call. (We anticipate introducing Repeat blocks and nested Options and Optional text blocks by late summer, 2017)

    The sophisticated source-text authoring tools such as 'Structure Checker' and 'Paint Markers' have been left to the earthly side of the program.  We are anticipating that you will create and test your source text locally and transfer only fully tested documents to the cloud. (If a 'bad' document is posted, error messages will display reporting that fact. Most corrections can be made directly to the cloud based document. But more elaborate and repetitive debugging would best be done on earth.)

     Similarly, Pathagoras' very handy 'Name & Subject Editor' will not be available in the cloud. If you want to rename your documents en masse, just bring them down home, rename them and shoot them back up to the cloud. The processing load in the cloud for this type of action is just too great.

    There are other features in Pathagoras On Earth that you have come to love that may not yet be present On Cloud. We are working on sending upstairs what we can. If you subscribe to our On Cloud platform and see a 'missing piece', write to us. That will at least give us an excuse to elevate the subject of your request to a higher priority. We always respond favorably to customer requests!)

What’s it going to cost?

    $30 per month base charge, and depending upon how many users, a per additional monthly user fee between $5 (if you buy lots of licenses) and $10 (if fewer).  If you are a current Pathagoras On Earth owner with an up-to-date Support Agreement, or subscriber, there will be a 33.3% discount from the above. Each user license allows a single (simultaneous if more than 1 user) connection, but each user can connect from any device.  (These prices are subject to change as we actually experience costs of providing SaaS. We are attempting to hold them down as much as possible. We also recognize that current POE subscribers should receive a benefit for their current investments.)

    Large site and world-wide subscriptions. will be available.

   You will be allowed access to POC via all of your devices (desktop, laptop and handheld) for the single price. While you can connect from multiple devices, you can have only one connection per user open at a time. (If your office has a 5 user subscription, and the 'boss' has Pathagoras open on 5 devices, then there are no more connections available. The boss would have to close one or more connections for another member of the office to connect -- or buy more licenses!)

What will the system requirements be?

Nothing other than a computer (including desktop or laptop), a pad or a smart phone* and an Internet connection.

Will it be as user friendly as on-earth Pathagoras?

    Yes, and that is why it has taken so long for us to get to this point. We modeled everything after POE, and tried to keep the steps and the look as similar as reasonable possible. Now, some things will be actually easier to accomplish 'On Cloud' than 'On Earth.' For example, you can display all of your variables in a single scrollable screen. No need to change pages. Similarly, the Interview screens (AskTables) will be of unlimited length, interrupted only by an <<*If* . . . >> equation.

Will it be as robust as Pathagoras (on earth)?

    Here we’ll have to say no. No cloud based (SaaS) system is as robust as its earth based counterpart. Pathagoras will be no different.

    First of all, as indicated above, the source document creation and testing features will not be as numerous. The document management tools (PathSmart and SaveSmart) will not be duplicated (although pieces of it that improve your navigation experience will be present.)

    Pathagoras On Earth comprises a half-million lines of code. Moving that into the cloud will not promote a better experience. It would just slow things down. (The speed of running in the cloud is simply nothing like the speed of running locally. It’s like opening up a web page. Sometimes its very fast. Other times it drags. And its dependency on a good, fast, consistent, static free Internet connections will always affect performance.)

    But the bottom line is that it will still be fast (a relative, but accurate term) compared to alternative approaches, and you can get work done away from your office using practically any device.

What the future holds.

     We expect that 95% of all process and Instant Database functionality found in POE will be available with POC. In other words, there should be very few documents that you cannot assemble and complete in the cloud using the plain text model for which Pathagoras is renowned.

 General Comments.

    Your source documents in the cloud are ‘real’ documents. They start as regular documents and stay that way. Just like with Pathagoras On Earth, there are no hidden text blocks or grey fields to contend with as you edit your bespoke documents. Your documents are not converted or compiled into something else you cannot edit. What you see is what you have.

    When you see other programs, you do you ever wonder how the questions in their interviews get formed, and how would you edit the text if need be? With Pathagoras, there is no question. It's all plainly in front of you, just as it is in the POE version.

Sign me up!

Just log on to the Pathagoras On Cloud website and sign up for a 30 day free trial. You will be able to long onto Pathagoras On Cloud almost immediately. Up to 5 users (or a single user using up to 5 devices) can sign on simultaneously.