Dynamic templates for content type?

Question

How would I go about having dynamic templates for a content type?

I have multiple language versions of one template document and I want the user to have the choice to select his preferred language version. These templates shall be filled with some values from the document library they are saved from (address, name, country etc.)

I have thought of only one way of handling this:

• Within a workflow with a custom task form with a field offering the language choice, depending on this task the workflow automatically gets the correct template from a template document library and automatically fills some fields via Open XML Content Controls

This seems rather complicated and I am just wondering if I might have missed something?

I know I can have Word Quickparts within templates, so I might work with those as well - but i think it is worse having a full blown text within a column instead of a Word document in a template library.

Answer 1

To keep things simple you can build one content type for each language and add corresponding language template to it.

First you should build top content type with some shared columns (address, name, country etc.). Each language content type should be inherit from it and by doing so each language content type will contain same shared columns (good for filtering, searching, sorting and grouping).

You can then add all content types to same library. If you use language name for content type name users can easily pick desired language. Alternatively, you can even create one library for each language.

Every other solution that I can think of right now includes some programming (btw. I don't think that using workflows is right approach). What I described here can be done by 'few clicks'.