How to Remove Strange Characters from Configurable Terms and Conditions

This article deals with Configurable Terms and Conditions functionality as described in the Solution Description for FR 2744.

The IDI Desktop Client uses a basic rich text editor that sometimes has trouble rendering the special formatting that Microsoft® Word and Adobe PDF® use. As a result, when you paste text from one of these applications into Configurable Terms and Conditions, you may see strange characters. To ensure strange characters do not appear, use the following procedure. Note: This procedure applies when viewing terms and conditions in the desktop client and not the web (Customer Care and/or Orders web modules).

Notes:

• Perform these steps first in a test environment to get a clean source document to work from. Then make the changes to Production.

• To preview Terms and Conditions changes in the IDI Desktop Client you need an OrderID. Service agreements are tied to contracts. You’ll need an OrderID that contains a contract using the service agreement you want to update.

Steps:

• From your source Terms and Conditions document, make a WordPad version.

  • Copy and paste the content of your current source document into WordPad.

  • Copy and paste the WordPad content into the Configurable Terms and Conditions in Product Management > Manage Service Agreements.

  • Click Save and Preview.

  • In the Save and Preview dialog enter your OrderID.

  

• This opens a PDF Example Service Agreement.

• Identify any strange characters in the PDF preview.

  PDF Example:

  

• Find the same text in your WordPad version. Often you will see something like an apostrophe or parenthesis that looks fine in WordPad but displays with special formatting in PDF.

  WordPad Example:

  

• Find and replace the characters in WordPad that are causing the strange characters in the PDF. Note: Any changes you make will be reflected when viewing in the IDI Desktop Client and web modules.

  • Select Replace from the WordPad tool bar.

    

  • Copy and paste the strange character(s) into the Find field.

  • Type (DO NOT Paste) the same character(s) into the Replace field and click Replace All. Note: You may notice a slight difference between what’s in Find versus what’s in Replace. It’s hard to see in the example below; however, there is more space between the quote lines in the Replace field than there is in the Find field.

    

• Once the replace has completed, copy and paste the whole service agreement from WordPad into the Configurable Terms and Conditions and do another Save and Preview. Note: Sometimes it’s hard to copy and paste into the IDI version, if you are having trouble, right click on the service agreement and select Restore Original Document. This removes the text from your previous attempts and gives a clean slate for your new test

  

• Once you have cleaned up all of the special characters that were causing issues, save the WordPad document. Use this clean document going forward as your source document. This clean version can then be used to make the changes to Terms and Conditions in Production.