The editor is where a document becomes fillable. You place things on the page, and each one either carries a value from your records or waits for a signature.
What you can place
Text, and text with several variables in it. Dates and times. Images and signatures. Tables. Checkboxes, radio groups and dropdowns. Lines, rectangles and ellipses for layout. Barcodes.
Two are worth knowing about specifically.
Signature fields are where somebody signs. Every document needs at least one, and each belongs to a particular signer rather than to whoever gets there first.
Tables are how line items work: a quote with eleven products is one table field, not eleven text fields.
Layout and meaning are separate
This is the one architectural fact worth understanding, because it explains a behaviour that would otherwise look like a bug.
The editor's canvas comes from a layout engine that owns positions, sizes and fonts. It validates what it is given and quietly discards anything it does not recognise.
So a field cannot carry a note saying this one is the client's name. That information lives in a separate map alongside the layout, keyed by the field's name, and the renderer consults it when producing the finished document.
The practical consequence: renaming a field can break its binding, because the map is keyed by name. The editor rebuilds bindings when names change and removes ones whose fields have gone, but if a field stops filling in after a rename, this is why. Re-bind it and carry on.
The upside of the arrangement is worth the caveat: what you place is exactly what gets stamped. The editor and the renderer read the same layout, so there is no class of bug where the preview and the final PDF disagree.
Undo, and the lack of it
There is no deep undo history in the editor. Work is saved as you go, into a draft.
The practical consequence is to be a little deliberate about deletions on a template that is nearly finished, and to preview before publishing rather than after.
Nothing you do to a draft can affect a document that has already been sent, so the blast radius of a mistake here is limited to the template itself.
Binding a field to your data
Placing a field is half the job. The other half is saying where its value comes from, which is done through the smart fields picker and has its own piece.
The short version: you search a catalog of everything the platform knows about the record type, pick one, and the field fills itself at send time.
Placement, practically
Work at a readable zoom. Fields placed while zoomed out land approximately, and approximately is visible on a signed contract.
Give text fields room. A company name field sized for "Acme Ltd" will overflow on a real legal entity name, and overflow on a finished PDF looks like carelessness.
Put signatures where people expect them. Bottom of the page, under a printed name. Signing is a moment of hesitation for most people and an unfamiliar layout adds to it.
Check every page. Multi-page documents are where fields get forgotten, usually on the last one.
Preview before publishing
Preview renders the document as a recipient will see it, with placeholder values.
The two failures it catches are the common ones: a field that shows nothing because its binding is wrong, and a field that overflows. Both are invisible while you are placing chips and obvious the moment you look at the output.
Fonts and appearance
The editor carries its own fonts so the finished document renders identically wherever it is produced. Typography is chosen per template rather than inherited from your brand settings, because a contract is a legal document rather than a marketing surface.
Keep it dull. A contract that looks like a brochure invites less trust, not more.
Conditional content
Some parts of a document only apply sometimes: a clause for one jurisdiction, a schedule that exists on larger deals.
Two ways to handle it, and the choice matters.
A field that resolves to nothing leaves a gap. Acceptable for a line, poor for a paragraph, because an empty space where a clause should be looks like a mistake to the person reading it.
Separate templates are the honest answer when the difference is structural. Two templates that differ by a real clause are clearer than one template with a hole in it, and either can be improved without disturbing the other.
The line to draw: values vary, structure does not. If the shape of the document changes, that is a second template.
When to stop using it
For a document your lawyers own, do not rebuild the wording here. Upload their PDF and place fields on top. The editor is for documents whose text is yours; the field layer is for everything.
That distinction saves a specific and expensive mistake: a re-typed contract that differs from the approved one in some small way nobody notices until it matters.
Working quickly
Two habits from people who build a lot of these.
Place every field first, then bind them all. Switching between placing and binding is slow because they use different parts of the screen and different parts of your attention.
Copy a similar template rather than starting blank where one exists. Most documents in an organisation share a header, a signature block and a set of company fields, and re-placing those is wasted effort.
Multi-page documents
Long documents are where field placement goes wrong, in three predictable ways.
Fields forgotten on the final page, which is where signature blocks usually live and where attention is lowest.
Fields placed on the wrong page after scrolling, which looks identical in the editor and obvious in the output.
Page breaks moving when content above them changes, taking fixed-position fields out of alignment.
Preview every page before publishing. It takes a minute on a twenty-page contract and it is the only reliable check.
Saving
Work saves as a draft, which is not sendable. Publishing is a deliberate step through a short wizard that settles who signs and how long links last.
Leave things in draft until they are genuinely ready. There is no cost to it, and an unfinished template that happens to be sendable is a document somebody will send.
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