(Last updated February 2021)

Hosting Your A2J Guided Interview on A2J.org

CALI offers free hosting of A2J Guided Interviews and A2J Templates intended for use by pro se litigants on A2J.org. Publishing your interview to a2j.org creates a URL that can be shared with end users. From that URL end users can run the A2J Guided Interview, create their documents, and save their answers for later use. 

Here are the instructions for publishing your A2J Guided Interview and A2J Template to A2J.org. **Note, you cannot publish HotDocs Templates on a2j.org. 

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to A2J Author’s Project Manager Jessica Frank (jessica@cali.org). 

1. Log into your A2JAuthor.org account. 

2. Click the “Run A2J Author” button under the “Author” tab in the top navigation bar. 

3. Open the interview you want to publish by double clicking on it. 

4. Go to the Publish tab. You’re going to see several options. To publish to a2j.org, click the “Publish to A2J.org” button. 

5. When you click “Publish to A2J.org” you will be redirected to the a2j.org tab within your interview. It will include a list of all the interviews you have published to a2j.org. The most recently published one will be at the top of the list.

6. The A2J.org tab shows all the interviews you have uploaded to a2j.org. It includes the interview’s name, a link where it can be run, its DEMO or LIVE status, and gives you the ability to delete the interview. **Note: This deletes it from a2j.org, not your authoring account. 

7. The interviews are either in DEMO or LIVE mode. “DEMO” means they are watermarked with a warning and should only be used for demonstration or testing purposes. When you’re ready to share your interview with end users and want to remove the watermark, change their status to “LIVE”. You change the status by clicking on the word “DEMO” or “LIVE”. If you go from “DEMO” to “LIVE”, you’ll be prompted to fill out the interview metadata page. It will automatically pop up and ask you to select the state/country that your interview is being created for. You should also add the URL where you’ll be linking to the interview URL (ex. If you’re putting the A2J Guided Interview link on your organization’s website, put that page’s URL into the metadata). You can come back to the a2j.org tab at any time and edit the metadata of any of your published interviews. 

8. Click the green “submit” button. Once you do that, your interview is “LIVE” and can be run without the watermark. Remember, you should only mark an interview “LIVE” when it has been thoroughly tested and is ready for public use. **Note that interview will only become “LIVE” once at least one jurisdiction is selected.

9. To run your interviews and assemble your documents, share the URL provided on the a2j.org tab within your interview. 

10. There are two ways to edit your A2J Guided Interview once it has been published. 

    1. Make your desired changes to the A2J Guided Interview file in the original account that published it to a2j.org. Then re-publish it to a2j.org under the Publish tab. This will replace the original file with the changes and preserve the URL. This allows you to share the URL with end users or testers and still make changes if necessary. 

    2. Upload a new A2J Guided Interview to your authoring account. Publish to a2j.org under the Publish tab. You will then see it with a new URL on the a2j.org tab. You can “move” that new interview to the original interview’s URL by clicking the double arrows. A small window will pop up and you can select the original interview to replace with the new one. This will give your new interview the same URL as the original one.  

11. To edit the metadata of the A2J Guided Interview once it has been published, click the pencil next to the name of the interview. The metadata editing page will appear and you can make desired changes. 

12. To delete a published A2J Guided Interview, click the trash can icon in the “Delete?” column to the far right of the a2j.org tab.