I have created a Word document template. That came together pretty easy. However, now that I have created the template, I am unclear how to deploy it. That is, how does a user trigger the creation of the template based report?
The easiest way is to create a new field of type 'Document Template' for that object and place it in the View page. When creating this field make sure you select the correct template (if not go back and edit the field to tell it to use the correct template).
When users view a record and click the link shown in this field, a document will automatically be generated on the fly and downloaded/opened.
There are more sophisticated things you can do with document templates as well such as:
1. Create a Trigger that generates a document and stores it in a specific File Upload field
2. Create a Trigger that generates a document and emails it to a set of recipients