1.3 Mailshot Dialog

Introduction

Version 1.2 of Inforama introduced the ability to send mailshots which has proven very popular and effective in generating personalised PDFs for lists of recipients. In version 1.3 we have improved this functionality with a dedicated mailshot wizard.

Getting Started

To get started with this improved version of the mailshot wizard create a project with a letter template which you would like to generate. If you want to get started quickly with a sample project you can download the SampleSpreadsheet project from SourceForge. This project generates its documents from a spreadsheet which is included in the download.

Once opened, the new mailshot dialog can be launched by clicking the 'Project - Run a mailshot...' menu item. The dialog shown in figure 1 will appear.

Figure 1 - The new mailshot dialog

From the list of documents and packs in the left-hand list, select the document(s) or pack(s) that you wish to generate and move them to the select list on the right. Click the next button to proceed to the screen shown in figure 2.

Figure 2 - Select the dataset to iterate

In this screen select the dataset which contains the list of recipients to whom you wish to send the mailshot. If the mailshot is to be emailed then the dataset should contain an email address field. Once the dataset is selected click the next button to proceed to the screen shown in figure 3.

Figure 3 - Specify actions to be carried out

In this screen you select which actions should be carried out with the generated documents. In this example the generated documents will be emailed to the contacts in the dataset. In order to use the email address within the dataset click the button to the right of the 'To' address field. A dialog will appear with a list of fields in the dataset. Select the field name which contains the email address and click OK.

Figure 4 - Specify actions to be carried out

The 'To' address will automatically populate with a reference to the email address field as shown in figure 4. Click the next button to proceed to the screen shown in figure 5.

Figure 5 - Carry out additional tasks using the mailshot events

This screen is designed to carry out additional tasks as mailshot items are processed. In many cases it would be desirable to record the action which is carried out in a database for example. The screenshot shows a query being executed against a database datasource within the project. Click the next button to proceed to the screen shown in figure 6.

Figure 6 - Apply a document name format

This screen allows you to apply a format or mask to the generated document names. This can be useful in cases where you wish to archive the generated documents and want to have a unique identifier as part of the file name. This will be come evident on the last screen where you have the option to save the entire mailshot. Click the next button to continue to the screen shown in figure 7.

Figure 7 - Specify parameters to be used

This screen allows you to specify parameters which should be sent to the document generation job. In this example there are no parameters so there are none prompted for but you may wish to limit your mailshot to users in a particular region or age bracked for example. Click the next button to proceed to the screen shown in figure 8.

Figure 8 - Preview of the generated documents

When this screen first appears it contains a list of all the rows which were used in the dataset to generate the mailshot PDFs. The actions specified earlier have not yet been carried out at this point. This first appearance of this screen allows you to preview the generated PDFs and emails which will be used when the next button is clicked.

On this screen you can also choose to save the documents which have been generated. You can do this by clicking the 'Save documents' button. A dialog will appear prompting you for a location to save them to. Choose an empty directory and the documents will be saved. If you specified a file name mask in step 6 the files will be saved using this format.

You can also choose to save the mailshot steps as a script which can be reused. You can do this by clicking the 'Save mailshot script' button and you will be prompted to provide a name as shown in figure 9 below.

Figure 9 - Name the mailshot script

You can preview individual documents which have been generated by double-clicking an item in the list. The dialog shown in figure 10 below will appear.