5. Maintaining Advice Formats

The advices that are generated from your bank will have a definite format. In the ‘Advice Format Maintenance’ screen you can specify formats and indicate the messages and advices that should use the formats you have defined.

By maintaining message formats you can ensure consistency across the branches of your bank. You can maintain advice formats either by:

Note

Message formats are maintained at the bank level and will be applicable to all the branch­es of your bank.

This chapter contains the following section:

5.1 Advice Format Maintenance Screen

You can invoke the ‘Advice Format Maintenance’ screen by typing ‘OLDADVFM’ in the field at the top right corner of the Application tool bar and clicking on the adjoining arrow button.

If you are maintaining a new advice format, click the ‘New’ button on the Application tool bar. The ‘Advice Format Maintenance’ screen is displayed without any details.

You can specify the following details pertaining to a format.

Format

In Oracle Lending, each format that you define is identified by a fifteen-character code called a Format code. You can follow your own convention for devising this code.

The code that you assign to a format should be unique as it is used to identify the format. You can compare simple conditions while defining message formats. When you need to use a format that you have defined, you need to just specify the code assigned to the format. The details of the format will automatically become applicable to the message. After you assign a code to a format you can indicate:

Language

A message can be sent to a customer in different languages. To make this possible, you need to maintain a format in different languages. While maintaining addresses for a customer in the ‘Customer Address Maintenance’ screen you can indicate the format and language in which a message should be sent.

Note

You should maintain Advice format in the languages maintained in ‘Language’ field in ‘Main’ tab of Customer Maintenance web page dialogue (fast path (STDCIF) for customers of the Bank, in addition to advice format maintained in ‘ENG’ (English).

Form Type

Specify the form type that applies to the message. Select a form type from the adjoining option-list.

Entering an advice format using the format editor

To enter a format using the format editor, click free format text icon positioned next to Format Text. In the note pad that is invoked you can actually tailor an advice to suit your requirements. The format editor has certain keywords which signify different options which you can use to create a format. The following table contains a comprehensive list of the key words that can be used in the format editor.

Keyword

Significance

#RH

Indicates the start of the report header section.

#PH

Indicates the beginning of the header for a page.

#EH

Indicates both the end of the header section of the report or the end header of a page.

#RF

Indicates the start of the report footer section.

#PF

Indicates the start of the footer of a page.

#EF

Indicates both the end of the footer of a report or page.

#B

Indicates the start of the body of the message.

#EB

Indicates the end of the body of the message.

#CL

Indicates that you can collapse a line.

#EC

Indicates the end of a line that you have collapsed.

#LOOP

Indicates the beginning of a loop.

#END­LOOP

Indicates the end of a loop.

#IF

Indicates a conditional section.

#ANDIF

Indicates a conditional section.

#ORIF

Indicates a conditional section.

#ENDIF

Indicates the end of a conditional.

Importing an advice format from an ASCII file on the server

The server indicates the machine on which the database of your bank is installed. To import a format from an ASCII file on the server:

  1. Click against the field marked Server.
  2. Specify the full path to the file on the server which contains the format you want to import.
  3. Thereafter, click ‘Import’ button.

The file containing the format of the message will be displayed on the screen.

Importing an advice format from an ASCII file on the client

Client refers to your own machine. To import a format from an ASCII file on the client:

  1. Click against the field marked Client.
  2. Specify the full path to the file on the client which contains the format you want to import.
  3. Click ‘Import’ button.

The file containing the format of the message is displayed on the screen.

Messages Format

After you have defined a format and assigned it a code you can indicate the list of messages that should use the format.

The format that you define for a message in this screen is taken to be the default format that will be used whenever the message is generated from your bank.

For each message that you specify, you can also indicate the specific details of the following, for which the format should be used:

Thus, you can specify a different format for the various combinations of the above.

To add a message to the list of messages that can use the format, enter the details of the message and click add icon. To delete a message from the list, select the message and click delete icon.

Note

For all the five combinations you can use the wildcard ‘ALL’ indicating that the format is applicable for records in that category. For example, if you indicate ‘ALL’ in the branch field for the message type payment message it would mean that the format is applicable when­ever a payment message is generated from any of the branches of your bank.

Saving the record

After you have made the mandatory entries, save the record. A user, bearing a different Login ID should authorize an advice format maintenance record that you have created, before the End of Day processes (EOD) are begun.

Click ‘Exit’ or ‘Cancel’ button to return to the Application Browser.

In the summary screen, all the advice format records that have already been saved, are displayed in a tabular form; double-click a record of your choice to open it. You can also invoke this screen by typing ‘MSSADVFT’ in the field at the top right corner of the Application tool bar and clicking on the adjoining arrow button.