Technical Implementation Of Online Letter Display
Users can view an image of any letter that is sent to a customer if you set up the following:
• Plug-in an Online Letter Display algorithm on the Installation Record. Refer to C1-LT-DISP for an example of such an algorithm. Note, if your letter print software is not capable of producing a PDF containing an image of a letter, users will not be able to view images of letters.
• Plug-in the appropriate extract algorithm on each letter template. Algorithms of this type format the records that contain the customer information that is passed to your printing software.
When you plug-in these algorithms, a button appears on Customer Contact - Main for customer contacts whose customer contact type references a letter template. When a user clicks this button, the following takes place:
• The installation record's Online Letter Display algorithm is executed.
• This algorithm calls the customer contact's letter template's extract algorithm. This algorithm constructs the information that's merged onto the letter and returns it to the Online Letter Display algorithm. This algorithm, in turn, passes it to your letter print software.
• Your letter print software renders an image of the letter in a PDF and returns it to the Online Letter Display algorithm.
• And finally, the Online Letter Display algorithm displays the PDF in a separate Adobe session.
The system provides an algorithm that interacts with BI Publisher to render an online image of a letter. The following points describe what takes place when clicking Display Letter when these sample algorithms are used.
• The sample Online Letter Display algorithm C1-ONLTR-RPT is executed.
• This algorithm calls the letter extract algorithm. The sample letter extract algorithm C1-LTREX-RPT is supplied for displaying letters via BI Publisher. This is not actually extracting data because when you use BI Publisher, the report itself is responsible for extracting and formatting the data. The base product algorithm supplied returns the appropriate report code to the Online Letter Display algorithm, which in turn returns the report code to the customer contact page.
• A user exit on the customer contact page invokes BI Publisher and displays the letter in a separate browser session.