Letter Templates Control The Information Merged Onto Letters
Customer contacts that trigger letters reference a customer contact type that, in turn, references a letter template. The letter template controls the following:
- It contains an algorithm that is responsible for extracting the
information merged onto your letters. Specifically, algorithms of
this type create the "flat file records" that are passed to your letter
print software. Algorithms of this type are called under the following
scenarios:
- The background process that builds the flat file that's passed to your letter print software calls these algorithms to construct the "flat file records" for each letter.
- If your letter print software has the ability to construct a real-time image of a letter (in a PDF), you can plug-in an Online Letter Image algorithm on the Installation Record. This type of algorithm will call the letter's letter template's extract algorithm to extract the information that is merged onto the letter. Refer to Technical Implementation Of Online Letter Image for the details.
- You can create letters online using an external reporting tool such as BI Publisher or Crystal reports. Refer to Letter Print - BI Publisher and Crystal Sample Welcome Letters - CI_LTRGN_ENG REPORT for more information about the sample template.
Refer to The Doc 1 Records for examples of the record layouts passed to the Doc 1 print software.
- It contains the ID of the background process that builds the flat file that's passed to your letter print software. The base package example of this process (known by the batch control ID of LTRPRT) simply calls each customer contact's letter template's extract algorithm to format the information placed onto the flat file.