[sims] Sending out letters

[Pyroman]

Heya,

 

I was trying to use mail merge fields from SIMS so that our receptionist could write a letter on a pre formed template with an automatic date & greeting (To parents carers of <><>) and saved it as a template but of course if just throws out 80 letters with

 

Dear parents of <><>

 

LETTER BODY

 

Yours faithfully

Teachername

 

Is there a way to do this so that they don't have to update the template with the actual LETTER BODY each time they want to send a letter out. I was trying to make it easy for them to send letters, the other way is to just keep a seperate database that's just first names and surnames as a and manually update it from SIMS

[PhilNeal]

It is possible to create any number of reports for mail merging with different body text and indeed most fields are available. Select the fields you want to use then select mail merge output.

[Kyle]

We design and use reports with various filters for all sorts of letters home.

 

I must admit though that since we have had InTouch this has dropped dramatically as we use email a lot more now and the feedback from parents is very positive.

[Pyroman]

It is possible to create any number of reports for mail merging with different body text and indeed most fields are available. Select the fields you want to use then select mail merge output.

 

But presumably you need to choose design report, do a next, next, next and then edit the template with the body of the letter you want, save and then run the report?

[CAM]

You create the report and custom template once then save it (remember to untick private!). The receptionist can then run it at a later date. You cannot edit the template to change wording on the fly though, this will require the report for the letter to be edited to update the custom template.

 

An alternative would be to dump the data into Excel and use it as a data source for a normal Office mail merge.

[Pyroman]

You create the report and custom template once then save it (remember to untick private!). The receptionist can then run it at a later date. You cannot edit the template to change wording on the fly though, this will require the report for the letter to be edited to update the custom template.

 

An alternative would be to dump the data into Excel and use it as a data source for a normal Office mail merge.

 

Cheers, that's what i thought. What i'll end up doing then is creating a spreadsheet and merge document and output the report once a week to check for and leavers/new kids and overwrite the spreadsheet.

[CAM]

If you are doing it that often, you might want to edit the template instead or save the report as a new copy before changing to keep the old letter. Otherwise you will be forever exporting data into a spreadsheet at risk of a mismatch instead of pulling it directly out of the system.