Address Lists 1 per household?

[ChrisH]

We need to send of some letters but only want to send one to each household, so we want to filter out where we have multiple children from the same family etc so only one letter is sent. We want to do this in SIMS any ideas?

[matt40k]

Assuming all your address are correctly setup, ie they have little houses for linked address\contacts.

 

It's just a simple report, then filter by address, supress duplicate.

[Sivadam]

Have you set up the Mailing Point? This can be done via the Housekeeping Routines. Then you can just send to the one contact.

[jcollings]

As above if you set up the mailing point you can send to parents of youngest in family or oldest in family - IIRC it's been a feature of SIMS for a while.

[ChrisH]

Ok it looks like the mailing point is set up. Suppress duplicates only seems to be on the default output part of the reports and filter is in another place with no duplicate suppression to be found. Can you be a bit more specific in the steps to take or point me at a report definition I can look at.

 

Thanks for you patience

 

Chris

[Gatt]

I really need to get my head round SIMS housekeeping and reports..

[Sivadam]

Chris, When designing a SIMS Report go to Filter Page and then select Students, Mailing Point (is true).

You may also need Parental addressee (is not null) and maybe some other filters dependent on what you are doing.

 

Gatt, I suggest you get on to one of the Reporting Training Sessions - Level dependent on experience. Because SIMS Reporting is brilliant and will only get better in March 2010 when Reporting (SQL Server 2008) makes it's first appearance.

 

But God help us when BSF arrives here. We are used to doing things efficiently and correctly. The stories so far re. hosted service are horrendous. Hopefully I will have retired to SIMS Care Home by then!

Edited June 25, 2009 by Sivadam

[Hecate]

On a related issue does anyone know if it is possible to automatically generate a quick letter to both parents when they live at different addresses. We have second parents marked as requiring correspondence and having parental responsibility but when we generate a letter it only addresses it to the primary contact address and we have to copy and edit it for the second parent (assuming the writer of the letter realises a second letter is required)

[dwhyte85]

I know this isn't a direct fix but there is something to integrate into SIMS which will help with housekeeping and speed up mailmerging, it's called keepkidssafe - i'm normally an absolute tur[d]...nip when it comes to buying software to do things i can do myself but this is pretty neat, i can leave the office staff to do it without fear of a meltdown.

[Sivadam]

KB33977 explains that this is not possible at the moment - the letter only goes to Home Address. But you can include or exclude Correspondence in normal reports as below. This is in addition to, or instead of, using the Mailing Point Filter as explained above.

 

On the 'Select Fields' page of the Report Design ensure that the field 'Correspondence' is selected in the Parent Subreport. Then click the 'Define Settings for Subreport' for the Contacts and in the filter that opens at the bottom select 'Correspondence (is true)'.

 

You may have to set the report to select at runtime and then run the report twice - once (with Corespondence set to False) to pick up the normal mailing point and then again (with Correspndence set to true) to pick up those parents with Correspondence ticked. It will depend on how your normal filters are set up.

 

A combination of the two techniques will get you what you want. There really is no need to waste money on third party software when SIMS will do the job in the first place.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Sivadam

[dwhyte85]

It's not a waste as it automates phone calls, texts & e-mails - but it's also very good for cleansing data as it complains alot about incomplete data... thanks, also the interface is far easier for our reception staff to use, plus... our reporting team get very grumpy when reception do anything on SIMS (as they ask too many questions). Was a suggestion however... as I know from my POV I don't have time to do this and nor does my staff.

[Sivadam]

Ah but, as we all should know, there are better products on the market to communicate with parents.

 

Well there defo is one anyway - that interacts with SIMS far better. IMHO that is!

[BatchFile]

Ok it looks like the mailing point is set up. Suppress duplicates only seems to be on the default output part of the reports and filter is in another place with no duplicate suppression to be found.

Chris

 

I'm afraid surpress duplicates isn't the answer - all that does is, for example:

 

With supress duplicates:

 

StudentName Contact1Name

...................Contact2Name

...................Contact3Name

(Dots added cos I can't put spaces in in front)

 

Without supress duplicates:

 

StudentName Contact1Name

StudentName Contact2Name

StudentName Contact3Name

[Sivadam]

ChrisH

Try looking at the default Report Template for Address Labels - Parents.

I am not sure why you are wanting to Suppress Duplicates. There should not be any.