SDL Desktop - Creating RTF MailMerges from the DataGrid

Many Municipalities prefer to continue using their existing renewal letters with SDL Desktop records. This is no problem for the DataGrid's versatility. Word documents or PDFs can be converted to Rich Text Format and used the feed SDL Desktop records into the renewal letter. This makes mail blasts quick and easy with SDL Desktop

Creating the Letter

Most people will be using Word, however this can be made using any Text Editor that supports the .rtf format.

Type up the contents of the letter and format it as you like, once complete, look back at the letter. Consider any field that would change with each letter. One example would be the Owners Name, this will change along with the address for each letter. Write down, or keep a mental note of each example.

Aligning with the DataGrid

Next, we need to choose a Datagrid. This is up to the Users intuition, however we can assume generally which datagrids will be needed. In this example we are sending out renewals for Mercantile Applications so we can assume we will either need the Mercantile Applications or Mercantile Licenses datagrids.

In looking at this renewal letter, I have determined we'll need the following fields.

• Business Type or Class
• Business Name
• Business Address, City, State and Zip
• Business Phone and Fax

I'm going to start with the Mercantile Application datagrid. This Datagrid I know has more columns in relation to Contacts rather than the actual Licenses.

In order to make this easier on the eyes I right click the Datagrid and select Field Chooser. This lets me alphabetize every column on this datagrid, click the Name column header, when pressed twice the fields will be sorted A-Z descending.

When I identify a field I want to plug into, I open up the mail merger letter and type an open bracket [! put in the fields name, verbatim, and then close it off with another bracket ].

Once complete, the final result looks a little like the below.

Now that we have identified the required fields, the optimal datagrid, and the letter to be used a Mail Merge can be performed.

When on the chosen datagrid, we will use the ctrl and shift modifiers to select the desired records.

When using Shift

The Shift key is used to select a range or records. This is most common as TA's will send out to every record. Click on the top most record to select it and scroll all the way to the bottom of the datagrid, hold shift, click on the last record in the datagrid. You will notice the First, Last, and every record in between is now blue. Move on to Final Step.

When using Ctrl

The Ctrl key is used to cherry pick multiple records. Click on your first desired record to select it, once it's blue, hold Ctrl and click on a few more records. Notice you can select multiple records in any random order. Holding Ctrl and clicking again on an already selected record will deselect it. Once all of the desired records are selected move on to the Final Step.

Final Step

Once the desired selection is made, locate and click on the mail merge  button on the Datagrid toolbar. A file picker dialog will open, locate and open the .rtf document created earlier. A print preview will open as SDL Desktop generates pdfs. Pay attention to the number of pages, eventually pages will stop appearing, this means the User can print by pressing the Print button in the top left of the window.

Next to the Print button is an Export button. When pressed, instead of opening a Print dialog, a File Save Dialog is opened and the user can save a multi page pdf containing every letter to be sent.

http://bit.ly/SDLrtfMM