[AccessD] mail merge

Charlotte,

this is a call center application for an insurance company.  They add new
claimants / claims, and then handle phone calls re the claim.  They need the
ability to do mail merge type stuff for a raft of documents from various
places in the program.  When a new claim is entered, generate letters to the
claimant / doctor / lawyer etc requesting more information.  While handling
the claim, generate letters to the claimant / employer / doctors etc. for
various reasons.

My client is nailing down exactly where in the app they want to generate the
documents from, and in general I would expect a button / toolbar etc which
allows the user to generate a specific document or select from a list of
documents based upon what tab they are on in the app (which will provide a
PK for filtering a mail merge query).

As you can see, what they are doing will be custom defined, we will write
queries to grab the specific data required for the mail merge letter, define
a specific or a set of specific letters that can be created from any
specific place in the app.  The users of the system don't want to have to
leave the place they are entering data to "go build a document".  They want
to just say "send a letter to the current claimant regarding the current
claim, on this subject, with this selected boiler plate inserted, and allow
me to edit the letter, perhaps in a specific place (paragraph).

All of that is simple enough until you get to the "selected boiler plate
inserted" kind of thing.  That requires a combo or something to allow them
to select boiler plate.

In addition, I am attempting to build upon a foundation of a table driven
mail merge system.  The system was built by someone else and I am simply
expanding on it (quite a bit).

This system allows the DBA to create mail merges in advance.  The DBA
selects a document from a directory on the disk, and an existing query which
will provide the data to the MM.  The MM Wizard then reads the bookmarks out
of the document into a combo and the fields of the query into another combo.
It then allows the DBA to match the bookmarks with the fields of the query
and write that information into a child table.  The MM Wizard also allows
the DBA to select text attributes such as font / pitch / bold / underline
etc for each bookmark insertion.

All of this ends up in a pair of tables:

Mail Merge Header - containing the information about the merge process such
as document name, query name, number of copies, duplex, etc.
Mail Merge Fields - containing information about the document bookmarks and
the matching query fields, as well as the formatting information for each
such pair.

It appears that I need to expand the system to include a boiler plate table
with a m-m child to this table as well as the mail merge header, then allow
bookmarks where the data is specifically selected boiler plate, and for
those fields pop up a form or something to allow them to select the boiler
plate related to a given letter.  Also a bookmark which is specifically a
user edit.  It seems like a useful thing to do, just a bit outside of what I
was doing already.

I was hoping somebody could tell me that they had encountered similar
requests and that they had resolved them by...

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Charlotte
Foust
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:00 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] mail merge


Are you trying to manage it from Access?  You might think about a Word
form and macros for some of the on-the-fly stuff, but even Word makes
you make your merge choices from a wizard unless you're hand-building
the merge document.  They can always edit the merged document if you
merge to a new document instead of directly to the printer.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 5:07 AM
To: AccessD
Subject: [AccessD] mail merge


My client wants to do mail merges where they can stop and edit the
letter, and also choose (on-the-fly) boiler plate text to be inserted in
the document.  I am building a wizard or code library to manage mail
merge but it seems that with these requirements I would need a form to
pop up to allow them to make selections.

Has anyone ever done this stuff?  How do you handle it?

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com


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