Letter Details

Letters use the abilities of Microsoft Word™ to function. Your familiarity with Word and its template and merge features supports your success with using Letters. There are two methods to produce letters: server-side and client-side

Letters have the ability to use Word macros. Tasks that you perform repeatedly in Word are good candidates for automation using a macro. A macro is a series of Word commands and instructions that are grouped together into a single command to accomplish the task automatically. Instead of manually performing a series of time-consuming, repetitive actions in Word, you can create a single macro and run it to accomplish the task at hand. Before you can begin inserting macros into letters, you must first create an instance of AMSIPostMergeModule and AMSIPostMergeMacro. Refer to Using Macros in Letters for basic instruction. Or, for more in-depth information about macros, and how they are used in Word, open any Word document and select Help from the product toolbar.

You create the templates that are used to produce resident and corporate client letters. When you create a template, you select a letter type, and then select the fields that you want to insert automatically in the letter. You can have only one data template for each letter type. However, once a letter type/template exists, you can use it to create unlimited customized form letters. To be able to create many form letters from one template, you must include all the fields that all the form letters will use in the data template.

Processing letters through a server merge location may pose a security risk since you are exposing the site to the internet instead of the intranet. Most decisions to run server-side letters are based on cost issues, especially for companies using Word 2000. Running server-side letters means that licenses for Microsoft Word do not have to be purchased for all individuals users accessing the website.

If running server-side letters is required, then one of the following techniques must be used:

Set the anonymous user account to Administrator. With this setup, everything run over the web server uses the Administrator account. In addition, you can restrict access to minimize user problems.
Set Word to always run under the Administrator account (using dcomcnfg). With this setup, your web site is not using the Administrator account, but Word always is.

Printing Letters Server-Side

Server-side letters display in an HTML page and cannot be edited in that format. If printed from the HTML page, the letter has formatting problems and the finished product does not look as you intended it to look. The quick fix is to open the letter in the HTML page and click the small Word icon in the upper right corner. The letter displays again in an MS Word document, which you can edit and print without formatting problems.

Refer to the topic Server-Side vs. Client-Side to learn more about the differences between the two methods of producing letters and to help you determine which operation best suits your business needs.

When letters print using the client-side method, a Word document (.doc) and mail merge file (.dat) are stored on your local system and over time they can accumulate. This application includes a script that clears out any pre-existing temporary data prior to creating new .doc and .dat files for the specified file and user. This housekeeping mechanism eliminates the need for a manual routine to delete old letters because the system does it for you.