Large Scale, Professional, Mail Merge Apps? 17
xtermz asks: "I recently began working for a mid-large scale print house. We do everything from printing of sales fliers to invoices for some fortune 500 companies. For doing these invoices, we use something called JetLetter which is basically a mail merge program on crack. It lets your create a template, pull from a database and send a PCL stream to your desired printer type. The problem with this program is that it is designed only to pull from flat text files, or antiquated .dbf files. It can't support SQL Server, XML, or anything made after say...1992 (even though they have a 'JetLetter 2000' version, which is basically the same DOS based app with a 'Windows' interface). If you try doing a search for 'mail merge', your likely to get back a couple thousand hits for MS Word. Talking to my co-workers, JetLetter seems to be the only solution which suits our needs." Many people seem to think that to do "mail-merges" you need a word-processor. Not so. A mail-merge is simply applying a subset of data over a text template. Looking at the problem this way, can any of you offer suggestions to a solution that xtermz might be able to use to replace (or supplement) JetLetter?
Re:Crystal? (Score:1)
Another possibility (Score:1)
Re:Mail Merge Apps (Score:1)
This gluing together of things is of course the unix way. In fact, what the poster above was joking about perl may turn out to be true; it is probably surprisingly simple to make a little perl script that takes the XML or connects to the SQL server, and turns it into the kind of text file your crack-addled mail merger wants.
Convertion (Score:1)
i dont get it.. (Score:1)
Re:try "Variable Data" instead.. (Score:1)
MadCow.
Re:try "Variable Data" instead.. (Score:1)
I fugured, "Why confuse them with details here..." q:]
MadCow.
Local (Score:1)
XML and XSLT (Score:1)
Star Office (Score:2)
And its free and cross-platform. And the US dept of defense like it.
Baz
Re:try "Variable Data" instead.. (Score:2)
Re:try "Variable Data" instead.. (Score:2)
Re:Mail Merge Apps (Score:2)
To anybody who is looking at doing this for the first time - check with the end person to see if they are trying to get bulk rates. You have to sort them and put them in specific crates in a particular order for bulk mail. The first time I did this, I wasn't told. So we had six low paid employees sorting a roomful of mailings for a week or two.
And since then I've learned to lock myself in a meeting room with anybody who asks for anything that will take time or cost money and get the *FULL* specifications, through to the end, from their mouths, of what they want. Later, (when I had her), I'd grab our inbound tech person who had been a secretary to take notes... not because I'm bad at notes, but because then it was the two of us with dual notes against his or her word ("No, I told you this!", is the first comment everytime the spec changes post-delievery). Now I just insist on recording key conversations... including phone calls.
--
Evan
Perl? (Score:2)
Wait a moment, dumb question. Everything is a one-line perl script.
try "Variable Data" instead.. (Score:2)
For your needs, Xerox is definately a leader... I'd talk to them about software, or possibly a digital printer company like Heidleburg, or Xitron.
Or, hire me, and I'll write you a custom one through PostScript. q:]
MadCow.
Mail Merge Apps (Score:2)
Text files and
A customers address file may pass through several programs on several different platforms before it is finally printed on the end product.
For example a customers address/varible message file comes from a database on a main frame.
Next it need to be loaded into Postal sortation software on a PC so it is correctly sorted to comply with USPS rules and regulation to obtain the lowest postal rates and generate the mountain of paperwork the USPS requires.
Next that file comes to the printer where it needs to be converted to an format specific to the equipment that will do the imaging.
The equipment specific file formats are still one of three types of text files that have added equipment control field(s):
1. De-limited field text
2. fixed field with text
3. header/data pairs of text file of either of the above types
You should be able to generate useable text files that contain what ever information you desire from any database app
BCCSoftware (Score:2)
BCC Software [bccsoftware.com] has Mail Manager 2010, a mail merge software. When I worked for them 6 years ago, they were probably the fastest mail merge software in existence. They work with flat databases, and can import many types of files. They print to many sorts of printers, and also print all the assorted USPS forms that you need. I think they would give you a demo.