Mail merge

According to Wikipedia, mail merge is:

A software product that uses a file (or database) of names and addresses, together with a template document, to produce multiple copies of a letter, each personally addressed to a different recipient.

When creating e-mail, the Contact management module provides functionality to produce and maintain the template as well as the data source. When it comes to creating mail merge documents, the module limits itself to the production of the mail merge data source. Word processing applications like Microsoft Word or Open Office provide excellent functionality to perform the actual mail merge process.

Mail merge settings

The mail merge settings page (Contact management > Settings > Mailmerge settings) lets the user define what information is included in the mail merge export. Different “mail merge settings” sets can be created and maintained from this page.

Private address versus contact address

For each set, we can first define how to handle addresses. Both contacts and contact persons can have an address (company postal address versus private address). Which one should be used in the export is determined by selecting one of the four options using the radio buttons.

• only use contact addresses
• only use private addresses
• use private address if it exists, otherwise use contact address
• use contact address if it exists, otherwise use private address

order

Using the order field, the order of the columns in the mail merge export can be determined. When no number is entered in the order field the column will not appear in the mail merge export.

export column name

The export column name offers the possibility to define an alternative name to the default column name as provided by the contact management. If this field is left empty, the default name will be used as the column name in the export.

Figure 1 Mail merge settings page

Mail merge

In the mail merge page (Contact management > Mailing > Mail merge) selections or queries can be combined with a “mail merge export” set to create a mail merge table.

This mail merge table will contain the contact and contact person information as defined in the mailmerge settings page for all contact persons in the selection or query.

Figure 2 Mail merge page

Clicking on the open icon  opens the CSV (Character Separated Values) version of the mail merge table. This file can be used as input for the mail merge process in Word, Open Office or any other software that can perform mail merge operations.

Communication details

When sending e-mails from the Contact management module, the option exists to create communication details at the same time. For mail merge, the contact management module only supplies the data source for the mail merge. The actual creation of mail merge documents is done outside the application. In the communication details creation page (Contact management > Mailing > Communication details) communication details can be created based on a selection or query. This makes it possible to use a selection (or query) for a mail merge action and afterwards create communication details of this mail merge action by using the same selection (or query).

Figure 3 Communication details page