Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by Guest on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 00:28

Implementation discussion

Hi,

We're currently investigating how to move more reminders over to email. One of the challenges we have is that our postcard size (http://pe.usps.com/businessmail101/mailcharacteristics/cards.htm) reminders are largely pre-printed. They have branding on one side, and on the back a division for text and address, as well as a cute little cat. What this means is that the printer only adds the text that varies -- reminder text and address.

What I've found is that the system appears able only to attach to email reminders what would be printed. So that means currently that the email reminders are rather scant, and potentially damaging from a branding perspective.

I see two solutions:

Change back to full-page reminders, and start stuffing envelopes again. This would provide a full-page email attachment that would look reasonable to our customers that receive the email reminder. They would also be able to print it more easily, because the chances are that their home printer is loaded with full-sheets of (letter size here in the US) paper. The downside of this is that the address information won't get printed on the envelope. It's currently printed directly onto the postcard. So we'd have a lot of manual envelope addressing to do. This is bearable since the goal is to move over to email anyway... but still not desirable.
Investigate if there's a way in the system to use a different template for reminder printing when it goes by email vs. by post.

Any thoughts would be most appreciated!

Cheers, Paul

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by tgething (not verified) on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 04:09.

Paul - there is another solution - use the IsEmail parameter to decide whether or not to include the required branding. If you have a look at a standard reminder template (say desex first reminder.odt) you will see a Printer Letterhead and Email Letterhead section at the top which show/print depending on the value of the IsEmail parameter. If you are using a jrxml based template, then the same facility is available - have a look at say the standard invoice a5.jrxml for an example.

[Incidently I think there is a minor bug in desex reminder.odt - the hide condition for the Print Letterhead section is missing its final " - ie it is set to 'IsEmail == "true' ]

Regards, Tim G

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by pstadler (not verified) on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 06:08.

Interesting, yes that sounds like a solution. Today we're using a Jasper template for grouped reminders and an OpenOffice template for single reminders. I assume we could convert the ODT template to JRXML? Is it possible to have the IsEmail parameter influence the page parameters? We're talking about not just different branding, but also completely different page sizes (postcard vs. letter size).

Cheers, Paul

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by tgething (not verified) on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 08:21.

Paul - I am afraid that I am at the limit of my knowledge. I am confident that neither the odt or jrxml based templates will allow you to do "if email then page size = ...". All you can do is print or not print sections/items on the basis is the IsEmail parameter. I would have thought that you could get away with using the postcard page size for both post and email - after all the email version sends the document as a PDF, and I don't think customers would be put off if the emailed reminder is a postcard sized document.

Although one can define multiple templates for a reminder, I think that the template is selected on the basis of the reminder number (ie 1st,2nd,..). I cannot see any way of saying "if sending reminder via email then use template xxx else use template yyy".

[After some playing, I do understand how the system decides whether to post or email the reminder - if the customer has an email address with purpose Reminder, then its email rather than post.]

Others may know better. Regards, Tim G

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by pstadler (not verified) on Sat, 16/02/2013 - 14:00.

Thanks for having a look Tim.

Yes, it's not the size per se, but the size and method of usage. I've attached the design here so you can see what I'm talking about. On this, we only print the second page... or the back of the postcard. That simple back of a postcard is insufficient as a reminder because the only portions that get printed are the text (where it says 'blah blah') and the address. We've toyed with the idea of printing the entire back of the postcard. This would be an improvement, because it would get the cat, and the vertical separation line. However, it would not include any of the branding that's present on the other side of the postcard (page 1). We don't want to print every card duplex... because frankly I don't think my printer can handle that -- and we don't feel that it would be a good experience to receive that via email either way (with the first page, or just the second page).

The thing that's recieved via email should be something that's printable by the customer and recognizable as a "normal document". It's possible that we just need to change tact here. I'm not averse to using full-size paper (A4-ish)... but we'll just want to get more clients onto email before we want to make that change. We're not terribly concerned about the increase in postage (due to cheaper mailing rates for postcards), but the time requirement for envelope stuffing is a little bit of a concern. Eitherway... maybe we just transition now to a more email based approach.

When we come to it, and planning out the future of OpenVPMS, I would suggest an improvement here... two in fact:

Allow a different template per sending method.
Allow a different template per location. (This is an entirely different topic, but imagine a single company that has two locations -- a cat specialty clinic, and a dog specialty clinic... they'd want separate branding, and hence separate templates.

Cheers, Paul

Attachment	Size
Reminder Postcard.pdf	249.36 KB

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by tgething (not verified) on Sat, 16/02/2013 - 15:40.

Paul - your second is already implemented - see http://www.openvpms.org/forum/practice-field-access-functions-available-no-practicelocation-equivalents#comment-5305

Note that in my case I have 3 locations each requiring their own branding. In the case of invoice/location [the only one I have played with] its really neat because the print invoice confirmation box has at its top the name of the template. Hence if you have set CC-Invoice as the invoice template for location CC, then CC-Invoice is displayed in the confirm box - if it is not, then you have not selected the correct practice location.

I totally agree with your first (ie different template for posted & emailed reminders).

Regards, Tim G

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by tanderson on Wed, 20/03/2013 - 21:43.

There is now a project for the different template per sending method suggestion: http://www.openvpms.org/project/add-support-different-reminder-templates...

-Tim A

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by pstadler (not verified) on Sun, 11/08/2013 - 02:06.

I've just given this a try using the attached template with no luck. I haven't done a print run per se, but used the Print -> Print, Preview, and Mail functions. I assumed this variable would be set in there as well. Is that a bad assumption perhaps?

Cheers, Paul

Attachment	Size
reminder general.odt	72.49 KB

Re: Reminders via Email and Post

Submitted by tanderson on Mon, 12/08/2013 - 14:29.

You need to create a User Field named "IsEmail" so that OpenVPMS can pass the appropriate value to it. This is one via Insert|Fields|Other|Variables (or Ctrl-F2 Variables)

I've updated your template to include it.

Regards,

Tim