The FRS mailout activity is exposed to ContactsLaw by FRS Tools. It is used to create mailouts by bringing together the results of a property query, a resource type and instructions to generate mailing labels or personalised letters.
How to use
To use the mailout activity, you must add a definition (and default workflow) for the activity to ContactsLaw, then assign members permission to start it. The activity supports a single-step workflow only, however you can create tasks for the activity and delegate to whomever you choose. You can also associate journals or fixed charges with the activity.
The general process for conducting a mailout is as follows:
Start the activity.
Build a query to return the properties which will be included in the mailout; either by using a query template or by building the query from scratch.
Select a resource type that describes the stock that will be depleted by the mailout; e.g. pamphlets, letters, labels, etc
Choose whether to print labels, generate personalised letters (or both), then click Save & close to finish the activity.
Property query
You must build a query to populate the list of properties included in the mailout. Query templates can be used to store commonly-used query options. Typically, you will want to query active properties added within a particular period or included in a previous mailout. You can further refine the list by applying price, location and property type criteria.
Once the query has executed, the properties will appear in the mailout window. From here, you can remove unwanted properties or edit the details for any property in the list (this is useful if you want to add salutations or link properties to contacts in ContactsLaw).
Resources
By selecting a resource type, you can track the effect the mailout will have on your stock of pamphlets, brochures, envelopes, etc. The remaining stock of each resource appears in the drop-down. Once you select a resource type, the activity will calculate the cost associated with the mailout (based on the number of properties targeted). When you save the mailout, an entry will be added to the
inventory to show the reduction in stock.
Save options
You can decide which action(s) to perform after the mailout is saved:
Print labels - The activity will display a dialog box for printing mailing labels. The labels will be arranged on a sheet according to the type of label selected. For properties with a salutation or linked contact, the contact's posting name will appear on the top line of the label. For all other properties, a default salutation will be used. You can also decide whether to print serial numbers or barcodes on the labels. Standard "Code 128B" barcodes are used, encoding the serial number and mailout number as plain text. You can preview before you print.
Generate documents - The activity will display a dialog box for generating documents from an existing, pre-prepared template (stored in ContactsLaw). The template should draw upon
fields exposed by the FRS plug-in. The documents are generated non-interactively for maximum efficiency, and saved to a location on the user's computer. You can elect to print each document using the application associated with the file type (Microsoft Word, etc) - note that not all applications offer a native print command and that this command usually prints using the default printer settings only.