Specifications Formletters

Intro

This is about formletters, also known as Mail Merge, etc

You want to send a letter to a donor, generated from data which is stored in OpenPetra

Old Petra 2.x

Formletters were stored in several database tables, and assembled from there. Quite complicated to edit for the user, and difficult to see what you are doing. Eg the annual gift receipts was a nightmare, even for us as developers. I wrote an Xml export and import functionality back then, to somehow cope with the annual receipt formletters.

OpenPetra HTML Formletters

At the moment, we have routines to print letters from HTML templates.

These are also not so easy to be edited by untrained staff (need to know HTML, but not all HTML features are supported by our own HTML2Print/PDF renderer), but at least easier for us developers. We could offer services to help offices get the initial version of their html template...

One thing to mention: especially for the application forms for TeenStreet, we had to print application forms for 4 or 5 different types of people, for 20 countries. The name of the file includes the conference role and country identifier.

Examples

Examples for such templates are visible here:

• annual gift receipt: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/demodata/formletters/AnnualReceipt.html
• application form for a conference: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/demodata/formletters/ApplicationPDF.en-US.html
• mail merge letter: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/demodata/formletters/NewDonorSubscriptionLetter.html
• printing some lists: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/demodata/formletters/MedicalReport.html
• printing badges (showing how you can define position of images, etc): https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/demodata/formletters/badge.teen.html

Central Class for formletters with HTML templates

• the code is implemented here:

https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Common/Printing/FormLetters.cs

annual gift receipts

called from: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Petra/Server/lib/MFinance/Gift/Gift.Receipting.cs#L123

print application form to PDF

see https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Petra/Server/lib/MPartner/Common/ImportPartnerForm.cs#L313

mail merge letter

• client side: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Petra/Client/MFinance/Gui/Gift/GiftNewDonorLetter.ManualCode.cs#L101
• server side: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Petra/Server/lib/MFinance/Gift/Gift.NewDonorSubscription.cs#L166

printing some lists

• called from here: https://github.com/tpokorra/openpetragit/blob/master/csharp/ICT/Petra/Server/lib/MConference/MedicalTeam.cs#L177