Document Mailmerge
Document merge
This allows you to upload a batch of documents such as reports, grade sheets or exam results in one go, and the system will then create an individual publication to each appropriate parent (or student if applicable).
You need to be able to produce an individual file per student which includes the student code (or first name and last name) within the filename first to be able do this. Please contact us if you need any help or advice on how to do this; it is straightforward to export such files from some school MIS systems; in other cases a simple software utility such as ‘A-PDF Content Splitter’ is sometimes needed to separate and re-name the files.
Filenames can contain the pupil code (e.g. ‘Code123’) anywhere within the filename separated by a non alphanumeric character, for example:
Code123_report.pdf
Code124_report.pdf
Or
Report-Code123-Lent.pdf
Report-Code124-Lent.pdf
Or
Code123.pdf
Code124.pdf
Click ‘New merge publication’ from the main menu – you will see a screen like this one below. Click the ‘Document’ option for merge type, and the ‘Upload documents’ button will appear:
Click ‘Upload documents’ to go to the upload page:
The default settings assume that you want to match your documents on Student Code – i.e. the filenames will contain Student Codes (e.g. usually Adno if from SIMS, Code if from PASS, or StudentID or SchoolCode from iSAMS). Even if you are planning to send to Parents it is most likely that you still want to match on Student Code, so do not change this unless you specifically want to match on parent codes.
Hit Select files and find/select your batch of files. You may upload a single zip file containing any number of individual files (recommended for a large batch) or up to 100 or so individual files (the exact max number depends on the length of the filenames). Wait until your files have all uploaded, then hit Matched documents to check that your files have been successfully matched to account codes.
- Now you should see some numbers indicating whether the documents you have uploaded have beensuccessfully matched to Student codes:
- Hit Merge publication and you are ready to complete the rest of the publication settings as usual. If you have matched documents on Student Code you will need to make a ‘mailbox’ choice in the dropdown to determine whether your publication goes to the Students, their linked Parents, or both – below shows the choice of just parents, so this publication will go to Parent accounts linked to those students shown as matches above: