Setting Up Form Letter Templates

Setting up a form letter involves 3 main steps:

ü Enter form letter details.
ü Specify filter/sort criteria.
ü Enter form letter template text/layout.
1. From the Main Menu screen, click SETUP. On the Receivables Setup screen that appears, select the General Settings, Developments, Units tab and then click FORM LETTER TEMPLATES. The Browse Templates screen opens with all available form letter templates displayed in a table.
2. Click on the toolbar. The Maintain Templates screen appears with the General tab selected.

Enter Form Letter Details

3. In the form letter template description textbox, type in the name of your form letter.
4. Select a data source from the drop-down list (Receivables Customers or Receivables Tenants).
5. If form letters generated from this template require responses, check the checkbox and enter the required response period in the days field. When the program generates a form letter from this template, the program records the date on which the letter was generated and allows you to record when your agency received a response.

Hint: Type in the number of days first, and then you can check/uncheck the checkbox for required.

6. If necessary, and if available, select a letter header and letter footer from the drop-down lists. Headers and footers are standard text blocks that are independent of any one letter. You can attach a header or footer to multiple templates.
7. In the field names for label data drop-down lists, select the labels you want to display for the addressee, address, city, state, and zip code. Click next to a field to browse for the field using a separate search screen.

Specify Filter/Sort Criteria

Filtering is a method of selecting specific items from a data source that match one or more criteria. For example, you can filter a batch of income verification form letters so that only tenants with annual household incomes under $15,000 will be included in the batch.

8. Select the Filter/Sort Criteria tab to filter the chosen data source to either show or eliminate specific data within it.

Note: This tab has two view modes: standard and advanced. If it is in standard mode, the Advanced button allows you to switch to advanced mode, and vice versa. In standard mode, you can only set up one filtering criterion. In advanced mode, you can set as many criteria as you need. You can set up to three sort criteria regardless of the mode the tab is in.

9. Select a field name to work with. This selects a single data field from the template’s data source and is the field on which the batch is filtered.
10. Choose an operator. This is a mathematical expression used for filtering, like “equal to” (=) or “greater than” (>), that performs a comparison between two things. This allows you to specify how you are checking individual database records against the filtering criterion. For example, if you want all records whose filtering data field is greater than a specific value, set the operator to “>” (greater than).
11. Enter a value; this is the data field for the value against which you are filtering.

Hint: The “between” operator allows you to set a pair of values between which the filtered field’s value must fall. Use a comma to separate these two values. For example, if you want all records with move-in dates between the first and last day of July, enter “7/1/2002, 7/31/2002” as the value.

12. In the sort criteria area at the bottom of the screen, select up to three fields to be associated with the data source of your form letter template. If you sort multiple sort criteria, they take effect in order.

Enter Form Letter Template Text/Layout

13. Select the Template Text tab and click the ENTER TEXT EDITOR button. The Form Letter Editor screen displays. The right side of the screen contains two lists: one of all of the standard signature fields in the form letter signature data files, and one of all data fields in the template’s data source (selected in Step 5 of this Quick Start Guide).

Note: You can use this screen just as you would a common word processor program like Microsoft Word or Word Perfect.

14. To insert page numbers, the current date, images, or a page break, click on the toolbar and select the appropriate option from the menu that appears.
15. On the right side of the screen, select a field you want to add to the form letter. Double-click or click the appropriate Insert Fields button.

Note: Make sure that when you choose to insert a field name, your cursor is located where you want the field to appear.

16. When you are finished typing the form letter, click on the toolbar to exit the Form Letter Editor screen. The Maintain Templates screen appears again.
17. Click on the toolbar to apply your changes and save the form letter template.
18. Click again. The Browse Templates screen displays with the newly created form letter highlighted in the table. The template is now available for use and you can generate individual form letters for tenants managed in the program. See "Generating Individual Form Letters"