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Letter templates are the documents or messages which VSys merges together with information about your people to produce letters. They are identical in concept to mail merge documents in Microsoft Word. Write your letter and include data fields. The data fields are then replaced with each volunteer's information to create the individual letters.
There are two types of letter templates: RTF (which works like Word and other word processors) and HTML:
Click on Letter templates from the Letters/e-mails panel.
Tools
Add letter template |
Creates a new, blank template. |
Add letter template (HTML) |
Creates a new, blank HTML template. |
Load built-in templates |
Brings up a list of the sample templates which are built into VSys One. These can act as a starting point for your own templates, and you can delete which are not useful to you. Check here first if you do not see a built-in template on the screen of the type you want. |
Load from a file |
Loads a saved template from disk, usually one sent by another VSys user. Note you can't use this link to open a Word or an RTF file. This is used for loading a file that was saved by another copy of VSys. |
Copy from another project |
This brings up a list of other projects (or globally, if you're working in a project now) which have one or more letter templates defined. Use this to copy a letter template from one project (or globally) to another. Select the source and one or more letters, then click on the Execute copy link. Once you've copied a template, changes made to the copy do not affect the original, nor do changes made to the original affect any copies. |
Expand all |
Expands all letter types to show the templates within them. |
Filters |
Lets you filter the displayed templates by status and/or type. |
Don't group by type |
Displays letter templates in a straight alphabetical listing. |
Setup
Setup letter types |
Brings up the Letter types tool. |
Setup letter template groups |
Defines letter template groups which can be used to organize your letter templates. |
Setup reply/RSVP statuses |
Defines RSVP statuses which can be used as part of letters. |
Right-click tools
Add letter template |
Creates a new, blank template. |
Add letter template (HTML) |
Creates a new, blank HTML template. |
Copy |
Makes a copy of this letter template which you can then edit. |
Copy as an HTML template |
Makes a copy of this RTF letter template, converted to an HTML template. (VSys makes a "best effort" conversion that's not going to be 100%.) |
Edit |
Brings up the Letter template editor, letting you modify the text, formatting, fields and properties of this letter template. |
Properties |
Opens the Letter template properties editor to define the detailed properties - Name, Letter type, Data source, Language, etc. - for this template. |
View |
Brings up the letter template editor, but in read-only mode. |
Delete |
Deletes this letter template. Any existing letters based on this template are not changed or deleted. |
Change status |
Change the status of this template. |
Clipboard |
Copy and paste individual or bulk letter templates using the Windows clipboard. (This isn't for copying from other programs such as Word, just for within VSys systems.) |
Load from a file |
Loads a saved template from disk, usually one sent by another VSys user. |
Save to a file |
Saves the selected template as an XML file. |
Letter templates created within a project are only accessible within that project unless you copy them into another project. This lets you vary the templates by project, including project-specific information in them while keeping them isolated from other projects.
Changing a letter template does not affect any letters which were created previously using that template.