Instruction for Using Cover Letter and Cover Page Forms

Transcription

1 Instruction for Using Cover Letter and Cover Page Forms Note: The Cover Page and Cover Letter forms may be customized in any way that you choose. However, the original forms must be used since the application is set to look for their original form ID s. Copies of these forms will not work properly. You will want to bring the forms into your development database in order to edit them with your own company information, and for testing, prior to uploading them to your master database. Fields indicated with <> brackets are automatically populated from the database. References to tagnames such as <PdbJobInfo#1> point to fields found in the Details tab of Job Properties. Utilizing these fields provides an easy way to automatically populate your Cover Page and Cover Letter with job information. Editing the Cover Page Form 1. If the form is not already in your database, import the Cover Page form into the Form Editor of your development database. Re-start the PowerDB application. 2. Open the form in the Form Editor. It can be found in the _REPORTS AND ADMINISTRATION family, REPORT subfolder. There are initially five editable controls on the page. a. Top Address Block i. This is an enhanced text control that displays your company name plus 4 fields for your address. ii. Edit the company name. iii. Address information inside the <> brackets is edited in the User Data subform in the Global Functions & Variables tab. Edit that script with your regions and addresses, taking care not to alter the format of the script. See Appendix for scripting example. b. Logo Cover Page subform i. The image control on this subform may be customized with your company logo or any other image of your choice. c. Main Report Title i. This is a text control that displays Your Company Inc. Test Report. ii. Edit the text in this control to your desired title. d. Lower Job Information block i. This enhanced text control displays the current date and contains information from the job properties, including the customer company name and representative, purchase order, project name and job number. ii. Edit these items as desired taking care to retain the format of tagnames and fields. iii. Purchase Order this example uses one of the custom job info fields. These are defined in Tools > Administration, with data entered in job properties, and are displayed in columns on the Jobs listing screen. iv. Project Name same setup and entry as Purchase Order. e. Footer Cover Letter subform i. This subform can be edited as desired. ii. The example shown contains only static information. No tagnames are being used to pull information from the database. Note: The location of the five controls on the page can also be changed for your own preference. The initial locations are provided to serve as an example. pg. 1

2 Editing the Cover Letter Form 1. If the form is not already in your database, import the Cover Letter form into the Form Editor of your development database. Re-start the PowerDB application. 2. Open the form in the Form Editor. It can be found in the _REPORTS AND ADMINISTRATION family, REPORT subfolder. There are initially six editable controls on the page. a. AutoPage text control i. This control is used to set a unique default page 2 for the cover letter. It is located in the upper left corner of the page. ii. The tagname must be AutoPage and the text must be the name of the subform that will serve as your default page 2. In this example the name is CoverLetterDP2. iii. No special scripting is required on this control. b. Logo2 subform i. This places your Logo2 subform in the upper left of the page. ii. The image control on this subform may be customized with your company logo or any other image of your choice. iii. You can simply remove this subform if not desired. c. Upper Job Information block i. This enhanced text control displays the first three lines of your company address. ii. Address information inside the <> brackets is edited in the User Data subform in the Global Functions & Variables tab. Edit that script with your regions and addresses, taking care not to alter the format of the script. See Appendix for scripting example. pg. 2

3 iii. Two additional lines in this control show an example address and website. Edit these or enter other static information as desired. d. Text Control i. A text control in the upper left of the page with tagname TestDate will display the current date. e. Text Control i. A text control in the upper right margin of the page with tagname AutoCreateImportFields. ii. This control is used in conjunction with script on the form On Initial Update tab. iii. It determines the starting location and sequence of subforms called in the script. Those subforms are used to populate the body of the letter. iv. The line of script that must be on the form On Initial Update tab is: 1. call Application.SetDynamicSubforms(.FormId, "CoverLetter_GeneralInfo,CoverLetter_Scope,CoverLetter_Recommend,CoverL etter_conclusion") v. Each subform in the list can be edited individually, per your own requirements. vi. Subforms can be deleted from the script or other subforms added, as desired. f. Footer Cover Letter subform i. This subform can be edited as desired. ii. The example shown contains only static information. No tagnames are being used to pull information from the database. pg. 3

4 How to Use the Cover Page and Cover Letter When you have the two forms customized with your particular information, you are ready to start using them for your job reports. The first step will be to add either or both of the forms to your job. There is no particular spot in your job that the Cover Page and Cover Letter must be added. However, for consistency and ease of use we suggest that you add them at the highest org level in the job tree. If you highlight the job number in the job tree, press the Add To Job button, then select <Insert Test Form At This Level>. Once the forms are in place in the job, open them and review the preloaded information for accuracy. Much of the information shown in the forms can be edited if desired. Whether changes are made or not, you will be prompted to save the form as you exit or open another form. When you are ready to print the job, with the Cover Letter and Cover Page attached to the job (and saved), you will see those sections both checked in the Report Pieces area of the Print Job Results dialog box. Both sections may be unchecked if desired. pg. 4

5 Appendix sub GetYourCompanyAddressForRegion(RegionName, byref AddressLn1, byref AddressLn2, byref AddressLn3, byref AddressLn4 ) select case RegionName case "Texas" case "Midwest" case "South" case "Cross Regional" case "Not Specified" end select end sub pg. 5

6 Figure 1 Script Example From User Data Subform pg. 6

7 Figure 2 Example Cover Page pg. 7

8 Figure 3 Example Cover Letter pg. 8