GTRR confusion / relationship issue

[Simon K]

I want to be able to maintain a record of mailshots sent to different groups of customers. I also want to enable users to create mailshot templates (well at least the content for those mailshots).

Anyway, I thought following some previous advice that I would get a found set of contacts and then do a single report (body per record etc).

(Mainly because of an inherited structure) I have the record of "communications" with contacts in a separate file to that containing the contact records.

I have been trying for a little while with the attached file - which corresponds to the above ideas - but there is something screwy in the final relationship which I don't understand (ie the output document doesn't show the correct data from the mailing record.

I should add that there is only one script - if your run the script it should create a new mailing record (it hard codes a couple of customer ids and a doctemplate id) and then using GTRR should go to the document layout - it saves the right info but the document definitely isn't showing the correct info.

I can't see how to get the output report to work.

I hate coming to the group at this point - but once again I feel that there is some fundamental gem of understanding I need to get out of this to do the job.

All help appreciated.

PS - In my contacts file I have the facility to build the lists of contact ID's to be mailed which I would thought I would pass to the "mailing script" along with the template id - hence the prototype just uses hard coded values pro tem

mailing.zip

Edited February 13, 2009 by Guest

[comment]

I would get a found set of contacts and then do a single report (body per record

Well, it's certainly possible (if rather limiting) to do it that way. However, since each contact can participate in many mailings, you need to select a specific mailing before you can print your report. Place the selected mailing ID in a global field in Contacts, and define another relationship to Mailings based on the global.

[Simon K]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the response.

1) To clarify - the report would be based on the found set of contacts - ie one report with a new page after each record -so my first question is simply that if this is restrictive what would be a better approach/would you recommend?

2) I added a global into customers and a new to of mailings. I created a further TO of mailings and linked it to the new global of. I changed the report layout to look at mailings fields from the new TO (for the body and the heading). I changed the script to set the global just after the gtrr

but still nothing appears in the body/heading fields??? i have missed the point somewhere

mailings2.zip

Edited February 14, 2009 by Guest

[comment]

You are setting the global to 3, but your ID's run from 55 and up.

[Simon K]

oh dear : - have amended and will look in more detail in the morning - the end result does look a bit "circular" is that what you meant by limiting? - what would be a better way? - would very much appreciate your insight

thanks

Simon

[comment]

Any many-to-many relationship that doesn't use a join table is limited in its find and reporting capabilities - because there isn't a distinct record for each individual sent letter. That's not to say that a join table is mandatory - only that you need to be aware of the limitation.

I'd suggest you look at some mail-merge templates. I believe there were at least three of those, one by Vaughan, one by Ender, and one by Ray Cologon.

Edited February 14, 2009 by Guest

[Simon K]

Thanks Michael - all appreciated