Sending reports to customers

[charper]

My database generates several reports (layouts) all of which must be rendered in Preview mode in order to see summary fields, etc. We need to send these reports to our customers all of whom have email and fax machines. I wondering what the best way to do this is, particularly from within a script.

I can print the report to a file then attach this file to an email and send the email to the customer using the "send email" command, but this would require that the user have the same printer and printer driver as we do - not bloody likely. I suppose we could acquire all of our customers printer drivers and then render the print file accordingly before sending the email, but that seems too chaotic and very difficult - if not impossible - to automate with filemaker scripts. An email based solution looks like a dead end.

Another possibility might be electronic faxing. We've just been given a huge fax machine that looks like it could do just about anything. I don't know much about fax machines. Do fax machines generally allow you to initiate faxes from your computer (without manual paper feeding)? I don't see anything in this machine's manual about this.

More importantly, can Filemaker 4.1 (or 5.0) send reports to fax machines via scripts or any other method? Please say yes.

Are there any other ways to get reports out of Filemaker?

(Right now we're using 4.1 but we will soon be upgrading to 5.0.)

[Chuck]

You have many options:

Option 1: Format the report manually as text and send it as an email using either the Send Mail command, Open URL command, or a third-party plug-in.

Option 2: Use Acrobat. Print the report to an acrobat file and make sure that all the recipients have Acrobat Reader.

Option 3: Fax. There are a couple of faxing solutions that allow the automation of faxing from within FileMaker. On the Mac I've used 4Sight, but there's one called Fax Tool that I've heard of as well. On Windows I believe that WinFax can help you with the job.

Which option you choose to use will depend on which platform FileMaker is running on (running in on a Mac will give you access to AppleScript, which can increase your options) as well as which format your recipients are going to find the most useful and which solution is the easiest to implement. I would start with "What do my recipients need?" and work from there. If they need to have an exact copy of the report, for instance, then formating a text email won't work. You will need to use either the fax or Acrobat solution. If they don't want to have a lot of paper coming in, then perhaps the Acrobat solution would work best.

Chuck

[This message has been edited by Chuck (edited December 28, 2000).]

[PinnWal]

Chuck-

How do you print to Acrobat?

Thanx :-)

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

---

Originally posted by PinnWal:

Chuck-

How do you print to Acrobat?

---

You need a PDF Printer driver. This can be gotten from Adobe as well as a couple of 3rd parties. You'll have to pay for it, I am sure.

------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Kurt Knippel

Consultant

Database Resources

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.database-resources.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[charper]

Chuck, the first two options you gave were not viable for us but I downloaded a free trial version of Winfax and it works great with FMP. I love it!. Good looking app too. I'm still running tests but it looks very promising. So far this appears to enable us to send out hundreds of our reports everyday as opposed to just 10 or 20 - just what we need. I'm hoping now that I'll be able to somehow automatically tell Winfax what our customers fax numbers are without without having to "select" them everytime Winfax is launched from FMP. We want this function to be as automated as possible. Any ideas here. Probably beyond the scope of this board. But thanks a million. This is a life saver.

- charper