How To Set Up Printing Letters Via Web Host

Related Information

Import Letters Into Web Host Edit Letters Print Debtor Letter Listing Edit Web Host Internal Reports Summary See Also

Examples & Tutorials

Add A User To Web Host Print Letters Directly From Web Host Set Up Printing Letters Via Web Host Learn More About Using Collect!'s Web Host

How To Set Up Printing Letters Via Web Host

Letters and reports may be printed directly from the Web Host with a few simple setup steps. These apply if you have upgraded from a Collect! version 8 or 10, or if you are using a version prior to CV11.1.4.3.

If you are using CV11.1.4.3 or newer, you should already have this feature fully enabled. Please refer to the Help topic, How To Print Letters Directly from Web Host for more information.

To Print Letters Directly from Web Host:

Import letters into Web Host Report Definition list.

Letters should be taken from the current list of reports in your working database so that you are sure of the output you want.
Edit letters for displaying as HTML.
Print debtor letter listing to create the options list for letters to be printed.
Edit Web Host internal reports to display a pick list of choices.

These steps are outlined below.

Please make sure you do not use a letter that prompts the end user to enter data, such as a date range or a dollar amount. Test print any letter that you add to the list.

Import Letters Into Web Host

1. Sign into Collect! as you would normally, NOT the Web Host. From the Collect! Report Definition list, export the letters that you want to print via the Web Host and then sign into Collect! in Web Host mode and import them into the Web Host Report Definition list.

Please refer to Export A Group Of Reports and Import A Group Of Reports for detailed steps.

Edit Letters

Each of the letters imported must be edited for printing in the Web Host.

Place the following lines at the top of the report body for each letter. Please make sure they are EXACTLY as shown below.

@SETde.dbaddress = @vardbaddr
@no html
<html><body><pre>
<script>
@tvarTxt = "window.print();" if (@varprint = 2)
@tvarTxt<

</script>

Place the following line at the bottom of the report body for each letter.

</pre></body></html>

Further formatting may be necessary to get the spacing and font size right. Use standard HTML tags just as you would in other HTML pages. This would require some prior knowledge of the HTML language and formatting principles.

Create reports.txt for letters to be printed.

Edit Web Host internal reports to display a pick list of choices.

Print Debtor Letter Listing

In the Web Host, we need a report called "debtor letter listing". When this report is printed, it will create a reports.txt in the {database}\html\user folder. The reports.txt is an ASCII text file. It contains a list of reports for the Letters pick list that displays to the Web Operator.

If you do not have this report in your list, you may request it from Technical Services, or you may create the report yourself, if you are familiar with creating reports and letters in Collect!.

To create it, do the following:

1. In Web Host mode, select Print from the top menu bar and then select Customize Printing, Edit Report Templates. Create a new report and name it 'MASTER debtor letter listing'. Set the Start On to Anywhere or [*].

2. Go into the Options. Set Destination to 'File' and set the Filename to

..\masterdb\html\user\reports.txt

If you are doing this in your DEMODB, please use this instead ..\demodb\html\user\reports.txt and name your report 'DEMO debtor letter listing'.

3. Put the following into the body,

@rd no total where (@rd.so = Debtor)
<option value="@rd.na<" >@rd.na< </option>
@rd

4. When you are finished, print the MASTER debtor letter listing report. This creates the reports.txt file in the \masterdb\html\user folder so that it includes the all letters that were imported and edited to be printed from the Web Host.

Edit Web Host Internal Reports

Finally, we need to modify the pages that are displayed to the Web Operator so that the Letters and the Print options are visible.

Web Host Letter Selection, Preview and Print Options

To do this, the following code needs to be added into the OperatorDebtorDrillDownWorksheet and OperatorDebtorDrillDownDetails reports. The code gets added on line 14, right under the @include buttonsdebtordrilldown.txt line.

<div class="buttons">
<table align="right" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<form method="post" name="rptselection" action="report" target="_blank">
<input type="hidden" name="reportname" value=" ">
<input type="hidden" name="filename" value=" ">
<input type="hidden" name="vardbaddr" value="@de.dbaddress">
<input type="hidden" name="varprint" value="">
<td align="right">
<select name="rpttype">
@include reports.txt
</select>
</td>
<td align="left" width="30%%">
 
<input type="button" value="Preview"
onClick="
rptselection.reportname.value = rpttype.value;
rptselection.filename.value = rpttype.value+'.html';
rptselection.varprint.value = '1';
rptselection.submit();
">    
<input type="button" value="Print"
onClick="
rptselection.reportname.value = rpttype.value;
rptselection.filename.value = rpttype.value+'.html'
rptselection.varprint.value = '2';
rptselection.submit();
">    
</td>
</form>
</tr>
</table>
</div>

Summary

That is all. Now when you view an account in the Web Host, you will have a Letter Selection, and a Preview and Print button. These are available on every Worksheet or Details page. Your Web Operator can go to any Account page when logged into the Web Host, and they will be able to select a Letter from the pick list and PREVIEW or PRINT it.

We are just dumping the text to an HTML browser. It is possible that the formatting you designed in Collect! may not be the same in the browser. If this is the case, you will need to implement HTML coding into the report to display it correctly.