Apsona is happy to announce a new add-on Mail and Document merge. Version 1.0 of the merging tool caters to three common situations:
- Email merge: Produce a batch of email messages from an email template, and send off the email messages.
- Document merge: Produce a batch of .docx document files from a .docx template, and download the results as a .zip file.
- Email and document merge: Use a specified email template and a specified document template to produce a batch of email messages and documents, attach each resulting document to the corresponding email, and send off the emails.
In all of these cases, the data to be merged into the template can be obtained either from an Apsona report, including cross-object reports, or from the records in any of the Salesforce objects via Apsona’s console or tabular views.
For email templates, the merging tool can use any of the templates stored in your salesforce org, i.e., the ones accessible via Setup – Communication Templates – Email Templates. For document templates, the merging tool can use any .docx files available in your Salesforce Documents object.
Below is a brief comparison of Apsona’s Merge/mail with other competing products:
- You don’t need special names for merge fields. This is unlike many other products. When creating a template, you can make up any field names you want, and the merge tool discovers and matches those names with your data fields on-the-fly.
- You can mix-and-match templates used with reports. Since merge field names are not linked to (i.e., don’t have to be the same as) either data field names or report field names, you can use the same report with multiple templates. For example, you can create an Apsona report of your top opportunities from last month, filter it once for the gold partners and send using the “gold” template, and then filter it for the “bronze” partners to send using the bronze template. The two templates to not have to use the same field names.
- It can use any of your existing document and email templates — no need to rewrite any of them.
- It works with cross-object reports. So you can (for example) create a report including contact fields and total value of opportunities/donations, and send the results via email.
In the coming versions Apsona’s Mail and Document merge will support merging of lists, PDF and Excel options. If you would like to try out this feature, please click the Feedback link in the Apsona app and send us a License request.
