Difficulty: Advanced
Required: 'Smart Communications' Add-on
Smart Communications Add-on has for objective to enable you to send customized communications to stakeholders of a given Engagement Plan, List, or Organization. This article focuses on sending letters.
There are 3 Sending options:
- A single letter to all participants: Each participant will be part of the same communication.
- One letter to each organization: Each member of an organization will be part of the same communication.
- One letter to each participant: Each participant will be part of individual communication.
The creation of your smart letters will require you to follow these steps:
1. Create the Smart Communication in Borealis
To create a smart letter:
- go to the 'Smart communication' register, click 'Create',
- select 'Smart Letter' as the type of smart communication and fill out the information. Note that details such as recipients, sending options, etc. can be modified once the record is saved.
- Click on 'Save and View', to display your Smart Communication.
- Fill-in the 'General information' tab: Add a title, a sender, choose a language, enter the expected date of delivery (helpful if you plan your communications in advance) and select a sending option.
- The 'Template' section provides you with the list of tags that will be inserted in your Smart Communication for customization purposes.
- In the 'Classification' section of the tab, add the title and description of the communication, link the letter to an engagement plan, project(s) and subject categories. Please note that when the Smart Letter is sent, only the title and description of the communication will be added under the individual record.
2. Prepare your letter template
Prepare a letter template in Word.
- Tags can be added directly in the .docx file.
- Wherever you want to personalize a field to a stakeholder, use the tags provided in the 'Template' section of the Smart Communication created above.
- e.g "Dear {SALUTATION_TITLE} {LAST_NAME}"
- The tag will be replaced by the stakeholder information (eg "Dear M. Smith"). If you need more information about these tags, click on the
icon next to the title of the field.
- Save your document.
Here is how you should use tags in a letter template:
- The first page must begin with the tag {#LETTERS} and the last page must end with the tag {/LETTERS}.
- If your letter has one page, the letter should start with {#LETTERS} and the {/LETTERS} should be at the beginning of the second page (use a page break). The end of the letter should be at the exact place of where the second letter should start when all the letters will be generated in one document by the system.
- Tags can't be added in a header/footer.
- Refer to the system for the complete available tags list.
3. Upload the letter template to Borealis
First, you need to send an email
After, In the 'Actions' menu, use the 'load template' option to load your document.
Once the template is loaded, the field "Tags identified in the letter template" helps to validate if all the tags in the letter template are recognized by the system.
4. Add recipients to your Smart Letter
In the Recipient tab, add stakeholders who should receive the communication.
- to add individual stakeholders, click on the '+' and add recipients
- To add multiple stakeholders from a specific distribution list : Click on the 'Action' button and select 'Add members of a distribution list'.
- To add multiple stakeholders from a specific smart list : Click on the 'Action' button and select 'Sync with Smart list'.
5. Manage warning messages and data quality
At the top right corner, a warning message might be displayed.
Error message. The information must be modified/added before being able to send the letter(e.g a stakeholder has no address). The letter CAN’T be generated.
A warning message about the communication details or participants (e.g The communication's language does not correspond with the participant's language). The letter CAN be generated.
For Smart Letters with a large number of recipients, use a data quality report to make sure your stakeholder's contact information is complete and up to date. This Analytics report, filtered on the distribution list used, helps to identify quickly if all stakeholders have salutation titles, titles, etc.
6. Generate and send letters
Once you are ready to generate letters, click on the 'Actions' button and 'Generate letters'. If the letters generated do not look as wished, modify the template, load it again and generate new letters. When ready, print the document generated and send it to the stakeholders.
Once the letters are sent, use the 'Workflow' button and select the 'Mark as sent' option. The communications will be recorded under the stakeholders' records and listed in the 'Communications' tab.