Technical Desk - Inserting A Commence View Into A Document

Being able to access and quickly provide your data in the appropriate format is crucial to an efficient sales process. 

Whether it is a report of your current hot leads or you want to send letters to your customers on maintenance, it is no good if your CRM system can't put these figures on paper when you need them. 

What most people do is export their data and then import it into Microsoft Excel or write it up manually in a word processing application. While Commence still allows you to do this, it also provides a neater way of getting your data into Word using a standard letter template. Commence allows you to insert a static or dynamic view from Commence, directly into a Word document, and still edit and format the document as you would for any other text file.

• A static view is one in which the information contained within it, does not depend on any other view.

• A dynamic view, sometimes called a linked or secondary view, is one in which the information contained within it, changes depending on which item is selected in another view

To use the above example, assume we have a connection from the sales person to the lead/contact which we have called "has salesperson". If we had a view of all the current hot leads for all sales people, then this is a static view because the hot leads will not change when a different sales person is selected (or anything else for that matter).

However, if one view contains all the sales people (primary view) and there is another view of current hot leads filtered for each sales person (secondary view), then this is a dynamic view because when we select each sales person in the primary view, the data in the secondary view will change to show the current hot leads for that sales person.

For more information on creating linked views refer to "Linking a View" in chapter 4 of the Commence User's Guide.

Inserting a Static Commence View Into A Document

1. In Commence, open up the view that you want to insert and then filter and sort it until it is in the correct format, then choose Views>Save View or Views>Save View As.. if you want to save it under a different name.   

2. In Commence create a letter template as usual  by going to Customise>Database and clicking on the Letter Template tab. Then make sure you have the correct category selected before clicking on the Add Formatted button. Give the template a name eg "Hot Leads" and if you want the template to be available to all Commence users then tick Shared or otherwise leave it blank. Then click Create Template button.

3. Word will then open up with the Commence Fields floating bar visible. Use this to insert any Commence fields you want and then click on the X to close the Commence fields bar. 

4. Move to the location in the document where you want the Commence static view to appear, then from the Commence menu select Insert Commence View

5. The Commence Views floating bar will appear. Select the Category on the left hand side and then the View name on the right hand side to insert the macrocodes for the view into the document. 

6. Once you are happy with everything in the Word template, select Commence>Save Commence Template and exit out of Word.

 You can now can use this letter template from Commence as you do any other letter template, but you will notice that your Commence view is inserted during the merge process.

Inserting a Dynamic Commence View Into A Document

The main difference in inserting a dynamic view is that you have to set up a primary and a dynamic view before you can insert the dynamic view. 

1. In Commence, open up the view that you want to be the primary view which in this example is called "Staff - Sales". 

2. Create the secondary view showing leads for the selected sales person. In this example the secondary view is called "Hot Leads by Salesperson"

3. You can now insert these views into Word in the same way as you would for a static view. Create a letter template following steps 2-6 of Inserting a Static Commence View Into A Document, but this time insert the salespersons full name from the Commence fields and then below that insert the secondary view we just created called "Hot Leads by Salesperson". 

4. Unlike letter templates with static views, to use a letter template with a dynamic view, you have to have the primary view ("Staff - Sales") and the secondary view ("Hot Leads by Salesperson") both open and an item (ie a sales person) selected in the primary view. 

5. Now go to Tools>Send Letter and select the dynamic letter template. Make sure the Preview box is ticked and click on the Merge button. You will notice that the person's full name appears at the top of the document followed by that person's Hot leads view from Commence. 

6. You can use this dynamic template on a single person or send it to all items in the list (ie all sales people) and Word will still dynamically merge the appropriate hot leads view, to each sales person.

Inserting dynamic views into a document can have many useful applications. Another example is where you may have equipment that has been sold to a customer to a customer, with a maintenance expiry date.

In this case the company would be the primary view and the equipment list connected to the customer would be the secondary view. Then you can use the Merge facility to send letters to your customers, complete with a list of all the equipment they have on maintenance.