Hope this is the right area for this question, it's a general "Should I" more than a "How do I".
We currently have a commercial software that offers, among many other things, a mail merge functionality to MS Word. However, we're looking for options to remove MS software, and the licensing fees that come with it. I've used openoffice personally in years past, and it seems to be a strong contender.
The mail merge functionality we offer is generally used to create letters or envelopes, and while often fairly simple, does contain some very advanced "hacks" like being able to merge rich text content and images (we save these to temporary files, put the path into a special tag in Word, then do post-merge processing on the Word document to bring them in). I need to have 100% functionality coverage to be able to switch products. Has anyone done any similar kind of processing on the document post-merge?
I see in the docs that there are Automation capabilities offered (this is how our current MS Word implementation works), and there's also an API reference. Has anyone used the two of these and have any recommendations one way or the other for mail merge?
Any of these documents could also be chosen to be emailed instead of just generated for printing. I know there's no email client in OpenOffice - does it use the locally installed mail client to send? Is there a way to send without a locally installed mail client? It obviously won't help to remove MS Word but still need Outlook/etc.
Obviously I'm going to need to spend some time doing serious prototypes, I was hoping to get some confirmation ahead of time whether it's possible or definitely not possible to do any of these things.
Thanks!
Related
I was recently looking at security issues from online-polls and the problem with online-elections and how they can sometimes very easily be tampered with.
Now it sprung to my eye that a lot of websites that I visit and even local newspapers in my area use "pinpoll" for online-polls.
So I wanted to know how trustworthy and secure these polls are?
Tobias here, Founder and CEO of Pinpoll.
I agree with #GreyFairer, let's not discuss this on SO (unless you want to know why fingerprinting libraries shouldn't be used to identify individual clients or how Pinpoll is applying ws to broadcast live updates across the globe).
Just send me an e-mail to privacy#pinpoll.com and I'm happy to explain to you in more detail what we do (and cannot do) to protect polls agains bots and fake votes.
And let me make one thing clear: we're one of the most trustworthy providers in Europe, especially when it comes to complying with the EU's strict data protection laws.
One example: You won't find a single request to a server other than our own (located in the EU) in our interactive elements.
And one last thing: What might be annoying to you (which is fully accepted), is interesting and entertaining to others. So let's agree to disagree when it comes to online polls in news portals ;)
I work for a small healthcare company. We use a simple browser-based gui to create our healthcare claims. Recently our number of claims has grown. To make things easier, we'd like to be able to batch bill our claims now. We only do 1 type of procedure (this requirement will not change for the foreseeable future). I need to generate an 837I file for said procedure.
Any resources to learn about building an edi file as well as any walkthroughs about how I can do this for one procedure? I'm not looking for an already created solution. I'm also not looking to buy anything. I'm not looking to create a full x12 parsing tool.
We already have a solution for receiving acknowledgements and remittance advice. However, we don't have a simple way to batch upload unless we create 837 formatted files. This is only for one procedure so I'm looking to do this myself and learn as I go along.
I am looking for a good way to translate an excisting Sitecore installation (English language is available) to 4 other languages (Russian , Chinese, Portuguese etc.) A dedicated translation company will translate all texts we deliver to the specified languages, but I'm curious on how other companies set this up. I thought about just exporting all Sitecore items which have to be translated using the Database language Export function in Sitecore and having the translation company edit those files. By just replacing the language tags in the XML we should be able to import this file as the newly created other language, however I'm affraid that this XML structure will be totally useless for a translation company and that they will drown in the codes inside this XML. How can we efficiently do this? Is there any other way then just giving those translation people access to the Sitecore environment and having them edit the languages here? Any Shared Source Module to achieve this? I still have alot of questions, is there anyone with some experience in achieving this?
Your primary options are either the language export/import functionality (as you mention), or a workflow-based solution that integrates with your translation agency's Translation Management System (if they have one -- hopefully they do).
The former is better for the initial translation. Typically, your agency should be able to handle translation of content within XML files. A good one can. If you create all needed language versions beforehand and copy english content into them, it will make the files easier to work with as they'll have tags for the new languages in them already. I've seen the creation of these layers done with Revolver (http://www.codeflood.net/revolver/) but could also be done with custom code or workflow.
For ongoing maintenance of your translated content, you'll probably want to integrate through workflow. Clay Tablet Technologies (http://www.clay-tablet.com/) have a middleware component w/ Sitecore integration that can make this easier, depending on your translation agency. You can also do your own workflow-based integration, with workflow commands that allow your users to send content for translation. Then you'd need some sort of listener that pulls the translated content back in, and continues the workflow.
Hope this helps!
You could also check out Lionbrdige (http://en-us.lionbridge.com/sitecore-and-lionbridge-announce-partnership-to-help-companies-thrive-across-borders.htm) as a solution.
From my own experience our customers normally use the Sitecore import/export function as a first step and then use Lionbridge or Clay Tablet as a service.
One important thing to think about with translations is the ongoing work. The initial translation is rather simple, but the second and so on might be more troublesome. What if different changes has been made in different languages. If local changes were made in the content for sat the french version you couldn´t just send the English version (second translate then) since you would also have to accomodate for the regional changes in the content.
Having worked with literally dozens of Sitecore clients worldwide — and helped get content to and from all the largest, and many smaller translation firms —, I can attest to the ineffeciency of trying to do translation in situ, that is in Sitecore. I liken it to asking an electrician to come over and rewire your house, but as they reach for their toolbox from the truck you tell them, "Nope — you need to do it by hand".
The very best way to manage anything more than a page or two of content for translation is to export it seamlessly. Deliver it to the LSP in a proper format (XML or XLIFF) and, when possible, auto import it to their TMS. Once translated, the content should then flow seamlessly back into Sitecore.
You can code this yourself — but the pitfalls are non-trivial just on the Sitecore side. (If you want intuitive UI's, scalability, and all the features that meet the needs of translation). Let alone the challenges of connecting to the systems LSP's use. (For example, who here knows the relative merits/risks of using SLD's Nexus connector versus their CTA for connecting to TMS?)
As kindly mentioned above, there are commecially available solutions that meet all these needs and more. So if you've got even a modest amount of content — and want to send that to any translation provider of your choice — I'd be happy to discuss how we can help.
The main issue with translation isn't technical at all, the XML export is a simple enough format and all agencies should be able to deal with it with no porblems. as others have suggested, maintenance after the initial translation is slightly more problematic but they also point to tools to achieve this.
The main issue we've found with translation is actually linguistic: how to achieve consistency of phrasing and that matches the original but is sufficiently adjusted to local requirements. Translation companies usually have software to aid this - libraries of of the phrases they translate etc. - working with an exported XML file doesn't provide the context of seeing content in situ. A particular item may be translated correctly and the site consistently, but as each page may be built from multiple items there can easily be conflicts between content as presented.
That makes working with the Sitecore backend (maybe with field security settings to limit ) or in the page editor (possibly pre filling fields with English values) a viable idea.
I have a few apps written in ruby on rails and like any good developer I want high quality data about my site, such as measuring the number of new user accounts per day. I'm in the process of writing my own analytics tools, but I feel like i'm re-inventing the wheel. Are there any plugins or gems that could help me pull this data and display it quickly (graphs are a plus)?
If not, what types of features would you want in such a tool (i'll put a plugin on github if my code is good enough)?
Update:
To clarify a bit, i'm looking for business level-analytics. I already use google-analytics for my site traffic, and active-scaffold to get an admin page, right now my application has users which generate tickets and can create surveys, i'm interested in general trends in my application and by graphing new & existing user numbers versus new tickets and new surveys i can get the info that I want. I like to get general numbers, so i'm pulling all the users for the last 30 days, and then iterating over them to count how many i get per day...then i'm saving that to an array and plotting versus tickets, etc. Right i'm doing this using a home brew library which isn't very efficient, and before I put time/energy into making it better I want to make sure i'm not duplicating an existing set of tools. Or writing un-needed code.
If you post how you personally do this, and the answer is at least intelligible i'll be happy to give you a karma bump for your time.
You have three options that are all fairly easy to implement:
Google Analytics
Just include a small javascript snippet in the footer of your page and you get meaningful data about your hits/traffic. This is extremely easy, and will provide traffic information, but nothing about the internal workings about your applications.
New Relic: RPM
New Relic RPM is a service that comes in the form of a plugin. There is a free version, which gives you a (useful) taste of the features it can provide. This plugin will give you hardcore rails analytics. It will tell you what percentage of a request to a controller is spent in the model, in the view, etc. It will tell you how long each SQL call takes. This is great for optimizing your application.
ActiveScaffold
While not in and of itself an administrative tool, ActiveScaffold fits the bill quite nicely. Just create an admin namespace and create ActiveScaffolds for all your models/resources. This lets you see the data in an easy to use way, get simple counts of your rows (to see how many users you have, for example). This is a very easy setup, with little overhead.
Edit to reply to the OP Edit
There are no gems/plugins that I'm aware of that provide business-level analytics that you seem to want, as they are specialized associations between models that can't be predicted. The best bet, in my opinion, would be to roll your own solution that provides the data you want.
Probably the easiest way is to stick with good ol' Google Analytics. I'm pretty sure there are tools for more specific needs, but for general purpose analytics they are probably the best.
Preferably using a scripting language like Perl or Python, but if I have to go the compiled route then so be it.
Essentially what I want to do is make an addition to my company's mail merge system. Right now, the software we use has a rather limited selection of mail merge fields that it exports, but if we could somehow incorporate results of database queries into the letters, we could accomplish much more (and unfortunately Word doesn't provide enough flexibility with database queries to accomplish this). The system we use automatically sends its letters to the default printer (which is a peer-to-peer printer, no print server). I would like to create a program that could act as a middleman for this. Ideally, it would detect when a print job is fired, capture the sent document, open it, insert extra data from its own queries, then send the new version to the printer.
I have two questions
Is this even possible, if so, where do I start?Is this feasible for one person to complete in a reasonable time frame? Keep in mind I'm not a programmer by trade, I'm the sysadmin type of person =P
Honestly this is an incredibly hard road to go down. Maybe try creating a virtual printer that dealt with the data and forwarded it onto the real printer. Will see if I can find anything for you.
If you are using Word, I think you would find it vastly easier to implement your enhanced mail merge system in Visual Basic. I suspect it would be vastly, vastly harder to intercept the jobs at that level. If you prefer Perl or Python to VB, you could even write .py/.pl scripts to run the queries and generate .vbs scripts. You could also use OpenOffice, which can be scripted with Python.