Print or Email a Class Invitation Letter
Note: The
instructions here explain how to print/email a letter inviting workers
to a single class. To create a letter notifying workers of multiple class
and/or election assignments, see
Send a Letter Covering Multiple Assignments.
This topic explains how to prepare a letter inviting workers to attend
a training class. The letter can be printed out for mailing and it can
be emailed to workers with a verified
email address. For emailed letters, the text of the Word document
is included in the body of the email.
The instructions here assume that you have set up the class
and have assigned
students to it. We also assume you understand how to use the mail-merge
processing Microsoft Word, should any changes to your county's standard
class-invitation letter be required.
The mail merge document used by this feature is specified in the document
specification named PW Class Invitation.
To find this document, go to PRINTING
> Document Maintenance > EW Class Invitation > Select Document.
This document specification is set up by VR Systems and should look something
like the screenshot here. The fields circled in red can be modified, but
all other fields on the dialog should remain as they are.
Before the run, we suggest you open the mail merge document in Word
and verify it has your county's letterhead and all the mail merge fields
you want to use. For example, you might want to add a response form or
page that the worker mails in or brings to class. The class-invitation
letter uses the standard Voter Focus mail merge data file—MrgVoters.txt—so if you want to add mail merge
fields, obtain them from this data file. (MrgVoters.txt is in the folder
\VR6SharedBinaries.)The date on the letter will automatically be set to
today's date.
Note: Letters
cannot be sent after the date of the class.
If the letter is not on your system and you don't want to create it
from scratch, contact VR Systems and we will send you the
standard version of clsinvite.doc, which you can customize for your
county.
Print and/or email class-invitation letters for
students assigned to a class:
- Go to ELECTION WORKERS > Train Workers to
open the School
Class Maintenance dialog.
- In the list of classes, highlight the
class you want to invite workers to attend. The class information
appears below the list of classes, in the fields of the Class
Detail box.
- Click Letters.
- On
the Delivery Selection
dialog,indicate how you want the letters delivered—by mail and/or
email—and click Continue.
You'll see the following message:
- To send the letter to all students assigned
to the class, click Yes. If
you've already sent this letter to some students and now you just
want to send it to students who were assigned to the class after the
first letter went out, click No.
Either way, you'll see the following message:
- Choose the way you want the letters sorted—by worker last name (No)
or their normal work position (Yes).
You'll then see a message indicating how many workers were found and
the number to go out by email and mail (paper):
- If you are printing letters in this run,
make a note of the number for Paper
output count and click OK.
- Email
deliveries. If you chose to send emails and workers with verified
email addresses were found, the following message shows how
many emails were sent and how many failed:
- Click OK
to close the message.
The Email Status Report opens, showing the
workers to whom the class-invitation letter was emailed (Status
will be Queued) and any whose
email failed to go out (Status
will be Failed). An entry on the
Comms tab in voter records is
made for the workers whose email went out. (The entry will be: Email:
Communication from the <county>
<state> Supervisor of Elections office.) If any emails failed to queue, we suggest
you print or export the report, close it, and continue with the run. Then
determine why the emails failed and rerun the letters.
- USPS
deliveries. If you chose to send printed letters, you see the
Windows Print dialog. Select
a printer for the letters and click OK.
- If the document layout for the letter
has Print Address Labels selected,
a Crystal Report containing the label information in 3-up format displays. To print the labels, click the
icon on the Crystal Reports toolbar.
- When you see the Confirm
Print dialog, verify that the number of letters you noted in
step 7 matches the number of letters printed and that all letters
printed properly.
- If there are no problems, click OK
to update each worker's record to show that a letter and/or email was
sent. Each worker's record is updated to indicate that the correspondence was
generated. This information appears in the following places in Voter Focus:
- In the Date
Last Contacted field on the General
tab of the worker's Worker Maintenance
dialog.
- As an entry on the
Audit and Notes tabs of the Worker Maintenance
dialog.
- If you selected
Record sending of this document in
Voter Communications at the time you set up the document specification
in Document Maintenance, you will see two entries in the worker's
voter registration record. First, an entry on the Comms
tab showing the Communication Type. And second, on the Audit
tab, an entry showing an outgoing communication.
Note: For
email recipients, the entry on the Comms
tab is made when you clicked OK
in step 7, above.
It there are problems with printing the letters,
click Cancel to abort the
run. Worker records will not be updated and you can rerun the
job after fixing the problem.
