Attachment & Email - Can't be done,experts is it true?

hcl-bot · February 28, 2008, 2:32pm

What the user is asking for is from with a database - they want to be able to select a document and then click on a button and it put this document in the body of the email to send.

Now, I know you can’t do attachments right? It would need to be a third party tool. This would be the ultimate. So since this can’t be done, I had them use the built in “Forward” feature and it worked great. Problem though, when you forward with more than one - the pages all run together and there is no way to do a line break.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get this users what they need?

thank you!

Thx! LS

hcl-bot · February 28, 2008, 2:44pm

Subject: Attachment & Email - Can’t be done,experts is it true?

What the user is asking for is from with a database - they want to be able to select a document and then click on a button and it put this document in the body of the email to send.

Now, I know you can’t do attachments right? It would need to be a third party tool. This would be the ultimate. So since this can’t be done, I had them use the built in “Forward” feature and it worked great. Problem though, when you forward with more than one - the pages all run together and there is no way to do a line break.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get this users what they need?

I’m confused by the first line of your second paragraph? “…I know you can’t do attachment…” What can’t be done?

Are you saying if you go into the database select multiple documents, click on this “button” you want for each document an e-mail be created with the contents of the document to be put into the body of the e-mail. The e-mail then displayed on the screen so the person can fill in the To, CC, BCC, Subject and possibly modify the body. Then they click save and the NEXT document does the samething?

If so. I think this would be possible, (OK I’m concern as Stan is more of an expert than I) with possibly a problem with “stopping” while the user gives their input.

The button would need to open the users mail database.

Loop through the document collection

 create a new backend memo

 get the body field in the memo.

 Render the document into the memo body.

 Save the memo (as draft) 

open the memo in edit mode in mail

 User fill in what they want ... Click on Send

get next document

end loop

If the user wanted to enter the samething each time, you could give them a single dialog box to enter the information they want ONCE and then update each memo and send them automatically.

Of course I just made a whole bunch of assumptions, so maybe that’s not what you want.

The forwarding “merge” is wonderful when you want to send someone a bunch of documents and normally don’t want to send them a bunch of documents.

hcl-bot · February 28, 2008, 3:11pm

Subject: RE: Attachment & Email - Can’t be done,experts is it true?

Expert? No – I’m a hack. AND I think I made an invalid assumption or two as well, having re-read Lexi’s post. (There’s no sense looking for a simple solution if a more complicated one is available, what?)

hcl-bot · March 4, 2008, 6:21am

Subject: Sorry for the delay - I do have a another question though based on suggestion

I did want them to use the forward button - but they said that when the customer received the email, it did not print correctly. So the only alternative would be, have the user to select each document they want to attach and click a button. SO basically, in utopia - this is what I need to happen:

User selects 3 documents.

Clicks Attach to email button at the top of page

Email of users opens and in body you see the 3 attachments and the cursor is blinking in the TO: field so the user can address.

So, while it sounds simple, I hear, you can’t do that! Well, they are partly right, I have no idea how to do it - but in Notes, I never like to hear you can’t - so…can i?? :o)

Thank you!

Lexi

hcl-bot · February 28, 2008, 2:51pm

Subject: Attachment & Email - Can’t be done,experts is it true?

“Can’t be done” is harsh. It’s certainly doable with DXL (and with the C API, and there’s probably an easy way to do it with the Midas Rich Text LSX). I’ve created something very similar in the past using DXL. But it’ll cost 'em – either in your development time or in the cost of a third-party tool.

hcl-bot · March 4, 2008, 8:16am

Subject: RE: Attachment & Email - Can’t be done,experts is it true?

I’d agree with this. It is likely to cost something, in time or money for tool. For example, our Midas Rich Text LSX, which Stan mentioned, can generate the mail as a .eml file attachment which works well if you are going to Outlook, or as a .mht file attachment, which works well if you use Internet Explorer, or as a .doc file, which works well if you use Microsoft Word, or as a .html file, which works well if you have a web browser. It would be easy to use, and render well, but it would cost something to buy. If you chose to build your own solution, you could pick one of these (or some other) formats and export to DXL and translate the DXL to that format, but be aware that rich text is just that, rich, so it is fairly easy to do something, but fairly hard to do everything, so the cost can be an on-going issue, rather than a one time issue. Either way, there will be a cost.