Personalizing Content

Variable-data printing is a form of digital printing in which elements such as text and graphics may be changed using information from a database or data file. It prints unique documents with customized messages for each customer. This is exactly what you can do with Connect: using variable data you can personalize your company's communications.

Before you can start personalizing the content of a template, you must open a data file or database; see: Loading data.

The most common ways to personalize templates are listed below.

Variable data

Variable data are data from a database or data file that are used to personalize documents for each customer. Variable data fields can be inserted in the text directly. For example, if a person's last name can be found in your data, the field that holds the last name can be used in the text of a letter or email. Scripts in PrintShop Mail Connect Designer are the basis of Variable Data Printing.

The easiest, quickest and most direct way to add customer data to content is via drag and drop; see Variable Data.

The drag-and-drop method results in a Text Script. Another way to create a Text Script is to use the Text Script Wizard. Often it is better to use the Text Script Wizard than the drag-and-drop method.
The Text Script Wizard gives you more control over the way data is displayed. It can insert one or more data fields, each with an optional prefix and suffix. For blocks of data, such as addresses, the Text Script Wizard definitely is the better choice. See Using the Text Script Wizard.

Conditional content

In a template you may want to reveal content - text or images - to one group of recipients, but hide it from others. You can use a Conditional Script Wizard to achieve this, if you have a data field in your data on the basis of which a condition can be set. See Showing content conditionally.

Dynamic images

Dynamic Images are dynamic in the sense that they are replaced by another image when a data field contains a certain value. Think of a signature image being swapped based on the sender's name, for example. You can use the Dynamic Image Script Wizard to make this happen; see Dynamic Images.

Snippets

Snippets are pieces of content that can be re-used within the same template, in all contexts and sections. Snippets can contain any contents that a section can have, such as text, images, variable data, dynamic tables, etc. They are often very useful to personalize content, especially in combination with variable data and scripts. See Snippets and Loading a snippet via a script.

Scripts

Self-made scripts

As soon as you want to do more than what can be done with the available (Text, Conditional) Script Wizards, self-made scripts are the solution. You could, for example, combine data of two or more data fields in a condition for conditional text. Or you could load a part of a snippet depending on the value of a data field. With a self-made script you can achieve anything that can be done by any of the Script Wizards, and much more. For an introduction on this, see Write your own scripts.

Control Scripts

Control Scripts are scripts that affect the output of a template per record as a whole, instead of parts of the content. They are executed before the data is merged and can be used to control how different sections of the context are handled when the output is generated.

With a control script you can, among other things:

• Conditionally omit sections from print output
• Dynamically set the background image of a section
• Make the page numbering continue over all print sections
• Select one print section as PDF attachment if the output is to be emailed, and another print section if the output is to be printed.

You need some knowledge of JavaScript to edit Control Scripts, just as for any other self-made scripts, because there is no Control Script Wizard; see Write your own scripts.

See Control Scripts.