Mail Mania: Creating a Simple Mail Merge with NetClassroom Usernames and Passwords

Katie Infinger — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Now that you've created your NetClassroom parent videos and customized our parent tutorials to your school's specifications, you probably want to send out a letter including this information and student and parent NetClassroom logins.

To create a custom merge letter, first create the query of students or parents you want to mail, and then include the query in an export. Select Blackbaud Simple Mail Merge as the export format. Let us take a moment to explain the naming convention: Blackbaud because the letter is created, edited, and saved within your Blackbaud software, Simple because it's easy, and Mail Merge because that's what you're doing!

After you've added your query on the Filters tab, select the Output tab and add any other fields, such as student name, address, grade level. If you are creating the letter from a student export and want to include the student's NetClassroom login information, select Online ID and Online Password from the Student grouping. To include parent login information in the same letter, select Online User ID and Online Password from the Relationship section. Oh, don't forget to select the specific parental relationships, otherwise you might accidentally export Endora's login information instead of Samantha's. If you're using an individual export, then you'll reverse those instructions, i.e. filter on the student relationships, such as son or daughter.

Your fields are selected, and now it's time for the merge letter! Click the Edit Word Merge and you'll get a blank Word document. For the folks using Office 2007, select the Add-Ins tab. For those playing at home on version 2003 or lower, the insert fields drop-downs will be on your screen.

To insert a merge field, place your cursor where you want the merge field, and then click Insert Education Edge field, followed by your field selection. Continue this until you've selected all your merge fields, and then click Save and Return to EE7 to Merge, which saves your merge document to the database. You won't be able to access this document through Word; the only way you can edit this document is to open the export and click Edit Merge Document. To generate your documents, click Merge Now on your export screen.

Next time we'll build off the simple mail merge and look at conditional mail merges.

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Favorite Tools

Sean Long — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:11:00 GMT

Three parts of the software are invaluable to me: Query, Export, and Reports.

Query - I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you master queries, you will master the system. There's a great Query Guide you can use to help learn about queries, but here's the short version: A query is used to group records, such as people, charges, credits, courses, classes, applicants, rooms, advance deposits, payments, deposits, or a combination! You can group records by any field you can find on a record (and some fields you won't find easily, like Record Added On date). You can use saved queries in reports, global changes, report cards/transcripts, and in your default searches.
Export - Many of you know how to use export, I'm sure. But do you know that you can perform mail merges directly from Education Edge? And did you know you can export any field, and control for duplication with far more accuracy by using a query to filter records in export? Do you need a list of every student with a second cousin who has missed more than 3 days, their name, shoe size, and nationality? Create a query to find those students, and use it in export to pull that information (you'd have to track Shoe Size as an attribute, though).
Reports - There are over 50 reports in Registrar's Office and 35 in Student Billing. Each report fulfills a specific need. Do you need a list of all the immunizations your 5^th graders have received? Run the Medical Report. Do you need a tally of how many D's and F's Mr. Triangle (the math teacher) gave compared to Mr. Square, who teaches the same course? Run the Grade Analysis Report. What about when you need a list of the Products and Billing Items you're using this year, because you can't remember what 0010 means? Print out a Product and Billing Item List. If you see a report that you aren't familiar with, open it and press F1 to pull up the help file that describes the report!

That was a really high-level review of my three favorite and useful parts of The Education Edge. Have any questions about these? Check out Knowledgebase, the user guides, or post a comment below!

The Book Bag : Export

Mail Mania: Creating a Simple Mail Merge with NetClassroom Usernames and Passwords

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Favorite Tools