Email Data Template 6.13

Introduction

EmailData Template for Clarion 5~5.5~6.3 ABC/Legacy. Template that gives you full control over email subject, body, and attachments. Can be used for composing complex emails similar to Clarion reports. No email settings are required from end-users.

The picture on the right side gives some ideas how template works, but you'd betted  download 'Try Before Buy' version of template. Please do not try to move cursor on top of that image! Have a quick look at few emails.
EmailData Template allows you to populate Address, Subject, Body, and Attachments
of email right from your Clarion fields. And you should use for that just plane Clarion
syntax. No exclamation marks in front of variables, whatsoever.
It makes it very intuitive and powerful when it comes to composing report-like emails.
Like our previous EmailReport template this one is designed to work in conjunction with Outlook
Express which these days is a part of Windows OS. So everybody who is using Windows has it.
And what even more important - majority of people knows how to use it, how to
insert picture, how to add new attachment etc. because they use this program every day
and they trust it. So the question is: why take it from them? Let your customers use their
favourite program for sending Clarion data as well! So everyone of them can say: "Yes,
I did send this booking confirmation, here it is in my Sent Items folder!".
Users still can employ any emailing program they like for their everyday emailing,
but for sending Clarion reports EmailData template will automatically invoke Outlook Express.
And if they are really kin on having those sent emails in another email program, they can
from time to time import them from Outlook Express.
And last, but not least - now you can send any audio files supported by HTML
(*.wav, *.mid, *.ram, *.ra, *.aif, *.au) and play them as many times as you wish
or forever.
 
Advantages of using template:
  • It's not a secret, that main balk of a Clarion job  involves customizing reports.
    Here the story is absolutely the same - once you give this email "report" to customers,
    you always will have somebody who is ready to pay for it's modification...
  • Main body of your customers will use their favourite email program for sending emails,
    so they should not get used to a new emailing program or some sort of Clarion window
    simulating New message window of emailing program
  • As with any other emailer, Outlook Express will put sent reports into Sent Items folder so
    user will automatically have logo of all sent reports in the form they are used to.
  • To make email more attractive you can define any background colour you like
  • As to technical side, EmailData as all our templates is a white box template
    (all code is available, no extra DLLs to ship)
  • Compatible with Clarion 5, Clarion 5.5, and Clarion 6 ABC/Legacy
  • It does not need or do any changes to either Clarion native
    or 3d party templates. Like all other templates of ours!

  • Automatic embedding all local images (they are sent with email)

  • Support for CC and BCC email addressing

  • Network friendliness - can be run by many network users simultaneously

New features in version 6.13

  • Option to define email priorities (High, Low, Normal)

  • Option to call emailing not only from button, but also
    from any embed point with new embed template

  • new internal help

  • New extension to email Clarion reports in PDF both with 
    and without report preview (c6 only)
  • New extension to email wPDFControl PDF by KlariSoft

 
Installation
 
Run the installation wizard. It will guide you through a few simple steps. That is it.
IMPORTANT: If you are using Clarion 5 or 5.5, after selecting Clarion5 or C55 directory wizard
will offer you to install it into C:\Clarion5\Clarion6 or C:\C55\Clarion6 directory respectively. 
So do not forget to get rid of last \Clarion6. But even if you do - it is not a problem.
Just uninstall template and run installation once again.
To start using template you have to manually register it.
Here is instruction: Open Clarion (no application must be open). 
Go to menu Setup -> Template Registry ->Register. Select new template
emaildata.tpl and then hit Open button
 View animated reminder on how to do that - Registering Template
(built with our JAVA Animated Help Builder).

Using Template

 
Using the EmailData template is pretty intuitive and self-explanatory.
First of all you have to install global EmailData extension template into your
application Global area (no matter DLL it is or EXE).
Optionally you can define email background colour here one for all procedures.
Later you can override it for any button you like (see picture below).
These are all settings you have to define in local extension.
Pay special attention to EmailTo. You can either hardcode them or build
as a combination of your fields. Just follow that simple specification below and
standard Clarion syntax. For your convenience we put the Example textbox
(not used by template) with few standard Email address prototypes. So you can copy
and paste any of examples and just replace our field names with yours.
It goes without saying that CC and BCC prompts follow the same rule as
does EmailTo.
Both EmailTo and Subject fields should be valid Clarion strings. Use lookup
buttons to find and append any filed from your Application like you do for formulas.
TIP: If you fetch fields do not forget to hit Tab key to accept whole string before
clicking OK button or Clarion can loose latest appended stuff :-(
For attachments you can use variables, hard-coded strings or build them like we did
on the second Tab. Building message body even easier - just compose each line of
the body line by line following standard Clarion string syntax (see the picture
and our 2 example application (ABC/Legacy) for further reference).
We installed this example into your /Clarion*/Examples/eData
directory so for various settings you can investigate the source.
You should not worry about 2 new featured - image embedding and network
friendliness. They work automatically. When embedding images template
follows that simple logic - if you put local image into email HTML it means
you want it to be embedded. Otherwise it will not be available for viewing
by email recipients anyway and they'll see just empty rectangles instead.
What of course is the last thing you want to happen to your customers!
Email SV Report PDF Extension
is a new extension specially designed to dramatically simplify
exploiting new C6 feature - Output report into PDF.
To enable emailing of those PDFs, you have to first insert global EmailData 
extension in the Global area and then insert another global extension - 
Email SV Report PDF Global.
You will see new Tab General in all application reports. Template generates 
global variable (GLED:Mode) associated with the only prompt on this Tab.
It is the main switch to enable/disable PDF emailing.
You can use either numbers or pre-defined equates. We put them on the last tab
so you can copy and paste them into your code from there:

0 - GLEQ:Email            !Email PDF
1 - GLEQ:Print             !Print as ordinary report
It works very much the same way as does Clarion Global request. So if you say:
GLED:Mode = GLEQ:Email; YourReport() !report will be emailed;
GLED:Mode = 0; YourReport() !report will be emailed.
If you want to disable emailing, you need to prime this variable to 1:
GLED:Mode = GLEQ:Print; YourReport() or GLED:Mode = 1; YourReport() -
report will be printed (emailing is disabled).
All other Tabs are absolutely the same as in button and embed templates.
So you should use them the same way.
You can find an example in this directory: / Clarion*/Examples/eData/c6
All other email prompts are absolutely the same as when you use
template to compose ordinary emails.
As to Report to PDF Clarion template itself, there is only one restriction.
You can use EmailData in conjunction with Output Name Type Variable or
Fixed, but not Runtime.
You can have a quick look at email generated by this extension.
Email wPDFControl PDF Extension
is another extension specially designed to allow you to email reports in PDF
created with wPDFControl PDF by KlariSoft (not included!). 
To enable this feature you have to first insert global EmailData extension
in the Global area and then insert procedure extension - 
Email wPDFControl PDF by KlariSoft in all reports to be emailed.
You will see new Tab General. Template generates global variable
(GLED:Mode) associated with the only prompt on this Tab.
It is the main switch to enable/disable PDF emailing.
You can use either numbers or pre-defined equates. We put them on the last tab
so you can copy and paste them into your code from there:

0 - GLEQ:Email            !Email PDF
1 - GLEQ:Print             !Print as ordinary report
It works very much the same way as does Clarion Global request. So if you say:
GLED:Mode = GLEQ:Email; YourReport() !report will be emailed;
GLED:Mode = 0; YourReport() !report will be emailed.
If you want to disable emailing, you need to prime this variable to 1:
GLED:Mode = GLEQ:Print; YourReport() or GLED:Mode = 1; YourReport() -
report will be printed (emailing is disabled).
All other Tabs are absolutely the same as in button and embed templates.
So you should use them the same way.
You can find an example in this directory: / Clarion*/Examples/eData/wPDFControl
On details of wPDFControl usage please visit KlariSoft site: www.klarisoft.com
or just download free fully functional demo of wPDFControl.
Move cursor on top of a Tab to open!
 
Advanced usage
 
Though word "advanced" sounds a little bit scary, the only thing you have to know to be
on top of "advanced" design - how to build Clarion queue.
Both attachments and email body lines are stored in 2 global queues (GL:AttachmentQue
and GL:BodyQue correspondingly). So for all emails you can use just template settings
that will populate those queues for you. But if you do not want to bother - you
can directly populate those queues from the only embed point we created for you -
EmailData After filling queues - which you can find among button embeds. Just
remember, that each queue node represents one line in the body of a message.
You can use HTML tags as well. (Tag usually starts with something
like <font> and ends with </font>. It can be <img> and </img> etc.)
If you like doing things in hard way you can consult HTML
and MIME documentation. For all other people here is a simple tip.
Use your Outlook Express for visual design. Just create new
message with it, insert images, text with any font you like etc. and then
Save it As a EML file. Done! Now you can open this file with any text editor
(say Notepad) and copy and paste HTML tags one by one. Just remember
that each tag should occupy one line in the body queue.
This restriction comes from the way we build message body, not from HTML syntax.
To make life easier we put new-line tag after each line of HTML
So if you try to split a tag on more than one line - this tag will get broken
by the new-line tag inserted by template.
For your convenience we are showing here few most common tags. You can copy
and paste them directly into you template settings. (Do not forget change our
image/text with yours :-)

Web Image (published on the net)

Local Image (from user hard-drive)

YOUR TEXT

Any words (from top of your head)
 
And the last thing to bear in mind - if you want to show web images remember -
they should be published somewhere on the Net and referenced from there.
You can even use your web space which everybody has from internet-provider.
Usually something horrible like http://fastnet.com.au/~alexanderg. Not to worry -
nobody will see that web address anyway! We put all possible scenarios into
example shipped with template (Clarion5, C55 or Clarion6)\Examples\eData), so you
can borrow code from there. Just have a look, it is not rocket science at all!
Users Tips (you are welcome to send your tips in this area!)
1. Latest WinXP issue. If you see email preview without Send button
    it means you should apply MS patch for OE. The simplest way to
    do it is to use Adobe version of it: adobeforums.com. To avoid
    registration you can log in as guest.
    Alternatively you can download original MS patch here: microsoft.com
    but it is much harder to use it.

Copyright (C) 2002 Vivid Help Systems Pty Ltd