Have you ever thought of sending several mails or printed letters to a select few people in your database using the fields from the records in the dataset as variables? The solution is here at last.
About two years ago, a novel solution to a problem that had eluded many emerged in Boachsoft Bizcom 2015. As Boachsoft’s founder and CEO I have stated time and time again the company’s drive towards global excellence. Developing Boachsoft Bizcom 2017, just like all our other products, is in line with Boachsoft’s mission.
The first version was very simple. The main window, separated into two panes, allowed one to compose a letter or a report. The pane on the left, when facing the screen, had the necessary fields to be used as variables in the letter. All you had to do was type, format the text using the right font and insert the fields where necessary. With a simple click of a button you could filter the dataset to only the records you wanted and print. The outcome you would have is many letters or reports with the fields replaced by the appropriate data. If your variable was field representing lastname you could have for example Boakye-Yiadom, Smith, Baker, Suarez, Diaz, Von Mises, Van de Vaart, Suzimoto, Singh, Mendeleyev and Huang in the first, second … tenth letter respectively. However, the 2015 version lacked the email functionality.
In 2016 Boachsoft did not release the Boachsoft Bizcom 2016 as promised. However, what we have is a newer and better Boachsoft Bizcom 2017 released this month.
What’s new in the 2017 version? The 2017 version has more. What people like best about the 2017 version is the email feature. After entering the correct smtp settings you could email your mails defined by template which includes fields as variables to several customers. You only have to select a recipient address field from the list of fields on the left pane as well as fields to be used for firstname and lastname. The software would automatically retrieve the email addresses from records in the database and send the template with the variables replaced by the appropriate data to each recipient.
In addition to this, formating the template is much, much better in the 2017 version. The underlying html which defines the template is accessible and can be manipulated. Just click the tab on the top of the right window pane which says “Underlying html”. Changing the foreground and background colors can be done easily by clicking buttons on the formating bar.
The software solves the problem defined in the first paragraph. I am sure some are probably thinking: most products have built in reports some of which can be customized so why Boachsoft Bizcom 2017. While it is true that most products come with predesigned reports and features which allow their customization they are not flexible or extensible to the extent desired. We would discuss this within this text. Boachsoft Bizcom 2017 works with all odbc compliant databases. What this means is that no matter the product you have, no matter the purpose of the product, so far as you have odbc access to the database you can create your own reports, print letters to your customers and send emails to the customers in your database.
If you run a restaurant, hotel, a rental shop, or a repair shop for example and you want to send an email to a limited number of customers informing them of their account balance or just to wish them happy birthday – feliz cumpleaños -this can be done regardless of the product you currently use. This is clearly impossible with most products on the market. Start Boachsoft Bizcom 2017 from your desktop. Connect to the appropriate database. Type your letter using the fields on your left pane as variables. Click send, filter your data to only records needed, choose the appropriate field to be used as the destination email address and it would be sent to all the customers. Isn’t that amazing?
In what I would call scenario two, the manager of a company wants to print letters to a number of customers. The product he has, has a number of predefined reports. There is no way for him to create and print letters from the software. If you are in this manager’s shoes start your copy of Boachsoft Bizcom 2017, connect to the database type your letter and insert fields from the left pane insert the required fields into the right places in the template. When you click send you would be asked to define an appropriate filter criteria after that the letters would be printed. What a time saver?
In scenario three, similar to scenario two, you want to print the details of all products sold on a particular day but there is simply no report to do that. Connect to the appropriate database, insert the right fields, filter and print. Currently, the software only allows you to use fields from one table at a time. If you have to use fields from more than one table you could ask your database administrator to join the tables into a single table with data and fields from the two tables.
Although there were earlier typewriters, the first to be commercially successful was invented in 1868 by Americans Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soule in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Michael Shrayer developed the first word processor in 1976 called Electric Pencil. However, the first commercially successful word processor was Wordstar programmed by John Robbins Barnaby in 1979.
Word processors and email clients have been around for sometime but is there any word processor or email client that has an easy solution to the problem posed in the first paragraph. In all honesty the answer is a big no. Some do have macros and other scripting languages but none solves the problem so easily and effectively as Boachsoft Bizcom 2017.
The next version, Boachsoft Bizcom 2018, would be released in the latter part 2018. It would have a feature that allows you to join multiple tables. This is just a tip of the iceberg!
Boachsoft also makes an excellent video rental software as well as repair shop management software.
Send Emails and print letters for records in any database in Boachsoft Bizcom 2017
Credit Yaw Boakye-Yiadom. Yaw Boakye-Yiadom is the Founder and CEO of Boachsoft
