in the upper right corner of the toolbar.The Stardust Portal provides an efficient method to generate ad-hoc correspondence letters from predefined templates. Auto-replacement of the fields (i.e., tokens) in correspondence documents is supported to simplify and speed the creation of standard correspondence, such as Claim Rejection and Claim Approval letters. Functionality for adding attachments and creating Carbon Copies of correspondence is also supported.
Correspondence documents may be printed, send by fax, or e-mailed (or any delivery combination) directly from the portal. Generated correspondence is stored in the document repository and a reference is added to the associated Process Instance to provide a read-only record of the delivered correspondence.
The nature and availability of the correspondence building blocks are discussed in this chapter.
You can start a new correspondence from the Activities Execution View in the Workflow Execution Perspective in case the active process has enabled process attachments. Please refer to the section Process Attachments in the chapter Working with Process Definitions of the Stardust Online Documentation - Modeling Guide Process Attachments in the chapter Working with Process Definitions of the Modeling Guide for information on how to enable process attachments.
Click the Add Correspondence icon
in the upper right corner of the toolbar.
Figure: Create a new Correspondence.
A new Correspondence tab opens, where you can edit correspondence content.
In the Process Documents section of the Process Details, select Send File from the file context menu to open a new Correspondence with the selected file added to the Attachments list.
Figure: File Context Menu - Send File
Please refer to the section Templates for detailed information on using templates.
Correspondence relating to the current context may be composed and sent from the Correspondence view. Activities are recorded in the Process History of the current context and a read-only archive of each message is stored as a Process Attachment. This provides a consistent location for viewing communications regarding the Process and, in addition, it provides an audit trail for the outbound email communications.
When starting a new correspondence, the Correspondence view opens with a form containing the controls necessary to compose, address, and send the correspondence as shown below.
Figure: Correspondence View
The sender and recipient addresses must be specified for Correspondences that are send via e-mail or fax. Correspondences are addressed in a familiar, e-mail client-style interface. The From is populated from the current user's e-mail address as defined in the Stardust Administration Portal. The To:, Cc, and Bcc: addresses may be selected from an address picker if any e-mail addresses are exposed in the process data.
Specify the sender's address in the From: field.
Note: The From address is auto-populated from the current user's e-mail address as defined for the user in Stardust Administration Perspective. This can be overwritten if desired.
Figure: Correspondence - Address Fields
If sending via e-mail, specify the recipients by typing their e-mail addresses directly into the To: field, or click the To: field a select addresses from the address picker. The address picker is populated with e-mail addresses found in the process data. To pick the recipient email address(es) from the Address Picker, click the email Id/Ids. The selected email id's will appear in the 'To:' field of the Address Picker. Click an e-mail address to add it to the To: field of the Address Picker. After an address has been added, you can click it to remove that email id from the To: field. When you finished selecting the e-mail addresses, click the Done button to close the address picker.
Figure: Send Email/Fax - Address Picker
If desired, click the Add Cc (Carbon Copy) and Add Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) buttons to specify additional recipients. Specify the recipients by typing directly into the Cc: or Bcc: field, or select the recipient addresses from the address picker.
Outbound fax functionality is supported by sending faxes to the SMTP gateway of supported third-party fax applications. Parameters for faxes, such as phone number of recipient are included in the fax address and sent to the fax application's SMTP gateway, which formats the faxes and sends them to recipients.
To send the correspondence via fax, click Add Fax. A new Fax entry field opens, where you have to specify the fax information.
Clicking on the Fax option opens a dialog to choose from a provided contact list. To pick the fax contact from the fax picker, click the contact. The selected contact will appear in the Fax: field. When you finished selecting the fax contacts, click the Done button to close the fax picker.
Note: The fax must be addressed in the format required by the third-party fax software.
Enter a subject text in the Subject, which is required.
The subject will be used in the naming of the email archive that is saved with the current context when the email is sent.
Arbitrary documents from the Documents panel can be dragged and dropped onto the Attachments area where they are displayed. Attachments are appended to the main correspondence letter so that the generated letter and any attachments are stored as a single file when saved. Attachments will be printed, send by fax, or e-mailed along with the main correspondence letter.
To open the Select Attachment dialog click the Add Attachment option.
Figure: Add Attachments Option
This dialog displays a document tree containing My Documents, Shared Documents, and Process Documents. In the dialog you can browse the tree and select documents to add them as correspondence attachments to the correspondence currently edited or created. Clicking one of the documents immediately adds it to the Correspondence Attachments area of the Correspondence View. To close the dialog click the Close button or the "x" icon.
Figure: Select Attachment Dialog
The Upload Attachments link launches the File Upload dialog, where you can upload a document that should be added as correspondence attachments to the correspondence currently edited or created. Please refer to section Uploading Documents of chapter Document Operations for detailed information on uploading files.
Figure: Upload Attachments Option
To remove an attachment from the Attachments list, click the x icon beside the its file name.
Figure: Attachments
The message content is composed in the HTML/rich text Message Content Editor, starting either from a blank canvas or from a predefined template. The message content may contain text, images, bar codes, tokens (tags), and other HTML elements. Style sheets may be leveraged to further enhance templates and create more elaborate business letters. Alternatively, pre-defined files or templates may be appended to the current content when sending an email or fax to speed the creation of standard messages.
Compose the message content by dragging a template (i.e., file) from the Documents panel onto the Content box or type the message content information directly in the Message Content Editor.
Tip: Using pre-configured templates is strongly recommended. Templates can contain tokens that are automatically replaced with information pulled from meta-data, which can greatly reduce the amount of time required to construct correspondence.
If desired, modify and format the message content using the formatting toolbars.
Operators may edit the document using the controls provided with the editor.
Figure: Message Content Editor
Correspondence templates are HTML documents that contain the content or body of the correspondence. They may contain text, images, bar codes, tokens (tags), and other HTML elements. Style sheets may be leveraged to further enhance templates and create more elaborate business letters. Templates are stored in the document repository and are accessible from the My Documents view in the Workflow Execution Perspective. Participants select a template from the template folder structure and move it to the correspondence canvas to quickly create correspondence that may be printed, e-mailed, or send by fax.
Tip: Using pre-configured templates is strongly recommended. Templates can contain tokens that are automatically replaced with information pulled from meta-data, which can greatly reduce the amount of time required to construct correspondence.
Templates can be uploaded to correspondence-templates folders by right-clicking the folder and selecting Upload File.
Figure: Upload a Correspondence Template
The File Upload dialog opens, where you can browse to the desired template. For detailed information on this dialog, refer to section Uploading Documents of chapter Document Operations.
Note that only HTML files are supported to be uploaded as correspondence templates. In case you try to upload a file format not supported, an error message opens to indicate that.
Figure: Unsupported File Type Message
Stardust provides example correspondence templates, which you can download here:
correspondence-templates.zip from the Examples - Correspondence Templates section of the Stardust Online Documentation correspondence-templates.zip
Click the Use Templates option to select templates directly from a list of documents.
Figure: Use Template Option
A Select Templates/Paragraphs dialog opens with available documents and template files. Clicking on a document directly adds the content to the content editor. You can choose if the content should be added at the top or at the bottom of your editor by using the Insert at Top and Insert at Bottom radio buttons accordingly.
Figure: Select Templates Dialog
Now edit the added template text to adjust to your correspondence.
Figure: Editor containing Predefined Templates.
Correspondence templates may leverage process data or document meta-data from the model for data substitution. IN data mappings are created for each data element to be used as a data source in correspondence tags, and then the IN data mapping ID is specified as the data source for correspondence tags. These tags are substituted with the corresponding data value immediately when the template is placed into the correspondence canvas.
Tags are defined in templates using the following convention:
#{in_data_mapping_ID}
Note: The IN Data mapping does not have to be configured as a descriptor in order to work properly in correspondence tags.
The following screenshot shows the template used above, where the specific placeholder are replaced with according data from process in-data-mappings.
Figure: Correspondence Templates with replaced data
Bar codes may be embedded in correspondence templates as images.
All correspondence templates can be versioned. To version the template:
Figure: Edit a predefined template and save.
Figure: Save Document Confirmation Dialog
Figure: Version Comment
Once a correspondence message is created and all information for submission is provided the message can be sent as an e-mail, faxed, printed, or simply saved as a Process Attachment in the current context.
The creation date of the message document is the submission date of the e-mail, if it was not saved prior to being sent.
Note: Functionality for faxing correspondence messages will be added in a future release.
To send the correspondence per email, click the Send Mail
button on the main toolbar.
The system will save the e-mailed document and attached files in the Process
Attachments folder.
Note: The Document Name is constructed by adding the initial 17 characters of the email subject. If the user sends more than one email with the same subject to the sender, incrementing logic will add a number in parentheses after the document name. For example, "document name (1)", "document name (2)", etc.
To print the correspondence, click the Print
button in the main toolbar. The
system will save the e-mailed document and attached files in the Process
Attachments folder.
A dialog is provided for selecting the orientation, paper size, and margins for printing correspondence. Correspondences are first converted to PDFs, which can then be printed to a local or network printer using the configured desktop PDF viewing application.
To print a correspondence:
button on the power toolbar.
Figure: Print Settings
Figure: Confirmation Dialog
The following video demonstrates how to create correspondence like e-mail and fax in the Correspondence view:
Note that this video was created in an earlier Stardust version than the current. Some functionality or design might have changed meanwhile.
You find more training videos for related and other topics on our Self-Learning Trainings Stardust Wiki page.