Technical information

INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION GUIDE

196

Fax Merge

Important

The Fax Merge feature is designed to be used by integrators. It is not recommended for desktop faxing. Desktop

users should use the VSI-FAX Mailmerge client

instead.

Fax merge is a special kind of print-to-fax operation that uses your word processor's mail merge feature to send

individualized faxes to a group of recipients. Refer to Print-to-fax

for more information.

When you print a mail merge job, your word processor creates each individualized document by inserting variable

information, such as the person's name, title and address, from a data source document (list file) into a content

template document (form file). The software repeats this process as many times as necessary to create and print all

the required individualized documents.

This diagram shows how to adapt a basic mail merge feature for fax merge.

Word processor

The first step in creating a fax merge job is to use your word processor's mail merge feature to create a content

template (form file) that will be individualized with information from a data source (list file). In many cases, this data

source is a text file containing entries for each fax recipient. However, some word processors support reading this

recipient information directly from a database.

To adapt your word processor's mail merge feature for fax merging, create your form file using a structure that allows

the fax server to distinguish destination data from the rest of the information that is the actual fax you want to send.

Destination data is embedded into the form file using standard VSI-FAX embedded tags. Embedded fax tags always

use this format:

@+TAG[<tag>=<value>]

Where <tag> is a valid send tag and <value> is a valid value for that tag. For example, this embedded tag is used

to include a classic cover page with a fax:

@+TAG[cvr=classic]