1.6

Creating a personalized URL
Creating a personalized URL implies writing a script. See "Writing your own scripts" on the
facing page.
It also requires some planning, because the pURL needs to contain data that is necessary to
create the web page. For instance, creating a personalized URL for a client's invoice may
require the Invoice Number to be present in the URL, which is then used to retrieve the invoice
data, generate the invoice in PDF or HTML format using a template, and then return it to the
browser. The trick is then to add the designated information to a hyperlink. How to do this is
described in a how-to; see How to dynamically insert a hyperlink.
Writing your own scripts
Personalization can be taken a lot further than just inserting names and addresses, and hiding
or showing text or images. Every bit of information in your communications can be made
entirely personal, using scripts.
Most scripts can be made using one of the script Wizards. For a block of variable data, such as
an address, the Text Script Wizard is a perfect fit. Paragraphs can be made conditional with a
Conditional Script Wizard. For dynamic images, you can use the Dynamic Image Script Wizard.
In an Email context, you are provided with a number of script Wizards to set the sender, the
recipients and the subject of the email.
However, when you want to do something that goes beyond what you can do with a Wizard,
like creating a conditional paragraph with a condition that is based on a combination of data
fields, you have to write the script yourself.
This topic explains how scripts work and how you can create and write a script.
How scripts work
A script is a small set of instructions to the program, written in JavaScript.
When Connect generates the actual output – letters, web pages or emails -, it opens a record
set and merges it with the template. It takes each record, one by one, and runs all scripts for it
(Control Scripts first).
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