1.7

In addition to the pURL, to generate a personalized landing page the Connect Server needs a
template with a Web context and a Workflow process with the following tasks:
l A HTTP Server Input task to capture incoming web requests (see Workflow Help: HTTP
Server Input).
l An Execute Data Mapping task to create the record set appropriate for the template (see
Workflow Help: Execute DataMapping Task).
l A Create Web Content task that generates the HTML files (see Workflow Help: Create
Web Content).
Creating a personalized URL
Creating a personalized URL implies writing a script. See "Writing your own scripts" below.
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.
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
(in a specific order, see "The script flow: when scripts run" on page585).
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.
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