Best Practices: Letters and Paragraphs

The following set of Best Practices have been developed by Emplifi as a result of lessons learned through many product implementations.

Compile Letters to be Defined

It is a good idea to design all your letters in electronic format first. Once you have the complete set of letters that you will need to support in Emplifi Agent, this will make the process of defining your Standard Letters and Paragraphs much simpler. You can simply copy and paste paragraphs into Emplifi Agent, and then add appropriate paragraph inserts as necessary.

Standardize Letter Content

Standardize all the paragraph content before building the standard letters. Try to develop standard introduction and closing paragraphs for all the letters to be configured. This will make the long-term maintenance of the standard letters easier.

Code Naming

Since the letter and paragraph hierarchies are restricted to a length of 12 characters, it is a good idea to use a code prefix naming convention. For example, all introduction paragraph codes begin with “I,” all body paragraph codes begin with “B,” all closing paragraph codes begin with “C,” and all general paragraph codes begin with “G." This will make it easier to maintain the paragraph content and create the letter definitions.

Also, if you intend to use conditional paragraph inserts, your paragraph names need to be able to fit both a prefix and another code into those 12 characters, so choose code names wisely. For details, see Inserts Based on Code Values.

Paragraph Hierarchy

The standard paragraph category contains the complete set of paragraphs that you will use on your letters. The complexity of the hierarchy in this category is dependent on the desired level of detail needed for responses to your customers.

As with other categories, before creating any standard paragraph codes, the ‘Number of Levels’ for the standard paragraph ID Category needs to be updated. For details, see Category Definition.

One common approach is to have the paragraph hierarchy resemble or mirror the hierarchy for issue reason codes. Since reason typically drives the response to the consumer, a body paragraph for each reason code can be created. This makes it easy to maintain and configure the letters since the structure matches the existing reason hierarchy. It also makes it easy for agents to find appropriate content when building letters.

Letter Formats

Emplifi Agent agents will benefit from the higher performance of the built-in editor. There is much less lag time as documents are transferred back and forth to the server.

End of Line Markers

End all paragraph definitions with a [special.newline] paragraph insert instead of a carriage return (pressing the [Enter] key). This provides explicit visibility for a line in a paragraph and makes it easier to diagnose spacing problems if one exists in the definition of a letter. HTML letters may not recognize carriage returns, and you may end up with paragraphs unexpectedly running together. For more information about paragraph inserts, see Special Paragraph Inserts.

Listing of Enclosures

List enclosures at the bottom of the letter instead of including the enclosure names in the closing paragraph. If there are multiple enclosures to be included with the letter, listing at the bottom does not require any user intervention and makes it easier to reference when performing batch fulfillment.

Paragraph Order

The typical sequence of paragraphs in a letter is as follows:

• DATE

• ADDRESS BLOCK

• SALUTATION

• INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH

• BODY PARAGRAPH

• CLOSING PARAGRAPH

• CLOSING SIGNATURE BLOCK

• CASE ID

• ASSOCIATED ENCLOSURES

The typical sequence for emails is as follows:

• EMAIL SALUTATION

• INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH

• BODY PARAGRAPH

• CLOSING PARAGRAPH

• EMAIL CLOSING

• CASE ID

The following paragraphs are pre-defined during an initial installation of Emplifi Agent: