Creating Form Letters

From PikaDocs

1. Open a new word processing document, such as Microsoft Word. 2. Type or copy/paste the text of your form letter into the new document. 3. Create merge fields. In each form letter, you will likely want case data (such as case number, client name, addresses, and counsel information) to be merged into the document. To do this, you must add merge tags to the form letter. In Pika, merge tags must be entered into the document in the following format: %%[name]%% where "name" is the name of the field in your database that contains the information to be merged. Some of the most common fields used in form letters are:

- %%[number]%% - case number
- %%[client]%% - client's full name
- %%[address]%% - client's street address
- %%[city]%% - client's city
- %%[state]%% - client's state
- %%[zip]%% - client's zip code
- %%[first_name]%% - client's first name
- %%[last_name]%% - client's last name
- %%[counsel]%% - name of primary attorney

Your document should look something like this:

4. Once the letter has been written and the merge fields inserted into the document, save the document in Rich Text Format (.rtf). To do this in word, click the edit menu, then choose save as. In the save as dialog box, select Rich Text Format from the file type drop-down box, then click save.

5. To upload your document to the Pika system, use WebDrive (p: drive) and navigate to the site folder. Then, select the forms subfolder. If you have numerous form letters, you may create further subfolders under the forms directory to organize your files. If you do not have access to WebDrive to upload the file, contact your Pika administrator.

6. To learn how to use your new document to generate form letters, visit the Document Assembly section of the Pika User Manual.

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