Acceptance Letters

This FOCEXEC runs the acceptance letters process. The trick we employed was to use the dorm phone field on screen 111 as the indicator for tracking acceptance letters sent. Two lists are generated. The first one is a mail merge file that can be brought into a standard word processor to produce the letters. Next, it will produce batch transactions for SIS that updates the dorm phone field on screen 111, which indicates the date the letter was sent. As you will note, I removed the code for producing the mail merge file. At the time this FOCEXEC was written, the word processor being used was ALL-IN-1 (please don't laugh). And since ALL-IN-1 was produced by DEC and now they have been acquired by Compaq, I suspect it will be phased out. Therefore, I left this portion of the FOCEXEC "open". Perhaps I can provide a link in the future to a page that has some sample FOCUS code for producing mail merge files. In addition, note the technique used in the DECODE statements. This allows the report to get the "translated" DBD value. For example, "Fall Semester 1998" looks much better on a letter than "98F". However, if you are on SIS+, you have the XSFOCT routine at your disposal. Finally, more information on the in-house faculty/staff file (SI$DATA:INSTFL.DAT) can be found in this case study.