Common Questions: Data Merge

This week’s topic: Data Merge

Data Merge is an interesting way to jump start your documents.  It's also a great way to keep your content accurate and up-to-date while reducing the amount of work that you need to do to maintain it both short- and long-term.

Our sales team loves Data Merge. It reduces the amount of effort they need to put into developing quotes. They use the Universal Business Language (UBL) XML DTDs to develop their quotes for customers and data merge makes it easy for them to include pricing and product descriptions from our partner price list. A simple Compose->PDF command, and their work is done!

Earlier this week, Dave Lorenzoni wrote up his thoughts about his favorite feature; last April, the Arbortext User group had a presentation on it; and today, we share several questions that we've gotten about it as well.

Question: Incorporating data from external systems

Is it easy to create interfaces with other systems by pulling content from another system or pushing content to another system, such as Oracle's Universal Management System or SAP?

In otherwords, can you create automated query-based content assembly?

Answer:

Yes. This is called “Data Merge”. With Data Merge, Arbortext lets you incorporate references to external data sources into a document. These references can be resolved at editing time,  publishing time, or both.

Question: Aggregation by batch

Can you aggregate as part of a production batch job or does it need to be run during regularly timed activity?

Answer:

Both options are available in both Arbortext Content Manager or Arbortext PDMLink.

Question: CMS and virtual documents

Does the CMS include support for virtual/compound documents that are assembled to a publishing event/request?

Answer:

Yes. In fact, the ability to create map documents directly in Arbortext Content Manger or Arbortext PDMLink is coming in the Pine release. It will also be part of the the Service Information System application.