Consolidator

Many companies generate multiple documents for delivery to the same recipient and send them in individual envelopes or electronically. This can cause increased call centre activity due to delivery timing issues, additional cost for envelopes and paper and postal charges.  It can also adversely affect customer satisfaction.  PARIS Consolidator suite provides two software tools to enable multiple documents to be merged into a single deliverable pack.

PARIS Consolidator comprises two software modules:

ConsoliData provides the tools to set the business rules for the matching of a number of documents for an individual. It can be used to merge two or more different text files into a single file based on a common index. ConsoliData was developed to help customers manipulate text data files prior to processing by our document creation software PARIS Enterprise.

ConsoliData can:

• Merge data files of the same type.
• Sort files into sequence.
• Merge data files of different types. In its simplest form, ConsoliData can read a text data file and re-order it. In its most complex form, ConsoliData can read multiple files of different types, merge them based on a common index and provide an output file in a chosen sequence.
• Output options are also available to “tag” the output file so that Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) or other mailing marks can be applied.
• Files from Unix and Windows are supported.
• The text file can either have a fixed number of lines per page or each new page defined by the presence of the Form Feed character (Hex 0C).

Consolischedule is complementary to both ConsoliData and the PARIS composition tools. It allows the merging and sorting process to be initiated automatically based on factors such as time, or the number of input files.

Consolischedule can:

• Run as a Windows System Service.
• Monitor multiple Windows Folders for input data files.
• Initiate a merge process in any of the three following methods:
  1. Merge all documents in a folder at a certain time (e.g. wait until the end of the day for all documents to be generated, then merge all of them together and send for final composition).
  2. Merge when a specified number of documents is reached (e.g. if one file of bills and one file of letters is received then merge the two together).
  3. Monitor a separate folder that is used as a trigger to kick off the merge process.
• Can support multiple configurations (e.g. one area handles merging bills and letters, another area handles bills and vouchers and another area handles Walksorted documents).

The Consolischedule user interface is used to create scheduling rules and to give a status of the system at any time. The user interface also has a link to the ConsoliData module, if installed, so that new merge rules may be developed.

In summary

ConsoliData is used to create the rules for the merging / Walksorting of data.

Consolischedule is used to manage and automate the execution. However, it is possible to use only ConsoliData if there is no requirement for automated running of the consolidation process.