Getting Started Using
Microsoft Word 97 ® Integration

Power Broker offers integration capabilities to allow merging of data from the Customer and Policy databases into a MSWord97® document

 

Before you can begin using the MSWord97® integration, the following items need to be addressed -

 

·         Install and configure Microsoft Office 97® (See Appendix A)

·         Configure Power Broker for Microsoft Word97® integration (User Preferences Screen, and Define Your Company Screens) (See Appendix A)

·         Configuring the MSWord97® sample templates that have been included with Power Broker (See Appendix B)

 

Once all these steps have been completed, each user will be able to create, edit and print Power Broker/MSWord97 documents, as well as forms generator documents from various areas of the Power Broker system, including the Customer and Policy Screens, Marketing List Section, and Policy Renewal List Section.  The MSWord97® integration is available through:

·         Customers – Customer & Prospects – Forms

·         Customers -  Customer Marketing Lists

·         Customers – Customer \ Prospect  Xdate Lists

·         Policies      -   (Automobile, Habitational and Commercial Business) – Forms

·         Policies      -   Renewal Lists

·         Policies      -  Print Cancelled Policy by Producer Report

·         Forms        -  Print Microsoft Office 97® Form Letter(s)

 

 

Note -

When launching the Power Broker/MSWord97® integration you can not have Miscrsoft Word97® open or Microsoft Excel® open before starting the integration

 


 

Creating / Editing  Duplicating Power Broker/MSWord97® Templates

Creating a new Template

Creating a form template creates a ‘Master’ Form from which all users can use to create MSWord97® documents from. When creating a Word97® document users will be selecting a template form from which the document will be created.

From the ‘Home Page’ main menu, select the Forms/Rating icon, the Forms/Rating system function menu select the ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’  option

Once you are in ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’ option, you will see a browse window with all the exisiting MSWord97® template forms. At this point select the [Create New Form] button on the bottom of the screen.

 

When creating a new form template, you will be prompted for the form name, form description, form language, and the database that the information will be drawn from.

 

 

 

Form Name -

This is the name of the form (max 8 charactors) that will appear when you select forms.

 

Form Description -

This is the form description (max 80 charactors), this will also be the default form description when saving the form to the customers file.

 

Form Language -

Select E for English or F for French

Database -

This is where the information for the form will be drawn from.

1 – Customer (Basic)

This form will be available from both the Customer and Policy Screens, Marketing Lists and Policy Renewal Lists

 

Information will be taken from the customer database and include basic customer information, producer, brokerage address, branch address.

2 – Customer with Networth

This form will be available from both the Customer and Policy Screens, Marketing Lists and Policy Renewal Lists

Information will be taken from the customer database and include all customer information, producer, brokerage address, branch address.

3 – Policy Basic

This form will be available only from the Policy Screens and Policy Renewal Lists

Information will be taken from both the customer database and policy database and include basic customer information, producer, brokerage address, branch address, basic policy information, insurer and CSR

 

Save Word document -

When set to ‘Y’ this option will also save the MSWord97® document into the \WORD97\DOCS folder. When viewing this document from the [Abeyance/Doc] browse window, Power Broker will launch the saved MSWord97® for review and/or printing

 

 

 

Once you have entered all the required information select the [Proceed >>] button, this will launch MSWord

 

Once MSWord97® has started, the following dialog appears. The Clippit Office Assistant will guide you through the creation process

 

Select the [OK] button to start

You are now ready to begin designing your form template.

 

 

To insert a data merge field select the [Insert Merge Field] button, a popup of all available fields will appear, scroll through the field list and select the appropriate field to insert into the template form

See Appendix C for a list of the fields and their descriptions.

When you have finished, remember to select the        [Save Form and Return to PowerBroker] button to return to Power Broker

 

DO NOT use the any other method of exiting MSWord97®

 

You will now return to Power Broker, the creation of the MSWord97® Template form is complete.

 

Editing an exiting template

Editing an existing template allows the user to change to contents of the template form.

From the ‘Home Page’ main menu, select the Forms/Rating icon, the Forms/Rating system function menu select the ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’  option

Once you are in ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’ Option, you will see a browse window with all the existing MSWord97® template forms. At this point select form that you want to edit in the browse window then select the [Select Form] button, next select the [Edit Form] button on the bottom of the screen.

When editing an existing form template, you have the option of editing the form description, Form Language and the Save Word Document fields.

 

 

 

Once you are done editing the fields select the [Proceed >>] button, this will launch MSWord.

 

 

Duplicating a template

Duplicating a template allows the user to create a new template from an existing template form.

From the ‘Home Page’ main menu, select the Forms/Rating icon, the Forms/Rating system function menu select the ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’  option

Once you are in ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’ Option, you will see a browse window with all the existing MSWord97® template forms. At this point select the form that you want to duplicate in the browse window then select the [Select Form] button, next select the [Duplicate Form] button on the bottom of the screen.

When creating a new template form using duplicate option, you will need to specify the new template name and description.

 

 

 

Once you have entered all the required information select the [Proceed >>] button, this will launch MSWord

 

 

Printing MSWord97® Forms from the Customer/Policy Screens

To print a MSWord97® form from either the customer screen or policy screen, select the [Forms] button from the option bar. In the list of forms available select the Word97 Generator option

 

 

Next, select the form that you want to print in the browse window then select the [Select Form] button at the top of the screen.

 

Once you have selected a form, select the [Proceed >>] button on the bottom of the screen to start the Power Broker/MSWord97® integration

 

 

Next, a pop up dialogue box appears. If you would like the form to be saved to the customer file, and an entry added into the ‘Abeyance/Doc’ section, select ‘Y’ to the ‘Save Memo to Customer’s File’ question

 

If you selected to save the form to the Customer file, you need to complete the abeyance date, abeyance item completed, producer code and description fields, then select the     [Proceed >>] button to start MSWord97®

 

 

Power Broker will now start Microsoft Word97® and begin the integration

Once MSWord97® has started, the Clippit Office Assistance will guide you through the printing and saving of your document

 

If you would like to edit the form, select the ‘Pre-Edit document before printing’ check box, if you do not select to pre-edit the form there will be no other opportunity to edit the form before or after printing.

 

 

Select the [OK] button to begin.

 

If you selected to Pre-Edit the document, the office assiant will disappear, and now you have the opportunity to edit the form. When you are done, press the [Continue with Printing of Document]

 

Note – You pre-edit the form before data is merged into the document

Next, the print dialogue box appears, select the [OK] to begin the data merge and print the document

 

Next, the Clippit Office Assistant will appear again, if the document did not print, or if there was a problem select the [No] button option to re-print.

 

If everything is ok, then select [Yes] button to continue.

 

 

 

If this document is being saved to the customer file, the following dialogue box appears, notifying you that the document is being saved, select the [OK] button to return to Power Broker

 

 

You now return to Power Broker.

 

 

 

 

 

Viewing a saved MSWord97® document

 

To view a saved MSWord97® document from either the customer screen or policy screen, select the [Abeyance/Docs] button from the option bar.

 

A browse window will appear containing the entire customers abeyance / documents, select the item that you wish to view, this is done by placing the mouse cursor on the record, and pressing the left mouse button. Once the item is selected a white box will appear, the item is now selected. Press the right mouse button to view the item.

 

If the item is a MSWord97® document, and the form was saved to the customers file, then Power Broker will launch the document in Microsoft Word97®.

 

Once you are in Microsoft Word97®, to return to Power Broker, just exit MSWord97®.

 

 

 

 

 


Appendix A

Setting up Power Broker

In ‘Define Your Company Information’ – Screen 5 you need to set up the Power Broker drive letter and directory – See below

 

 

In this example Power Broker is installed on the F:\BRO directory.

 

Once this done, exit and re-enter Power Broker, and then run the ‘Pack & Re-Index’ utility. This will create directories in the \BRO directory based on the user ID. These directories are where Power Broker will create and edit Word97® documents.

 

In the ‘User Preferences’ section each user will need to select ‘MSWord97’ as the word processing software and define the start up directory and file.

 

 

Select the <BROWSE> button to locate Winword.exe file, it should be located at –C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe, because Power Broker operates on all versions of Windows, the locate window shows the Dos format of the directory listings, for example ‘Program Files’ will look like ‘Progra~1’

 

 

if you have multiple directories that start with ‘Mircosoft . . “ then when looking for the Microsoft Office folder you will see –   Micros~1

Micros~2

Micros~3

 

You will need to search through all these folders until you find the correct one.

 

To simplify matters, when installing the Microsoft Office package, change the installation folder from ‘Microsoft Office’ to ‘Office97’, this will make searching for the Winword.exe easier (See the above example).

 

 

 

Installing / Configuring Microsoft Office97

These setup procedures need to done on each users computer who is running the Power Broker / MSWord97® integration.

 

Note - if you do not feel comfortable make changes to Windows95 and Word97, please have your hardware or network technician make these changes.

 

The following steps will help with the installation of Microsoft Office97®.

 

Changing the install Path

To simplify matters, when installing the Microsoft Office package, change the installation folder from ‘Microsoft Office’ to ‘Office97’, this will make searching for the Winword.exe easier.

Select the  [Change Folder]  button

Change the path from -

 

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office

 

to

 

C:\Program Files\Office97

Select in the Installation Type

 

When installing MSOffice97® there are many different installation options, the most common is the ‘Typical’ type, this will install all the necessary programs and files. If you do not use the ‘Typical’ installation, and select the ‘Custom’ installation, then review the following steps

 

Select the [Custom] button. When installing using the ‘Custom’ options, make sure that both Word97® and Excel97® are installed. Power Broker requires both these programs to operate the MSWord97 integration.

Also, when using the ‘Custom’ install, make sure that all the ‘Data Access’ drivers are installed. To install all the drivers,  highlight the Data Access option, and select the [Select All] button

Running MSWord97® Integration for the first time

When running the MSWord97® integration for the first time, you will see a warning dialogue box, this happens when you run macros in MSWord97®,

 

 

Unselect the ‘Always ask before opening documents with macros or customizations’ check box, and then press the [Enable Macros] buttons, this is required for the MSWord97® integration to work correctly.

 

 

Setting up Windows95/98

These setup procedures need to done on each users computer who is running the Power Broker / MSWord97® integration.

 

Note - if you do not feel comfortable make changes to Windows95 and Word97, please have your hardware or network technician make these changes.

 

Configuring the ODBC drivers in Windows95/98

In the Control Panel, select the 32bit ODBC icon.

Once inside the 32bit ODBC control panel, select the dBase Files in the list of data sources and press the [Remove] button. This is required for the operation of MSWord integration, and will have no affect on any other operations in MSWord97. (See below)

Removing the dBase ODBC drivers will prevent this dialogue box appearing every time the MSWord97 integration launches and tries to merge data from Power Broker

 

 

 

 


Appendix B

Configuring Power Broker MSWord97® template samples

 

Power Broker has included sample MSWord97® form templates. These forms need to be edited before they can be used. This procedure need only be done once, the first time the Power Broker/MSWord97® integration is set up

 

 

In Power Broker, select the ‘Create or Edit Word97 Form Letter’ from the [Forms / Rating] menu.

 

 

Once inside, highlight the first form in the browse table; press the [Select] button and then the [Edit] button. When the ‘Edit Word97 Form’ dialog box appears, select the [Proceed >>] button to start MSWord97®

 

 

Once MSWord97® has started, the following dialog appears

 

Select the [OK] button

 

 

Next, the following dialog box will appear.

 

Locate the BRO folder on your network,  then locate the WORD97 folder inside the BRO directory

 

 

Once you have located and selected the WORD97 folder, the dialoge box should look like this -

 

 

Now press the [OK] button.

 

Now that the MSWord97® form has been reassociate with the database, the integration will continue.

You should see the Clippit Office Assistant, who will guide you though editing and saving the form.

 

Just select the [OK] button, and the [Save Form and Return to Power Broker] button to finish.

 

 

Repeat these steps for all sample forms in the browse window.