Excel programming of a newsletter generator

Development of a Microsoft Excel tool for sending newsletters

DuPont de Nemours (Deutschland) GmbH" is part of one of the world's largest chemical companies and has commissioned eWorks to plan and develop a software tool for the creation of customized agricultural newsletters: the "communication database".

eWorks designed and developed a software tool for creating individual newsletters that are specifically adapted to the different areas of interest of the individual recipients. The communication database is intended to provide customers throughout Germany with individual newsletters by fax, post or e-mail - depending on the customer's wishes.

In the first step, eWorks worked closely with the client to design a software architecture that promised to cover all technical requirements in the most resilient, unproblematic and, last but not least, cost-efficient way possible. In the end, the decision was made in favour of a software solution based on Microsoft Office 2010 and Excel 2010. Acquisition and integration costs could be minimized as the client already had sufficient Excel licenses and Excel expertise. eWorks developed a technical concept for implementation based on Microsoft Excel 2010, discussed it with the client and fine-tuned it until it was finally accepted and its implementation commissioned.

The second step involved programming the customized newsletter tool with Microsoft Excel 2010 and VBA ("VisualBasic for Applications"). Using a flexible set of rules, the communication database draws from a pool of freely configurable text modules for the newsletter design, which are strung together and sent out as an individual newsletter. As a "bonus", the mailer downloads a weather forecast graphic for various regions and integrates it into the newsletter. In the final step, the generated newsletters are personalized in the classic way, e.g. by addressing the customer personally. In order to merge all this data, it was necessary to program various interfaces, e.g. customer data is obtained via CSV from a CRM system or weather data via FTP from an external server.

The third step was to create and manage the text modules required for sending the newsletter. As one of the central requirements for the newsletter tool was not to hold any "hidden" data, the text modules were implemented as standard Word documents that can be created, deleted, moved and filled with content as required. eWorks provided a Word document template that was intended to reduce the work involved in maintaining the text modules for the client to a minimum and provided the client with a convenient maintenance screen that could be used to "keyword" the text modules.

In the fourth and, for the time being, final step, eWorks supported the client in setting up the newsletter tool and sending out the first newsletters by fax, e-mail and post. To prevent newsletter recipients from receiving identical information twice or more, a sophisticated "tracking mechanism" was implemented to prevent the same snippet of information from being sent more than once to a particular newsletter recipient.

eWorks supported the client from the beginning of the clarification of requirements to the technical conception, programming, handover and commissioning - from start to finish. The programming was carried out exclusively with Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft Word 2010 and VBA ("Visual Basic for Applications"). The completed solution was handed over to the client and installed on the target system, which has been operating successfully ever since. Following successful commissioning, eWorks supports the client with questions on operation, troubleshooting (warranty) and occasional change requests.