Project
- E-mail Template Manager
Client
Requirement
Management of e-mail templates for trade fair visitors on-line registration. Describing various e-mail templates and recipients depending on trade fair requirements. Easy to use editor for creating rich-text e-mail templates. Multi-language versions with immediate preview. Configuration versioning. Use current database. Network-settings independent application.
Solution
During the implementation of this project we encountered two main challenges. The first was to create an easy to use template editor. The second was to create a tool for complex template management.
We had difficulty finding a good professional WYSIWYG HTML editor due to the clients requirements so we decided to build an editor from the ground up. Our tool enables the user to edit and format text as they would in common text editors, however every text block has additionally complex context logic, hierarchy and allows for multiple language version content. Database items can be easy inserted into templates. We also created automatic tests to check blocks dependencies and completeness. All templates are stored in XML format.
The core of our system is a “configurator” that enables the user to create new, edit and copy templates. It allows the user to assign templates to different trade fair context, specify templates validity dates, specify recipient groups, filing and restore templates.
Technology
Client-server model application. Client side is Windows application created in the .NET Famework 1.1. Because of current server structure, server side was implemented in Java (using the Axis library) and shown as a web service. Database access is asserted by Hibernate: data is stored in Oracle 9i.
