Mergemill Pro Quick Start Guide

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The installed software package contains the Mergemill Pro User Guide in PDF format. It explains most of what you need to know to make productive use of the software. On Windows, the user guide is located at Program Files > Mergemill Pro > Mergemill Pro User Guide.pdf. On the Mac, it is located at Applications > Mergemill Pro > Mergemill Pro User Guide.pdf.

A good way to learn how Mergemill Pro works is to see it in action. We've included a simple case study in your installed software package for this purpose: Mergemill Pro > Mergemill Resources > Examples > Simple Case Study. The files are also available here: download for Windows, download for Mac OS X.

Start-Up

The main window appears after you start up Mergemill Pro. The window title bar shows the name of the current Mergemill document.

To enable all features of Mergemill Pro, you need to activate it by entering a valid registration code in the Preferences window. The Preferences window can be displayed by selecting the Preferences... menu item under the Mergemill Pro (Mac) or the Help (Windows) menu. Without a valid registration code, the following restrictions apply:

Each merge field takes a maximum of 50 data values.
Project autoruns are disabled after one hour.
The Run Project and Run Job buttons are disabled after 30 days for each newly created Mergemill document.

PLEASE NOTE: Unregistered copies of Mergemill Pro monitors the expiry date of documents by reading a date string at our site. Absolutely nothing from your computer is sent to us except the request for this little piece of data. Registered copies of Mergemill Pro does not communicate with our site, except accessing our online documentation and checking software updates.

Some Helpful Menu Items

To familiarize yourself with the purpose and use of each user interface element, turn on help tips by selecting the Mergemill Pro menu item Help > Show Help Tips. For quick syntax lookup, you may use the menu items Help > Tags Reference and Help > Regex Reference.

Entry Controls in the User Interface

As you specify your settings, items and pages are enabled and disabled appropriately so that you are not distracted by irrelevant objects. For example, the Job setting pages are activated only when you have selected a job name on the Project Job List. Likewise, appropriate Feed setting pages are enabled only when you have selected a task on the Job Task List.

Mergemill Templates

A Mergemill template contains all the static text to be included in the output, plus the tags to instruct Mergemill Pro on the actions to take. Prepare the template with a simple text editor or Adobe Dreamweaver. Software applications like Microsoft Word are inappropriate for creating or editing templates, because they embed invisible characters that break up what you type, such that Mergemill tags that look innocently proper on your documents are actually unrecognizable to Mergemill Pro.

When creating templates, always keep in mind that all field tags insert contents, whether generated dynamically or from data feeds, and the entire result of processing a template will be the output of the associated job. Remember also that all filter, processing, search-replace, and sorting actions specified in job and task settings are applied to the data values BEFORE the template is run.

Workflow to Generate Static Web Pages

Start off organized. Create a Job folder that contains the subfolders Template, Source, and Output.
Prepare the template:

Create a sample web page to serve as a concrete goal and copy it to the Template folder.
Decide which data elements are to be inserted into the page and replace those parts with Mergemill field tags, like <?[Town]?>, which serve as placeholders for the content to be provided by data feeds.
Insert other tags, like <?Loop?>...<?EndLoop?> and <?If(...)?> etc., where necessary to control what and how values from your feed are to be inserted.

Copy all supporting files required for the output, such as GIFs, to the Output folder. Mergemill Pro will automatically create all non-existing subfolders in the paths to the output files, but you have to ensure that all hyperlinks in the generated web pages work correctly.
Add a job in Mergemill Pro. Specify the modified webpage as the template and push the Parse Template File button to scan it. For each new field found in the template, Mergemill Pro automatically adds a task to the job definition. You then specify the data feed and data column to be fetched for each field in its task settings, or specify that the values are to be dynamically generated.
Test run the job. Mergemill Pro gets the data values, applies the filter, processing, and search-replace actions to them, and then sorts the data. Next it copies all static content in your template to the output, and replaces each field tag with the appropriate processed data value to generate the output.
Test run and edit your template till you achieve the exact result you desire.
Repeat steps 2 to 6 for each template.

Workflow for Other Jobs

Again, start off organized. Create a Job folder that contains the subfolders Template, Source, and Output.
Create a sample output. This gives you a concrete goal.
Prepare the template using a simple text editor.
Add a job in Mergemill Pro. Specify an associated template and push the Parse Template File button to scan it. For each new field found in the template, Mergemill Pro automatically adds a task to the job definition. You then specify the data feed and data column to be fetched for each field in its task settings, or specify that the values are to be dynamically generated.
Test run the job. Mergemill Pro gets the data values, applies the filter, processing, and search-replace actions to them, and then sorts the data. Next it copies all static content in your template to the output, and replaces each field tag with the appropriate processed data value to generate the output. Depending on what you set the job to do, when Mergemill Pro reaches the end of the template each time, one of several things will happen: the merged English text is spoken, the merged email is sent, the merged file is saved, the data is used to update an SQL data store, or the data are exported to TSV, CSV or XML files.
Test run and edit your template till you achieve the exact result you desire.
Repeat steps 2 to 6 for each template.

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