CSV because that's what our CRM database outputs. Its not actually a great system, mainly because no one who actually uses it regularly was involved in choosing it. We were going to get the upgraded version of our old system, but then one of the owners golf buddies recommended it, so it became the be-all-and-end-all (its actually a horrible system designed for a rental style business like car rentals rather than a stock sales based business with a load of mediocre stuff tacked onto the side of it, half of which is actually no use. I spend half my life making data analysis spreadsheets because it can't do it, but its all we've got to work with).

And again, because of the boss, it does have to be a clickable link. He's pretty OCD so the idea of having something like

https://www.ABCD.com/stuff/?f=123456...&salesman=Fred

in the email as text rather than a link saying "click here" would be unthinkable. He can't even tolerate us having a spare monitor, tower and cables in a cupboard in the back of the stores room so that we have a fall back if something breaks. The idea of something going to customers which wasn't all pristine and perfect would be criminal. And he's no more computer literate than his new marketing manager, in his eyes anything is doable, everything is straightforward and nothing will take longer than half an hour to do. If it does, its not down to the complexity of the system or an inherent limitation of the system, or even "Its processing 110,000 records of 50 columns to produce 70 different stats so its gonna take a little while to process". If its not done the way he wants in the time scale he wants, you're clearly not doing it right.

OK, but a mailmerge should still be able to retrieve the data it requires from the database without the need for the CSV.

So are these links in the body of the email, or in documents being sent as attachments? If the former, are the emails being sent as plain text, or in HTML format?

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

You'd think so but no. Its a nonsense system picked by the owner who doesn't know what the system actually needs (he literally didn't log into it for the first year of use). The server is stored off site and we can only access it through what is basically a web interface. I know that in practical terms its basically just a spreadsheet with a fancy UI, but all I can get is that UI and when you ring them up to say "how can we access it?" the answer is "no one's ever asked that before. Why would you need to access it? You have reports for that."

Like I say, its a system designed for a company doing short term car rentals which has had stuff added on to make it work for a car sales dealership, but not very well. There are literally dozens of things which we would want which we're having to use bad work around's for (ie - we associate a customer to a salesman because for salesmen being paid on commission, having their customer sent to another salesman would be a huge issue, they nearly close a deal, the customer comes in, gets sent to another salesman and they get the sale and the commission. But because the system is designed for rental, where sales are sales and who makes them doesn't matter, you can't do that, so we're having to use the intro-source section to associate salesman to customer). And because its not bespoke, its the same interface for every company using that system, we can't get it changed just for us. Like I say, its a bad choice but its all I've got to work with.

The links are in the body of HTML format emails.

Basically it'd be along the lines of:

Dear Mr Blogs,

In relation to your recent purchase, we would like to ask you to fill out a short feedback form.

Please click here for the survey.

Thank You



We can get the text right, and it does generate a link, but every link comes out based on the the same record, rather than bespoke as we wanted.