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Once the sortation has completed, the reports are output to the location specified in the MISQL Mailsortation task. By default this is set to "C:\matchIT SQL\SSIS\mailSortation\reports"
Sortation Data Fields
During the sortation process, several new fields containing information relating to the sortation and the status of each record are added to the main file. All fields are of character type. The key fields are as follows:
Zone: Indicates the nationality of non-UK records. For UK records, this field is left blank.
CarrierName: Contains the name of the downstream carrier that has been used. If Royal Mail has been selected to carry standard tariff items, then these items will have "Royal Mail" in their carrier field.
BBSBag_ID: Simple bag ID field, where the numeric value represents the bag number.
CarrierBagID: Bag ID field containing all of the bag information that is required by the carrier.
SortCode: Standard selection code field, where the length may be between 3 and 8 characters depending on the type of service used during the sortation. This field also contains start of bag indicators; ”r;**”.
Barcode: Contains a generated bar code (only applicable when using CBC services).
Sequence: Contains ascending numeric values, indicating the files sortation order. This can be used to re-order the records if any other processes that may follow the sortation step order the file differently.
Computer Planning Report
This is a Royal Mail standard summary report of the Mailsort, including postcoding levels, direct and residue selection statistics and the value of the discount obtained. Royal Mail refer to it as the Computer Planning Report. The costs shown on the report are not used by Royal Mail, but are presented for the mailer’s information. The name of this file will be the jobname you specified in the MISQL Mailsortation task and have an extension of _rm.prn. It is possible to output this as a PDF instead if you prefer and this can be set in the Systems Option > General > Format for Output Reports.
Line Listings
This is a combined Direct and Residue line listing. These are listings of all the places that the Direct/Residue Selection bags are going to, together with the number of items and number of bags.
Combined CPR & LL
By default, the setting is to create the line list and Computer planning report in a single file, this places the line list above on the same document as the CPR. If you wish to have separate documents for Line list and CPR, then you can change this setting in the Parameters for each carrier.
Bag Labeling
When you Mailsort your data, a bag label file will be generated. This bag label file will be produced in an extended format by default, however this can be changed to “native format” should a native format be required by your mailer.
Extended Bag Label Format
We recommend that, for normal use, you should always produce the labels in Extended Bag Label format, because this has several advantages:
It is a more flexible format that allows for additional items to be printed on the label, such as Item Sequence Number, Number of Items, Bag Number and Weight. It also produces header, trailer and separator labels, to tell mailroom staff when the run switches from one carrier to another.
The entire set of labels for a complete job can be printed in one run, even when several carriers are involved. If you are using several carriers depending on the client’s requirements, then a single bag label printer (and computer) could be used in all cases, and one program will handle all the formats needed. If you always use Extended Bag Label format, then there is no need to hold the Royal Mail and DSA reference tables on the bag label printing computer, because all the information is encoded in the BAG file.
Native Format
Sometimes however you may require the native format, to be used when outputting bag labels. This might be because you have a special system in place, or a third party handles all of your bag labels, requiring them to be provided in standard format.
In this case you are still able to print and generate bag labels, standard to the formatting of the selected carrier.
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