Function Overview / Purpose

Use the method detailed below where documents are to be issued through Dwellant either by email or by post via Print Provider – where arrears letters type, demand type or credit note type document is required.

 

Summary of the Process:- Steps

1. Create required documents within your accounting package.
2. There will be an automated process for the Managing agents to Sync to Dwellant.
3. Locate batches and proceed to Publish feature.
4. Prepare any additional attachments you need to send as PDFs
5. Check Print Provider post portal for successful letter generation and dispatch for both batch types.

 

*Please note you must be on the managing agent level of Dwellant and not on building level to perform the below.

 

Detailed Process: Steps

1. You will create documents in your accounting package.
2. Your IT team will have provided the export facility to send documents to Dwellant

NOTES

Automate batch – For batches that DO NOT require a covering letter.

Non-Automated batch (untick the option) – For batches that DO require a covering letter. Note Automate batch is the default setting. (So remember to turn this off if not required.) ACCOUNTING PACKAGE will then batch the documents into a folder on the Managing agents' servers for Dwellant to read and ingest.

Typical batch information looks like this – with the Batch number being the first in the string. Other information in the string denotes date time stamp, Tenant ID, Unit ID, Property ID, Document type, Automated or not. These are required for Dwellant to enable correct processing of the sent documents.

 

What does each ecomms batch status mean?

Accessing Finance / Accounts / eCommunications Document Batches page allows you to search and filter for Batches by their status -

New – these are new batches that have arrived and need Manual publishing

Published - means that the Batch is fully processed and document sent. There are useful reports 

Deleted - means Batches that have been deleted, this may be because of errors 

In progress  - means a batch that is currently being processed.  This may be either automated or manually triggered batches.

Awaiting processing - When things get busy, Batches will queue up and should clear in a few minutes.

Automated batches in the Awaiting Processing queue do not require any additional attachments, or further user intervention (add additional document attachments via the Publish feature) and will be released on a timer which is currently set to run on the hour every hour during the working day. You can override the settings if you need to release the batch immediately by selecting the Publish Feature next to the batch and manually publishing the batch via step 4 if required.

For New batches filter by Status. To proceed to release the Non-Automated batches select the Publish option:

 

Steps to publish a finance document batch-

 

1. Proceed to Dwellant and from the Managing agent level, Select Finance / Accounts / eCommunications Document Batches:

 

 

It will show the following page, it allows you to search and filter for batches of documents as per their status: 

 

2. If your batch requires a covering letter, and/or additional document attachments locate the batch and select the Publish option:

 

 

We will cover below what each section on above screen means:-

Batch Type shows the document type. This will determine based on user preferences how many people will receive email or letter.

Template: Allows you to select templated messages based on your administrators setup 

File Description -Subject – This will be the subject of any email notifications and or covering letters produced.

Additional Email Text: Content – manually type in or copy and paste content from another source/template. This will be the main body content of your email or letter.

Print cover letter:  You can choose to have the cover letter printed (for those receiving by email, the cover letter will be the email body).  If you choose to print the cover letter – it will appear as the first page on the pack.  It will obviously put the costs up. So consider whether it includes anything 

Publish on behalf of – leave this blank to insert your own user credentials and signature etc at the bottom of the covering letter. If this is not required and you are sending on behalf of another person (e.g the Property Manager), type part of their name in the field and select the user from the presented list to insert their credentials and signature on the letter.

Show print settings – these are standard by default for envelope size, delivery method etc and should not normally require user maintenance or changes.

Override Print setting and generate local copy – if you see this tickbox, this will NOT send the documents out via Print Provider, but will batch the documents up onto a Request as a PDF zip file attached to the building instead. This scenario will be used if there is a requirement for the documents to be printed and posted or hand delivered at a local location by a third party, e.g Property Manager at their office, or Site staff at the property etc etc or in the unlikely event the Print Provider service is down.

*For Latcham Settings – read “Print & Dispatch settings”.  Anywhere you see Latcham just think of print & dispatch

Adding Additional Attachments - drag any additional document attachments into the area panel, or click button to open a file location window and navigate to the saved location of your attachment.

Preview PDF – IMPORTANT - if you have this option, always preview the PDF with the button and CHECK the details on the letter – this is imperative to ensure your letter looks correct before release, as once released this will immediately transmit to Print Provider. You can preview and adjust the document as many times as required by adjusting content in the Additional email text field.

 

 

Once all fields are complete and Preview PDF is passed, select the and note the warning:

The batch will release to the recipients' online accounts and email alerts will be sent and letters will be sent to Print Provider portal.

 

3. Check your Print providers post portal – once the button has been pressed - log onto the Print Provider portal and check documents have been successfully received and have passed the Print Provider requirements for dispatch. Check and release any failures for foreign postcodes etc., as necessary. If documents fail due to attachment formatting etc., then you will need to remove them from the portal, resynchronise documents from ACCOUNTING PACKAGE and reattach an appropriately correctly formatted document – BUT try to avoid this wherever possible by applying correctly formatted documents in the first instance.

 

Online v Offline Users

It’s important to understand whether a user is considered to be online or offline because this has a bearing on whether they will receive paper or electronic documents.

Do email preferences have a bearing on this???

Publish Actions

When a batch has been published…

• Emails may be sent to online users - those with an email address

• The documents become available online in the users eComms Document vault

• Cover letters may be generated

• A request may be generated with a Zip of documents that need printing

• Documents may be sent to a 3rd party print provider API for printing (example - Latchams)

• The data gateway eBilling Document Downloader plugin may download documents for printing

• A Receipt Report becomes available on the Select Action menu for the batch

Publish Email

Requires eCommunications emails enabled privilege.

All tenants with an email address are sent the email (depending on their preferences they can also receive paper copies of the documents).

 

Document Vault

Tenants have two ways to access eCommunications documents that have been published. Documents that have not been read are marked as “NEW”.

Per Unit

Settings & Account Info > Your properties tab > Unit > eCommunications Documents

Per Building

Unread eCommunications marker in the page header (/EBilling/DocumentTableFull)

 

 

Request Zip

Requires eCommunications Download Print Documents privilege.

A request is created assigned to the user that published the batch, with a zip attached with all the documents to print.

A cover letter is included if the checkbox is ticked when published.

Print API (Latchams)

Latchams is one of the external company we integrate with to send documents for print and posting. You can sign-in to Latchams to see the documents that have arrived from Dwellant.

For Latchams-

A background job is created on publish, and it creates cover letters and creates a job for each “letter” that needs printing and sending which sends the data to Latchams. The “letter” front page contains the address correctly positioned so that it can be read by Latchams. Normally this will be the generated cover letter. The subsequent pages are all the documents in the batch for the Tenant. If there are multiple contacts for the Tenant, only one “letter” will be generated for them. The documents shown in the users vault should match what is sent to Latchams.

10 minutes later a job runs to check status of print queue. If any of the jobs have failed to send the documents to Latchams than a request is created to alert customer service. On the Batches page a Retry button becomes available for the Managing agent to resubmit them to Latchams.

eBilling Document Downloader Plugin

This data gateway plugin downloads eComms documents that have been published to the customers' local network. Managing agents can then send these to print as they wish.

Documents are downloaded into three folders:

 

Receipt Report

Once a batch has been published the receipt report can be downloaded via the Select Action menu. The report will show when tenants have read the documents.

Merge

It is now possible to Merge multiple batches into a single batch. To do this the privilege Allow Batch Merge privilege must be enabled.

Only batches in the same building can be merged.

When batches are merged:

• The first batch is nominated as the 1st Batch

• All documents form subsequent batches are moved to the 1st Batch

• All subsequent batches are deleted

The 1st Batchcan now be published. This batch may contain documents with multiple print codes. The documents can be sent to print provider and each user will get a single print regardless of the print codes.

If a user has multiple documents with multiple codes, if ANY should be printed then ALL will be printed.

 

Batch Errors

There are 2 possible error messages that can come up when batches are delivered from the accounting package.

Error	Cause	Resolution
Batch with Errors!!	Mean the batch has arrived incorrectly. If there are no unit users for the document - so a document does not match any users for the building	Check the user data is loaded correctly. Look at specific units/users to resolve - check view of users is updated and check in accounting package.
Batch with Error!!	Any exception thrown during the upload process. Files are empty (zero byte files) If print control code is Null If the external lease ID is Null and the External Unit ID is null If the External Unit ID is not null Any file error Any Dwellant program error	Check the documents actually contain a proper PDF (open a PDF file) Check the user data on Dwellant matches the Accounting data (random cross section) checking unit and tenants against the filename. There may be an access control error if there have been changes to the folder we are accessing A bug/exception in Dwellant In Summary: 1. Check the files have stuff. 2. Check the unit/users match. 3. Finally contact Dwellant to check for an exception
Batch Crash	Means the document upload is in progress - but we have not received anything for 15 minutes. Usually an accounting system crash on creating documents	The Managing agent needs to check there is no issue at their end, and if there is not delete the batch and restart