Batch Print Letters

The Print Letters page in Batch Processing gives you the ability to generate a PDF containing communications for multiple students at the same time, rather than generating them individually from each student record. This enables you to communicate with students quickly and more efficiently and allows you to set up processes for regular communication to specific populations.

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Some advantages to printing letters in batch include:

  • Efficiency of printing communications for multiple students at once: In just a few steps, you can print communications for entire groups of students, saving you the time and effort of printing each letter individually.
  • Tailored messages for each student or population: When used alongside the robust features of communication templates, sending communications in batch doesn’t have to mean sending the exact same information to all students. Each communication in the batch will be individually populated with any student-specific data or population-specific messaging you’ve set up within the template.
  • Access to a detailed results report: Once the batch process has completed, you can view a detailed results report showing you the outcome of the process, student-by-student, including any reasons why a letter was not printed.

Selection sets can be used to automate the process of sending financial aid offer communications in batch, rather than student by student, by quickly identifying those students who are ready to receive an offer letter but have not yet been sent one.

The following selection set example identifies students currently in an Awarded status who have not yet had their notification requirement completed for their current aid package.

Selection set with three rules specifying award year, tracking status, and whether the notification requirement is completed

For more information, see Creating a Selection Set.

Printing Letters in Batch

To print letters in batch, complete the following steps:

  1. Select Batch Processing in the top navigation bar to open the Batch Processing menu along the left side of the page.
  2. Expand the Communications options in the left navigation menu and select Print Letters.
  1. Choose the group of students to whom you want to send letters from the Selection Set list.
  2. Choose the academic year the letters apply to. This field determines which academic year to retrieve data points from for any student data blocks or field alias values included in the communication template.
  3. Select the communication type from the Type list.
  4. Select the communication template from the Template list.
  5. Enter the file name for the PDF. This single PDF will be an aggregate of all letters for the students included in the selected population and it will be exported to the file manager.

    Tip: Optionally, select Preview Students to view the population prior to generating the PDF. This will show you a list of students in the selection set.

Select Generate PDF to generate letters for the selected population of students.

Note: The batch print letters process in PowerFAIDS is asynchronous, meaning that you can navigate away from this page to other student records, modules, or pages, or even close PowerFAIDS completely without disrupting the batch print letters process. Once completed, a message will appear in the top right of the page letting you know the batch print letters process was completed successfully or that there was a problem, and it was unable to be completed. Either way, a results report is generated with more information.

  1. Navigate to the exported PDF in the file manager: Import/Export module > File Manager > Export folder > Communications folder.
  2. Select the Download download icon icon to download the PDF to your device to print. For more information, see Downloading an Exported File.
  1. Select Results Reports at the top right of the Print Letters page.

    Print Letters page shown with the Results Reports button highlighted at the top right of the screen

  2. Select View Report from the rightmost column of the Print Letters Results Reports table for the instance of the process you want to view.

    Results reports table is shown with the rightmost column containing the View Report links highlighted

    A window appears with detailed information on whether the field value was updated for each student and if not, the reason(s) why.

    Tip: There are many customization options available within tables in PowerFAIDS so you can use and organize the data to your liking. This includes rearranging the columns, searching the table, filtering the data, and exporting the table. For more information, see Working with Tables.