Configuring Letterhead

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Older method using HEAD.HTM

Letterhead using Maintenance mode, F5, DEFINITIONS Special:PermanentLink/6482

Primary Letterhead Requirements

While setting up the letterhead for any company, NEOSYS requires the following:

  1. Exact company name to appear on invoices etc
  2. Company logo
  3. Address for letterhead
Image Format
     - Must be a *.JPG or *.GIF or *.PNG file 
     - Must be about 100 pixels high and proportionally wide with NO MARGINS or WHITE SPACES inside the file.
    ** LOGO WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED IF IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THE ABOVE FORMAT **
     - A correctly sized image MUST be created from the ORIGINAL graphic design file (eg. Photoshop PSD).
Crude resizing of image files using image editing programs is unacceptable. This is because random
re-pixelation of the edges and (especially) the text from an already pixelated image leads to an
unacceptable loss of quality.
(Click here to see why NOT to resize images for letterheads: http://userwiki.neosys.com/index.php/General_FAQ#Is_it_okay_to_resize_images_for_use_in_letterhead_for_NEOSYS_documents.3F )

General principles to get excellent letterheads

Set the letterhead aesthetically pleasing by following the below points:

  • DONT just cut and paste whatever you have been given with no care and attention to it looking nice.
  • DO balance up the lines in some clever way and avoid stretching across the whole page as far as possible
  • DO JOIN multiple lines onto one line or SPLIT lines to make full use of the vertical space that the logo height reserves in the letterhead
  • DO something nice even if you see other cases and examples done badly
  • DONT copy existing letterheads if they dont follow the above principles (unless it is known that the client specifically wants it like that)

Dynamic letterhead

NEOSYS letterhead is not designed for a specific page size or layout. It has to be highly adaptable to work on many different device types and dimensions, for example browser screen, email screen, printer landscape, printer portrait.

NEOSYS media invoices use the "date list" mode by default (instead of "date grid" mode as for schedule printouts) and therefore can fit in portrait mode but, since media schedules and plans usually must be printed in landscape mode, it is common to print media invoices in landscape mode too.

Using Preprinted Letterhead

NEOSYS output documents have an option to OMIT letterhead in order to be suitable for printing on paper that has pre-printed letterhead on it.

Usually the user will have to configure a large printer top margin in such a case to ensure that NEOSYS will not start overprinting the pre-printed letterhead. This is because there is currently no option in NEOSYS to configure the printer top margin.

Setting up letterhead in Company File

Basic concepts:

  • A letterhead consists of 1, 2, 3 or more "cells" of equal width, spread from left to right.
  • Each cell may contain an image, text, or both.
  • The alignment left, center or right, and font-size of each cell can be configured.
  • Images, e.g. logos, can be uploaded. Text, e.g. addresses, can be entered.
  • Text may contain HTML tags to allow for customisation eg bold or anything else that you can imagine.

Uses DRY principle - DONT REPEAT YOURSELF - to keep configuration clear, ease maintenance and reduce errors. Any future changes to logos and addresses will be automatically replicated everywhere necessary.

  • Logos and addresses can be shared between companies.
  • Text may contain various substitution codes like %COMPANY_NAME%, %TAX_REG_NO% etc.

Using substitution macros in letterhead text

To avoid having to make separate letterhead per company in multi-company databases, various "macros" can be inserted into letterhead text.

The macros are replaced with the corresponding values from the Company File at the time of document or report creation.

NEOSYS Support team MUST always put Tax Reg No/Company Name/Company Reg No in the Company file and NOT directly into HEAD.HTM, as it is unnecessary repetitive work and prone to errors if and when changes are required to be made.

  • %COMPANY_NAME% from the Company File
  • %COMPANY_REG_NO% from the Company File
  • %TAX_REG_NO% from the Company File
  • more options can be added on request

Example 1: Logo on left, address on right

Lettereg1.png

Example 2: Using the same image and text as another company

Letterheadeg2.png

Example 3 - Full Manual letterhead

Completely manual design of letterhead can be done in a single row/cell by placing the HTML code as Text.

Old style letterhead will automatically appear like this. It can very easily be converted manually to the new format, as and when convenient, by extracting the company name, address, font size etc from the html tags and placing them in new style letterhead configuration. Any old logo or logos should be downloaded and re-uploaded in the new configuration style.

Conversion of multi-company databases requires conversion of each company individually. Converting one company, does not automatically convert them all. Any unconverted companies will remain as they were.

Letterheadold.png

Example 4 up a "banner-style" letterhead

Use a three cell html table to store left, center and right images.

Make normally sized separate images for the left and right sides.

Make a single color image that can be resized on the fly by html to fill in the gap.

<table width=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 >
 <tr>

  <td align=left width=1%>
   <img src=EXAMPL.PNG />
  </td>

  <td>
   <img src=EXAMPC.PNG style="width:100%;height:100px" />
  </td>

  <td align=right width=1%>
   <img src=EXAMPR.PNG />
  </td>

 </tr>
</table>

Customising the letterhead for transmission certificates

“Transmission certificate” is an option on the Schedule Printout that formats the schedule printout slightly differently so that it can be used as a transmission certificate i.e. a formal document suitable for certifying that advertising has appeared correctly.

See Certificate option in Schedule printout

The letterhead of a transmission certificate can customised per media vehicle so that the agency can issue them on behalf of the media.

Media vehicle logo per vehicle can be uploaded on the Vehicle file.

Positioning address at bottom of page

This unfortunately cannot be done in NEOSYS due to lack of facility in HTML web pages or at least lack of knowledge of how to do it at the moment.

Some NEOSYS clients print their invoices on pre-printed letterhead stationary in order to get precise branding and the formality of real letterhead.

Location of images for letterhead

In order for NEOSYS documents to be converted with their images into other formats like OFFICE/PDF etc, the new program must be able to access the image by the URL embedded in the DOCUMENT.

This means that the URL in the document should be full and not relative to the document in NEOSYS.

Images could be placed on a public web site and the FULL url (omitting http: and https:) placed in the letterhead

<img src="//www.neosys.com/img/medialine.jpg" alt="medialine">

Note: Do NOT start the src with http: or https: to avoid browser questions when accessing neosys using https/http

Checking what file names are actually used for logos

  1. Get the document on screen
  2. Right click the image you want to check
  3. Choose Properties
  4. Look at “Address (URL)”. The last bit is the file name.

Location of NEOSYS HTML files

All html documents output by NEOSYS are put in the data\xxxxxxxx folder where xxxxxxxx is the database code

They are deleted automatically after about one hour