Overview of Correspondence

Correspondence refers to the ability to generate pre-defined letters, directed towards customers or other career managers, based upon actions completed within OSST.  Because many customers share similar case characteristics, OSST includes a mail merge function.  Mail merge allows for creating letters in bulk.  OSST also includes the ability to maintain correspondence templates.

Common Terminology used with Correspondence:

• Correspondence - system generated letter directed to an individual customer or other career manager.

• Locally Defined Correspondence - letters generated by OSST that may be defined by local workforce boards as a local standard and uploaded to OSST for generation when a trigger is encountered.

• Mail Merge - ability to retrieve a listing of customers from OSST based upon common case characteristics and generate the same letter for each customer listed using MSWord.

• Primary Mailing Address - the address located in the upper portion of the Contact Information page, typically this is the address received from the FLORIDA system via a nightly batch interface.

• Queue - a temporary holding area for correspondence to be printed at a later time.

• rtf file - a rich text file format, OSST correspondence is based upon this common format considered standard across all local workforce boards.

• Trigger - a specific action taken by a user of OSST within the system that has associated correspondence .

• Variable - a piece of information contained in OSST that is used to define case specific information contained in correspondence.

What is required in order to fully utilize the correspondence capabilities within OSST?

Your computer must be connected to a printer via a local area network (LAN) or a local printer (direct connection between PC and printer).  MSWord is required to support printing and creating correspondence.  MSExcel is required to download search results when processing large mail merge batches on your PC.

Most of the correspondence generated from OSST occurs when a career manager takes an action on a case that has an associated letter.  This is known as invoking a trigger.  For example, it is a common practice to send a Welfare Transition customer a Pre-penalty Counseling letter (CF-ES 2290) when pre-penalty counseling is recorded.  In OSST, when the 'Save' button is clicked while recording pre-penalty counseling, a trigger is invoked to generate the 2290 letter that includes specific information about the customer and the rationale for counseling.

Letter Generation

Once you have performed an action that will generate a letter, a pop up window is displayed.   A message appears informing you that a letter has been generated and asks you if you want to print the letter now.

When triggers are set to active by an administrator and when these triggers are encountered within the application - the associated letter is generated.  This includes retrieving the letter template (state or locally defined), retrieving variables to populate specific text within the letter (for example, customer's SSN), and combining the template with the variables to produce the final letter.  The letter is available for viewing prior to printing or queuing for printing at a later time.  

Example: Requesting Pre-Penalty Counseling

Documenting the Pre-Penalty counseling information creates a trigger for OSST.  The trigger instructs OSST to retrieve the CF-ES 2290 and also retrieve several variables contained within OSST such as: customer name, SSN, primary address, reason for counseling, etc.  These two elements of correspondence are merged together.  You are given the option to print preview the letter now or place it in a queue for printing later.  When you select 'OK' (to view the letter now), another browser instance automatically opens with the associated letter in view.  At this point you may choose to edit information contained in the letter, but this is not a required step.  

If you would like to print the letter, use your browser print button.  You must be connected to a printer for the letter to print.  If you require assistance to connect to a printer, contact your local technical support staff.  

Case Notes generated from Correspondence

When a trigger is encountered and the user decides to print the associated letter, a case note is automatically generated.  The case note includes: the name of the letter, the address used as the mailing address, the date and time the letter was printed and the user id of the logged in user.  This creates a historical record that a letter was printed, however, it does not mean that the customer received the letter nor does it imply that the letter was ever mailed.  The letter is not archived in the system for later retrieval.  For future reference, you may wish to print multiple copies to place a duplicate in the case file.  This may be useful for hearings, quality assurance audits or as a reminder of actions taken on the case.  Another way to archive printed correspondence is to save the document to a local or LAN drive.  This can be accomplished by selecting 'Save As' from the File drop down menu within the browser instance containing the letter.

In the example above, there was an option to print or queue the letter. If you choose not to print (view) the letter at that point, it will be added to a list of queued letters, updating the 'Queued Letter' hyperlink available on your OSST Desktop with the number of queued letters that exist.

To print queued letters, simply click the 'Queued Letter' hyperlink on the control panel, select the letter you wish to print or delete.  

List of Correspondence included in OSST

Below is a list of all correspondence included within OSST.  The list includes a common name for each letter, the purpose of the letter and the trigger action required to generate the letter.