Creating a transmittal template

For most organizations, the document templates provided with the Meridian Transmittal Management Module will be sufficient to meet their needs:

• IC Transmittal: Uses the proprietary BlueCielo briefcase format. Use this template to create transmittals or submittals that are compatible with the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise, BlueCielo TeamWork, and BlueCielo View briefcase commands. The briefcase file format does not employ any data compression.
• RarTransmittal: Uses the standard RAR archive format used by WinRAR. The RAR file format produces slightly smaller files than does the ZIP file format.
• Zip Transmittal: Uses the standard ZIP archive format used by Windows and WinZIP. The ZIP file format produces highly compressed files suitable for electronic data transmission.

However, additional templates that use alternative archive file formats may be defined if the third-party program that uses the archive file format meets the following requirements:

• It must provide a command-line interface.
• It must provide command-line options for adding and extracting files.
• It must accept command-line parameters for the destination folder and file name.
• It may accept additional command-line parameters, such as for an optional password.

To create a custom template:

1. Create an empty archive file with the third-party program.
2. Add the file as a template to an existing transmittal or submittal document type. For more information, see the BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise Configuration Guide.
3. Define the file format on the Briefcases page of the Application Link Settings in Configurator:

1. Add the new file format name to the BriefcaseFormats setting in the [Settings] section.
2. Add a new section to the text using the new file format name in square brackets. See the existing file format definitions [zip] and [rar] for examples.
3. Type command lines for the AddTo and Extract settings of the new file format that specify the required options.

4. Test the new file format with your custom template until it successfully adds and extracts documents from transmittals or submittals made from your custom templates.