Stylesheets

Some of the export processes output an XML data file, but in other cases XSLT stylesheets are used to transform the XML into formatted correspondence. Each stylesheet contains standard text and formatting along with placeholders for the data from the output file.

For example, the stylesheet for a delinquency notice would contain standard text stating that an account has become delinquent, and would also indicate where to insert each individual customer’s name, address, account number, and so on. The correspondence engine can generate a notice for each customer by inserting the customer’s information in the appropriate places in the stylesheet.

The stylesheets are relatively straightforward. XSLT is a standard technology for transforming XML documents into other types of documents, so it won’t be discussed in any detail here. Most importantly for correspondence generation, you can apply multiple XSLT stylesheets to the same output files. For example, you might have separate stylesheets for emails and letters, and you can also use different stylesheets to generate correspondence in different languages.