How Do Schools and Universities Use PDF-eXPLODE to Distribute Reports and Academic Results?

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We asked a few of the many Users and this is what they said.

FROM SWITZERLAND

University of St.Gallen (HSG) 

     "The University of St.Gallen (HSG) is Switzerland’s leading business university. Internationality, practical relevance and an integrative focus have distinguished the HSG’s programs since its inception in 1898. Today, more than 8,200 students from 80 countries are enrolled in business administration, economics, law, social sciences and international affairs. HSG is consistently recognized as one of Europe’s leading business schools.

Each semester the University of St.Gallen issues around 7,000 grade notifications and 1,000 grade transcripts on paper. Currently Crystal-Report (in versions 8.5 and 9) is available for this. In a very cumbersome process, outputs from the reports were split and stored in electronic student files. From now on this process should also be electronic. For this purpose the Crystal output must be stored in student files promptly and on time. So the big output PDFs must be split to individual students.  PDF-eXPLODE offers an excellent solution for this:

1.   Install PDF-eXPLODE (one-off, around one hour)
2.   Put the necessary tag as a field in the reports (around five minutes)
3.   Use it! Files are moved to the software (window) with drag&drop.
4.   No prior experience, but a few thousand split PDFs can be produced in an hour.

Therefore each semester we will save ourselves several days’ work! The support is excellent. The software was installed and configured on my computer via a remote software which is already on the support site. The whole process was demonstrated on a report after the installation. Questions by email are mostly answered within a matter of hours or even minutes, despite the considerable time difference. - So far we have been entirely satisfied with the product and the support!  "

Jürg Kapferer

IT-Department, Service Operation

www.unisg.ch

University of St.Gallen (HSG)

Dufourstrasse 50

CH-9000 St.Gallen, SWITZERLAND

FROM NEW ZEALAND:

The New Zealand Educational Institute (Inc.), or NZEI Te Riu Roa (www.nzei.org.nz), is the union and professional association for teachers in the primary and early childhood sectors, support staff in schools and specialist education services in New Zealand. NZEI Te Riu Roa has nearly 50,000 members.

Until recently, NZEI mailed a printed publication to schools in bulk. They sent all the copies in a see-through wrapper with the school address printed on one side of an A4 sheet of paper and the list of members on the other.

When the publication was replaced with a new magazine, a new distributor was engaged. This distributor, however, could not use the label/list format, and NZEI was dependent upon the school site representatives to make sure the magazine reached the members. “Unfortunately many reps didn’t know the member names and complained that they needed the list,” explained Steve Coates, NZEI’s Senior Officer – Administration & Membership Services. “I was interested in finding a solution that would allow me to e-mail specific reports to specific people automatically.  Enter PDF-eXPLODE.”

The organization’s first job using PDF-eXPLODE encompassed creating 3,140 individual lists and emailing them overnight to the schools so the reps could reference them when the magazines arrived as well as contact the organization with any changes to the list.  Coates is creating reports with PDF-eXPLODE tags in Microsoft Access, which is the front-end to the mySQL membership database. 

"So far we have had more than 400 email responses with list changes. Clearly, with the first issue, which did not go out with a list, we received no feedback at all.  Had we used conventional mail to send the lists it would have cost us a few thousand dollars and we would not have proceeded.

It is pretty easy to use and solved a major issue for me without my having to roll my own code. The best attribute of PDF-eXPLODE from my point of view is that I can send hundreds of individual e-mails to people containing only information relevant to them -- all achieved with no additional coding on our part.”  

Steve Coates,

NZEI’s Senior Officer – Administration & Membership Services

178-182 Willis St / PO Box 466, Wellington, 6140  NEW ZEALAND

http://www.nzei.org.nz/




FROM CANADA:

"We have been using PDF-eXPLODE from 3000AD Systems in Australia for just over a year now. We are a private school in Montreal and we regularly distribute report cards and other parent communications using PDF-eXPLODE.

Our report cards are created using Crystal Reports and the PDF-eXPLODE tag is easily inserted into our reports. The PDF-eXPLODE printer quickly splits each large pdf into its individual reports then emails the individual reports to each parent. We will have one, two, or three email addresses receiving the same report and PDF-eXPLODE greatly simplifies this process for us.

The process is very quick once we click PRINT in Crystal Reports. We can also ‘explode’ or pull apart individual reports without emailing them. It has been a huge time saver!

The other major advantage of using PDF-eXPLODE is the support we have received. Our initial training was over the phone and it was thorough, using our own reports to explain. If I do have a question, response is very quick and any problems have been solved faster than I imagined. The support is really second to none.

I highly recommend PDF-eXPLODE for any organization. It is a fantastic tool! "

Brenda Montgomery

Director of Academic Innovation
Montreal, QC, CANADA

Selwyn House School

95, chemin Côte St.-Antoine | Westmount, QC H3Y 2H8 

(p) 514.931.9481 x2281 | (f) 514.931.6118

www.selwyn.ca

“Great Minds, Big Hearts...We Know Boys.”  Member CAIS, IBSC, QAIS, NAIS

FROM AUSTRALIA:

"Christ Church Grammar School, founded in 1910, is an independent Anglican day and boarding school for 1600 boys from pre-Primary to Year 12 and is located in Perth, West Australia.

A few years ago, we were looking for a way to distribute hundreds of letters to parents derived from a complex Crystal Report. The most efficient way to accomplish this task was to convert them to PDF and email them.

This is where PDFeXPLODE came to the rescue. The software was very easy to setup and the addition of simple tags in the Crystal Report allowed us to create the PDF and email them directly to parents from our school information system.

The speed improvement with our recently upgraded PDF-eXPLODE Version 4 has been phenomenal; and the new log of emailed recipients is a great addition.  The documentation is very clear and the support is nothing short of excellent. I can't recall the last time I sent a support ticket only to receive a call two minutes later with the fix to resolve the issue! 

" 

Roberto Masetti

ETL Developer

Christ Church Grammar School

Queenslea Drive, Claremont WA 6010 AUSTRALIA

www.ccgs.wa.edu.au