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3. Build the data mapping workflow.
A data mapping workflow always starts with the Preprocessor step and ends with the
Postprocessor step. You can add as many steps as you like and edit the Data Model of
the extracted data as required. See "Data mapping workflow" on page221 and "The Data
Model" on page267.
What's next?
Use the data mapping configuration in the Designer module to create templates for
personalized customer communications. To learn more, see "The Designer" on page439.
In Workflow, a data mapping configuration can be used to extract data. The extracted data can
then be merged with a Designer template to generate output in the form of print, email or a web
page. See Workflow and "OL Connect tasks" on page181.
Data mapping configurations
A data mapping configuration file contains the information necessary for data mapping: the
settings to read the source file (Delimiter and Boundary settings), the data mapping workflow
with its extraction instructions ('Steps'), the Data Model and any imported data samples.
Data mapping configurations are used in the Designer to help add variable data fields and
personalization scripts to a template. In fact, only a Data Model would suffice (see
"Importing/exporting a Data Model" on page268). The advantage of a data mapping
configuration is that it contains the extracted records to merge with the template, which lets you
preview a template with data instead of field names.
It is also possible to generate output of a data mapping configuration directly from the Designer
(see "Generating output" on page1447).
Ultimately data mapping configurations are meant to be used by "OL Connect tasks" on
page181 (i.e. the Execute Data Mapping task or All in One task) in OL Connect Workflow
processes, to extract data from a particular type of data file. Typically the extracted data is then
merged with a template to generate output in the form of print, email and/or a web page. To
make this happen, the data mapping configuration as well as the template and any Print
Presets have to be sent to Workflow; see "Sending files to Workflow" on page446.
Alternatively these files can be sent to the Connect Server directly; see "Sending files to
Connect Server or to another server" on page447.
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