Print Layouts

Print layouts let you print documents from Populi that use your school's formatting (fonts, text sizes, logos, etc.). Populi includes a number of built-in layouts; you can modify these or add your own in Communications > Print Layouts (see below). Because they're finicky and technical, most of our customers get help from Populi Support when setting up custom layouts (but there's no reason a skilled user at your school couldn't handle it himself).

An example of how it works

Using a letter template and a mailing list, you prepare a printed letter to be sent to Alumni donors. Here's what happens:

1. When creating the print job from the mailing list, you choose the "Official College Stationery" print layout, which includes your school's logo and address.
2. Populi replaces the {!BODY!} variable in the layout with the text from the letter template (which itself contains variables for senders and recipients).
3. Populi produces files based on the layout for every recipient in the mailing list.
4. There are 100 people on the mailing list, and so 100 unique files are generated, each one customized for each recipient but otherwise identical to the other 99 files.
5. The print job is found in the Print Queue, where you go to generate a PDF of the letters and also print envelopes.

What kinds of layouts are available?

A picture is worth a thousand words (or, in this case, 40):

Working on layouts yourself

If you're comfortable working with HTML and CSS, you are free to modify built-in layouts and add your own. If you're not, just ask us to take care of it!

To create an HTML layout:

1. Click Add a Print Layout.
2. Give it a name.
3. Select the type of layout—your selection here determines what variables you can use and where in Populi you'll be able to use this layout.
4. Check to make this the default layout when exporting this kind of document.
5. Click Save.

After creating the HTML Layout, find it in the list and click to go to its page, where you can edit it, preview it, etc. Make sure you're familiar with Populi's HTML layouts before you start coding!