Author's Note:

The majority of my projects allow me to integrate some "real-world" technology with Lotus Notes/Domino to come up with some pretty seemless solutions - much like a project that I recently wrapped up where a client was looking for a Macromedia Flash-based banner to create content back in their CRM solution. The client has given authorization to use their banner as an example in this article, for which I am very thankful!

The Client

COMPANY X, a growing New Jersey-based organization offering classes and programs to teach your children second-language skills with both Spanish and Chinese courses. The company is ready to add more seats to their classroom rosters, and thus is in need of targeted marketing solutions - they need to get the word out to their potential student families that they are in open enrollment!

The Requirement

Site hosting and other technology is managed by Clearframe under the "Professional Services" group. We handle all of their technology needs from hosting their messaging solution to maintaining their website (via an in-house CMS solution). Currently, a potential student family can sign-up for additional information via the website's signup form. Their targeted marketing campaign calls for banner ads in various online parenting and NJ-local business sites, but a simple banner ad would not generate the registrations that COMPANY X was looking for. The solution: a Flash-based banner containing a simplified version of their current DHTML-based signup form that communicates potential student family information back to COMPANY X's CRM solution for review/follow-up.

The Solution

I'll start this by assuming that you know nothing about Flash, nor have it installed. That being said, you can get a 30 day trial of Flash Professional 8 here so you can play around and/or follow along with this article. I plan on taking you step-by-step through the build of this banner, so seeing the Flash client UI may help in your digestion of the materials. I'll additionally use some very basic visuals (not the higher-end visuals of the finished banner) as they may confuse those of you not familiar with Flash and thus prove distracting from the goal of this article.

We'll start on the Welcome page in the Flash client (fig. 1), and select the Advertising folder under the Create from Template section (fig. 2). We'll select the 240x400 (Rectangle) template and (selecting the text tool) add a total of four fields (name_first, name_last, phone_home, emailaddr respectively) to the page (fig. 3):

1. Field in Design Mode
2. Field Type Selector
3. Field Instance Name Input
4. "Show border around text" Field Properties option

Continue to Part 2!