We've been getting a lot of great feedback on the merge codes available in VIP Professional. Clearly, merge codes are a very, very popular feature.

We are planning on dramatically expanding the range and scope of merge codes available to you -- and to making them even more flexible. Some of what we are working on includes:

• Building in an import / export capability. This is a highly requested feature and one we've had in our development 'roadmap' for a long time. This will allow us to post new templates for you, of course, but more importantly it means that you can use 3rd-party templates (sharing those from other users, from your designers, and ones we created).
• Adding support for functions. For example, an 'if' function would allow you to say "if the Reservation Type is a 'Private Party' insert some party-related text, otherwise insert some other, generic, text". Another function might allow you to control the formatting of information (such as a date), or to filter the information in a listing (such as inserting a listing of reservations that have more than 30 guests). Functions will dramatically change the way you can use VIP Professional's notifications and confirmations / reminders. What is already a strong marketing tool will become even more capable - stay tuned on this one; we think you'll like it!
• Adding support for snippets -- pieces of text that you can create (including more merge codes, if desired) that are inserted by the merge code. For example, you might create a snippet to be used as the footer for every message you create. This allows you to update all the footers in all of your templates by making a single change, in one place. Another snippet might have sales blurbs that can be used in multiple message templates. And so on.
• Adding more 'summary' merge codes -- we get a lot of positive feedback about how much you like being able to create your own reports interactively and having them automatically circulated. We're looking to add a lot more functionality to the summary codes.
• And much more -- there's a lot to do!

There is no timeline on any of the above yet. Once we're close, we'll announce more details.

What merge-related features interest you? What would you like us to add? Let us know -- your feedback would be very much welcomed.