Understanding Rendition and Direct Distribution

Introduction

Communication Rendition and Direct Distribution are key components of Communication Cloud Service. It enables you to generate document in required business format, such as PDF, HTML, or JSON, and reliably preview this output by your business user. Based on the parameters received in the request from your organization, Communication configuration determines whether it needs to create the customer communication output using Communication Rendition and/or distribute it using Direct Distribution. The clear separation of communication output creation and distribution processes enhances maintainability, version control, and auditability. This results in improved operational agility and customer engagement.

Communication Rendition

Communication Rendition helps you to configure and generate business communication, such as invoices, account statement and so on, based on the associated Communication Package containing the Document with the required Style, Layout, and personalized Content. You can generate the communication output in PDF, HTML, or JSON format.

See Creating a Communication Rendition Configuration for more details.

Communication

Communication configuration facilitates the orchestration and automation of the complete communication rendition workflow within Communication Cloud Service. Once the Communication Rendition generates the required output, Direct Distribution service within Communication configuration manages the inclusion of that output in the base64 code format within the response of the REST call. This allows your organization to preview communications, such as statements, confirmations, or receipts, and directly viewed by your business or support teams with minimal manual intervention.

See Creating a Communication Configuration for more details.

Example:

Your organization wants to automate the process of previewing the monthly PDF Bill generation of a customer based on the changes happening in your system. This PDF can be viewed by your business users when your system consumes and presents the produced base64 code data of the generated communication.

Let us see how Communication Cloud Service helps in this scenario:

You need to perform the following configurations:
  1. Communication Package – Create a Communication Package configuration that defines the template, style, layout and customized content for each customer, including details such as customer name, address, bill details, amount due and so on.
  2. Communication Rendition – Create a Communication Rendition configuration for customer billing statements associating it to the respective Marketing Company. You can create multiple Versions to handle layout changes and branding updates over time. Associate the Version to Communication Package for PDF Rendition.
  3. Communication Configuration – Create a Communication configuration where you need to define the sequence of process execution in the Contextualized Table. The sequence is first, assemble and create PDF bill using Communication Rendition. Then include the PDF Bill output as part of the REST call response to be consumed by your system for presenting the information to your business users.

Execution Flow

When your organization sends a request, the Communication configuration initiates the process and identifies the request to create and distribute the PDF bill. It triggers Communication Rendition configuration to assemble personalized customer Bill and generate it in PDF format. This generated output is passed to Direct Distribution, which includes the output as part of the REST call response. You can present these bills to your organization's portal where your users can view the bill.