Did You Know you can link a single soft proofing project to multiple parts?
Creating and configuring soft proofing projects personalized products can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with:
- Products with many variables
- More advanced settings like Triggers and Conditional Variables
- Multiple data sources and global form instances
That’s why, in certain cases, using a single project for multiple similar parts can save significant setup time. It also simplifies updates, allowing you to revise one template instead of many.
There are several criteria to consider when determining whether it makes sense to use the same soft proofing project for multiple products.
Important criteria include:
- The products are the same size signature (ie, all Business Cards that are 3.5″ x 2″)
- The products use a similar set of variables. NOTE: Do not dismiss products right away that may have one or two variables that are different, as there is the ability within the Propago variables settings to hide or alter a variable to use in different instances.
- The products need to have the same workflow usage. (ie, all products have Production Files with marks and Bleeds, or all products are e-Delivered with a JPEG being the deliverable file.)
Benefits to You
- Save time by utilizing a single soft proofing project for multiple parts.
- Update multiple personalized products at once by changing a single soft proofing project connected to multiple parts.
How It Works
There are a variety of ways to set up a project to support multiple projects. Let’s use a simple Flyer Use-Case for this discussion:
Say you have ten to fifteen 8.5″ x 11′ 1-page flyers that have different content subjects but all have the same variable contact information block in the lower right corner. Inside Pageflex, you would set on the template using one of the flyers to lay out the variable fields in their placements.
Then you can create a Plain Text Variable (ie, I like to use the variable name ‘SKU’ as I will be populating it with the actual SKU field to will be in the Propago system for each of the products.)
Next, create a variable as an Image Rule (ie, SKU_Rule). For the conditions of this rule, you will use the SKU variable and provide the value (ie, the Display SKU) and then find the appropriate Image file for the back content as the Result. Repeat as needed for all of the other flyer products.
Finally, to complete he template set up, you will need to assign the back image on your template to this Image Rule Variable.
So now after saving your template project and package, you will upload it into the Propago system and go through the same procedure as any other project, but when you get to the Variable List you will want to change the SKU variable from a User variable to a System variable.
You will not see the SKU variable in the general project variable settings, but if you navigate down to the part section, and after adding all of the applicable parts to this project, you will be able to click on the Manage Variables button for each of the parts.
This will navigate you to the similar variable settings page with a few differences. First you will notice a section at the top called System Variables with your SKU variable as the sole field in the section. Also you may notice the left column named Override. For the SKU field you will enter the same exact value you gave in the Image Variable Rule for that particular part. Also with the overrides, you have the ability to control certain variables for that specific product. Say, one of the flyers doesn’t use the phone and fax fields. You can click the override checkbox and hide these variables for that product and the use user will not see them when proofing from the portal.
There is a simple use-case but using these similar techniques, you can use more complex elements like area templates to control multiple products all within one soft proofing project.
If you have any questions about these methods or features within soft proofing, please contact support@propago.com, and we will be able to help you out.
