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PDF Workflow

A PDF workflow, in essence, is one that does not contain any PlanetPress Design document and only uses PDF files as data files. In most cases, this also implies the use of Metadata, as Metadata is used to establish boundaries between document, sort and sequence (split) the PDF data into different parts.

The idea is that a PDF file, because it is a formatted document in and of itself, doesn't absolutely need to go through PlanetPress Design to be processed and printed. Additionally, because of the PDF tools in PlanetPress Office and PlanetPress Production, you can easily merge, split, print and take parts of the PDF file as required.

Because we are using Metadata, however, here are a few ground rules to keep in mind while working with such workflows (these rules also apply to Metadata use in general):

• Modifying Metadata does not immediately modify the data. This is one of the benefits of Metadata because you can sort it, filter it, sequence it, add data to it, without ever modifying the data file itself. This is important because if you, for instance, filter out certain data pages from the metadata and then save your data file with the Send to Folder task, the full data file is saved, not the filtered one. This is resolved through different methods, used in the different examples below.
• Modifying data does not immediately modify the Metadata. So, if you have a PDF file with metadata and you use a PDF splitter, the metadata information would still reflect the original data, not the split. This can generally be resolved by using the Create Metadata plugin again.
• Branches, Loops and Conditions do not reset the metadata. This is important in some cases because the metadata does affect your output (see next point) and can cause confusion if not handled properly. For example, if you were to split a data file and, under a specific condition, create metadata on the file and generate a PDF, other wise print the file, you would run into this issue. When the metadata is created in the condition, it stays "active" even on the next split. If that split actually prints, it's using the metadata from the previous split, and will attempt to print the number of pages specified in the metadata. So, it may print 3 pages instead of 40, or 25 pages, the last 5 of which would be blank. The only way to get around this is to either regenerate your metadata when possible, or to use the Metadata File Management to delete the active metadata file. When doing this, metadata is ignored so the data file itself properly determines the number of pages to print.
• As a general rule, Only Input Tasks and Metadata-Related tasks modify Metadata. There are, however, a few notable exceptions:
  • Create PDF has the option to reset your metadata according to the new PDF file. In reality, Create PDF is one of the most useful tasks in PDF workflows, since it is the easiest way to make your PDF file conform to the metadata without using a PlanetPress Design document. See the Create PDF page for more information.
  • Run Script tasks can also modify metadata using the Metadata API (see Using Scripts).
  • The Barcode Scan task can add information to the existing metadata, and creates it if there is none.
  • The Capture Fields Generator, Capture Fields Processor, Get Capture Document and Find Capture Documents tasks generate their own metadata.
  • The Lookup in Microsoft® Excel® Documents enhances metadata fields with information from an Excel spreadsheet, but does not otherwise change its structure.

Examples

• Daily Sales Report from PDF Files