We are reviewing the Connect product and are coming from PP7. We are confused. Hoping someone can take pity on me and provide a basic explanation of how to use multiple XML fields that point to a folder on our network that contains PDF files that need to be merged into the print-stream with xml data on top of it.
The Connect examples don’t really explain this where the images are not in a resource per se.
Thank you,
Hi ricks,
The approach that you’ll want to take is going to depend on different factors.
For one: whether it is a static or variable number of PDFs being merged into the print stream.
Here is an article explaining the basics on how to configure a dynamic image using a data field:
https://support.uplandsoftware.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=230206175246867
If it’s a static number: then you’ll be best off creating a section for each PDF, each containing a dynamic image. The multiple sections get merged into one print stream.
If it’s a dynamic number: then you’ll need to use section cloning as a way to create a variable number of copies of your section. This article gives an explanation on how to do that:
https://support.uplandsoftware.com/portal/app/portlets/results/viewsolution.jsp?solutionid=230831083438180
When you have access to the name of those PDF files in your data you could use the Dynamic Section Background option to point to the respective files on disk and dynamically set them as section background. This automatically creates a page for each page in the PDF.
Right click the section in the Resources panel and choose Dynamic Background. Set the Path to the folder holding your images and use the Fields controle to construct the name to the file based on your data field.
In the example above the ‘image’ fields holds the full name. In case you only have the basename you could add the file extension in the suffix field (.pdf).
Other data can be placed in a positioned boxes. Either create a box using the Positioned Box icon on the toolbar or drag and drop a data field with the Ctrl key pressed. This creates a positioned box with the placeholder for the data field (expression).
Hope this helps,
Erik
