InDesign Client Tags
Attribute Ordering
The numbering of attributes should follow the format “00”.
So “Attribute01” is correct whereas “Attribute1” can cause issues.
We recommend you start numbering from 1 on each page. This has some distinct advantages, because if you have several pages with 6 products on each page you can simply duplicate the page each time.
This principle extends to tables of variants. If you’ve spent ages making some beautiful table with space for 12 variants… simply copy and paste the same table for your other products and relabel the table or text box for the new product. Again this saves loads of time!
Finally consider storing tables and product styles in a Library in InDesign, this allows you to quickly style up a page using your pre-designed objects.
Inline Tags
You can add any attribute to your text with the syntax;
[attribute##]
Where attribute is the name of the attribute and ## is the number of the product on the page in two digits.
e.g. “[Heading03]” would replace the tag with the “Heading” attribute of the 3rd product you export
Inline Variant Tags
You may choose to arrange your products as “groups” and “variants”. If you do, each product group can contain multiple variants, each with multiple variant attributes. These attributes are typically things like “Color”, “Size” and “Price” all under one set of group attributes like “Heading” (see above)
These variant attributes work like the above tags and follow the syntax;
[variantattribute##]
Where variantattribute is the name of the variant attribute and ## is the number of the variant product for that group in two digits.
e.g. “[Color03]” would replace the tag with the “Color” attribute of the 3rd variant product you export for a given product group.
However because you could have multiple groups on a page and each one has its own variant tags, the text frame in which the tags exist must have a Script Label indicating the group number.
So for example if we had a text frame labeled “[02]” with a tag of “[Color01]” inside it that would be replaced with the 1st Color attribute of the 2nd group.
Tagged Text Frames
Instead of Inline Tags, you can get the InDesign Client software to update the contents of a Text Frame with an attribute. You do this by labelling the Text Frame using the Script Label function in InDesign.
This means that every attribute has to have it’s own Text Frame, but it gives the distinct advantage that it can be updated or refreshed with new data after the first export. Because the frame is labelled this allows the system to replace the contents but retain the label allowing refreshing and updating of data.
The labels follow the same syntax as above but instead of typing the tag into the text you apply it to the Script Label
[attribute##]
Where attribute is the name of the attribute and ## is the number of the product on the page in two digits.
e.g. A label of “[Heading03]” would replace the contents of the text frame with the “Heading” attribute of the 3rd product you export
Once you’ve exported data to a tagged text frame the label will automatically change. This allows the system to update and refresh it with new data. The label will change from a format of [attribute##] to[attribute-XXXXX] where XXXXX is the unique ID of the product. It also allows to rearrange the data on the page or pages and the system will still update it.
e.g. A label of “[Heading03]” would change to something like “[Heading-5fbcfc0a096f091b83c4a9]”
Tagged Tables
There’s two ways of tagging a table. You can either highlight the entire table and label it with a number of the product or you can place the table into a text frame and label the text frame by the product.
Labelling the whole table
Labelling the text frame containing the table
Working this way, (where each table on a page is essentially identical apart from the either the label of the table or the label of the text frame it is in) means that you can quickly and easily copy and paste tables to reuse with other products without having to redesign, re-tag or re-label each cell.
Tables can be stored in an InDesign Library and dragged onto the page as and when required, quickly assigned a product number and then they’re ready to use.
Within each table you can replicate the tagging seen above for the individual cells.
You can either have Inline Tags in a cell, (just type the attribute you want to appear using the format as above), or you can label the cell like you would a Tagged Text Frame. See below for examples of both ways of working.
Tagging the contents of cells
Labelling the cells
There is a big advantage to using Labelled Cells instead of Tagged Cells in that you can update and refresh the data on subsequent exports and again the system will change the format of the label to show the product ID.
e.g. A label of “[Color03]” would change to something like “[Color-5fbcfc0a096f091b83c4a9]”
Tagged Images
Images can be tagged on the page using Script Labels, in the same format as Tagged Text Frames.
[attribute##]
Where attribute is the name of the media association attribute and ## is the number of the product on the page in two digits.
e.g. A label of “[Picture03]” would replace the contents of the Graphic Frame with the 1st media asset belonging to “Picture” attribute of the 3rd product you export
You can also place multiple images onto a product. In this case use the format
[attribute##-XX]
Where attribute is the name of the media association attribute and ## is the number of the product on the page in two digits and XX is the number of the image in the selection of associated media belonging to that product.
e.g. A label of “[Picture04-02]” would replace the contents of the Graphic Frame with the 2nd media asset belonging to “Picture” attribute of the 4th product you export.
The system will automatically change the format of the label to show the product ID to allow the update and refresh the image on subsequent exports.
e.g. A label of “[Image03]” would change to something like “[Image-5fbcfc0a096f091b83c4a9]”
Boolean Images
Sometimes you want an image to appear on the page based on a boolean attribute. For example you might have an attribute named “New” or “Sale” and you want a “flash” to appear on the product to show this.
To make this work simply draw a Graphic Frame and add a script label in the following format
[attribute##-path]
Where attribute is the name of the boolean attribute, ## is the number of the product on the page and path is the path to the graphic you want to use entered in OSX format.
e.g. “[New01-Image Server:Flashes:new.png]” would replace the contents of the Graphic Frame with a PNG file called “new.png” at a location of “Image Server:Flashes:” if the boolean attribute “New” is true on the 1st product. If the product isn’t set to true the system will leave the Graphic Frame empty.
The system will automatically change the format of the label to show the product ID to allow the update and refresh the image on subsequent exports. This is especially useful if the status of the boolean attribute changes. i.e. A product that was “new” last time is no longer “new”, therefore the system will remove the graphic.
e.g. A label of “[New01-Image Server:Flashes:new.png]” would change to something like “[New-5fbcfc0a096f091b83c4a9-Image Server:Flashes:new.png]”.
Boolean Text Frames
Sometimes you want a text frame to appear on the page based on a boolean attribute. For example you might have an attribute named “Extra Info” and this determines if you show some attributes contained within the text frame or not.
To make this work simply draw a Text Frame and add a script label in the following format
[attribute##]
Where attribute is the name of the boolean attribute, ## is the number of the product on the page.
e.g. “[Extra Info10]” would remove the Text Frame if the boolean attribute Extra Info was not ticked.
Barcodes
Any attribute can be “barcoded” and the InDesign Client will either try and guess which barcode to use based upon the contents of the attribute or you can specify specifically which format you would like. The supported formats are:
- UPC-A
- UPC-E
- EAN8
- EAN13
- Code39
- Code128A
- Code128B
- Code128C
To make barcodes, simply label a graphic box in the same way you’d label it for images, except instead of using square brackets “[” and “]” to wrap the attribute you use the pipe “|” character. So for example if I had an attribute called “Barcode” and I wanted to put the 1st product’s barcode into a graphic box, I would label it “|Barcode01|”
The system will then examine the value of the attribute and let’s say, for example, was a 13 digit number, the system would automatically assume it was an EAN13 barcode you wanted. It will create a PNG image for the barcode and place it in the box. If the value is non-numeric or doesn’t look like it conforms to a barcode standard it will revert to Code128B.
Rather than let the system make an educated guess at which format you require, you can also specify precisely what format to use. So using the example above, if we didn’t want the 13 digit number to be EAN13 but Code128A, the format for the label would be “|Barcode01-Code128A|”. Just add a hyphen and then the format, spelt exactly as they are above in the list.
