Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post Reply
RytisT
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:18 pm

Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by RytisT »

Hello good people.

I want to make a flow with multiple "pitstop server" elements, but at the end, I want to have only one report to give to client.

Hopefully this makes sense. I know this is possible with "opaque pickup" element, problem is if I pick up data with opaque, from first preflight, same file won't go into the second preflight element, I assume because it's structure is different or something?

This is how I made it: http://prntscr.com/kw8hhf

Can anyone tell me, how is it supposted to be set up to work correctly? Thanks.
jan_suhr
Advanced member
Posts: 586
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 1:12 pm
Location: Nyköping, Sweden

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by jan_suhr »

The App "Take Notes" can do it for you. It can pick up meta data along the way in a flow and combine it in to one dataset.

https://www.enfocus.com/en/appstore/product/take-notes
Jan Suhr
Color Consult AB
Sweden
=============
Check out my apps
RytisT
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:18 pm

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by RytisT »

jan_suhr wrote: Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:47 pm The App "Take Notes" can do it for you. It can pick up meta data along the way in a flow and combine it in to one dataset.

https://www.enfocus.com/en/appstore/product/take-notes
Isn't this is possible with opaque pickup?
jan_suhr
Advanced member
Posts: 586
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 1:12 pm
Location: Nyköping, Sweden

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by jan_suhr »

Sort of, but with the app you can select the parts of the report you need.
Jan Suhr
Color Consult AB
Sweden
=============
Check out my apps
RytisT
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:18 pm

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by RytisT »

Up.

Anyone?
Padawan
Advanced member
Posts: 358
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:48 pm
Location: Belgium
Contact:

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by Padawan »

In summary, you have multiple PitStop Server elements, each creating reports and you want to send only one report to your customer.

Can you expand on what you mean by "report"? Since you are talking about opaque pickup and not xml pickup or something like that I think you mean a report in PDF format? It should be possible to use merge PDF tool to merge both PDF reports together to one report. The obvious downside is that it won't look good.

An alternate route is to have PItStop Server create XML reports and attach those as dataset. Then you can do one of these:
1 use Switch variables in the mail body to get all the errors from PItStop Server element 1 and PItStop Server element 2 (or any other specific pieces of information from both reports)

2 Use the take notes App or another dedicated script to combine the information of both reports in a text or xml file which you can send.

2b Once you have an xml file where the reports are combined in a nicely structured way you could create your own kind of PDF report out of this. Possible routes are XSLT-FO, filling in PDF or Indesign templates, ...

Using opaque pickup you can attach two different reports to one job Switch. Please note that this doesn't mean that the information of both reports is merged in one file. It is not merged in any way. It simply attaches two reports to one job as datasets.
RytisT
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:18 pm

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by RytisT »

^ Thanks a lot. I got it working with XML Pickups, downside is, I have a different amount of errors/fixes every time, not sure how can I point out so that switch just "prints" out all the messages for fixes/errors, because if I link 10 and I get 20 with next file, it's a no-no.

Also, how would it work with Annotated PDF? How can I collect all the data from previous preflight, and to have one final preflight to output a annotated PDF with current and earlier preflight reports? Any ideas? Thanks.
Padawan
Advanced member
Posts: 358
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:48 pm
Location: Belgium
Contact:

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by Padawan »

Using a TextIndexed variable you can get a Switch variable return multiple pieces of information if they are found using one xpath.

Are you using the v3 PitStop Server xml report? If so, then this Switch variable should do the trick:
[Metadata.TextIndexed:Path="/EnfocusReport/PreflightReport/Errors/PreflightReportItem/Message",Dataset="report",Model="XML",Separator="</br>"]

It will place </br> at the end of each error. So if you use this in the body of a html mail you will get a new line for each error.

When I tested this the variable preview didn't work correctly (it showed only one preflight error) but when I ran the flow itself it worked okay. I'll report it to Enfocus. (Edit: after some further testing I can't reproduce this anymore, it always works as expected. Maybe I made a mistake earlier)

It's also complicated when you want to merge annotated reports. You'll have to extract all the comments and bookmark information from all the annotated reports and then place them together on one report. This is most likely possible using custom scripting in Acrobat.
RytisT
Member
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:18 pm

Re: Combining reports from seperate preflights?

Post by RytisT »

Padawan wrote: Thu Oct 04, 2018 5:17 pm Using a TextIndexed variable you can get a Switch variable return multiple pieces of information if they are found using one xpath.

Are you using the v3 PitStop Server xml report? If so, then this Switch variable should do the trick:
[Metadata.TextIndexed:Path="/EnfocusReport/PreflightReport/Errors/PreflightReportItem/Message",Dataset="report",Model="XML",Separator="</br>"]

It will place </br> at the end of each error. So if you use this in the body of a html mail you will get a new line for each error.

When I tested this the variable preview didn't work correctly (it showed only one preflight error) but when I ran the flow itself it worked okay. I'll report it to Enfocus. (Edit: after some further testing I can't reproduce this anymore, it always works as expected. Maybe I made a mistake earlier)

It's also complicated when you want to merge annotated reports. You'll have to extract all the comments and bookmark information from all the annotated reports and then place them together on one report. This is most likely possible using custom scripting in Acrobat.
You're a life saver, thanks for that code. Although, for me it shows all the errors, works correctly (Like you said, it didn't for you.)

Thanks again! :)
Post Reply