Configuring the Publication Overview Application in Content Station Aurora

The Publication Overview Application allows users to see a general overview of how far the production process of a print publication has progressed by showing all layouts of a publication and their Workflow Status.

Various aspects of it can be configured, as described below.

Reversing the reading order

By default, pages are displayed from left-to-right, starting with page 1.

For those publications that require it, pages can be displayed in reverse order and from right-to-left.

This is controlled on Brand level by enabling the option "Reading Order Reversed" on the Brand Maintenance page in Enterprise Server.

Example: Here, pages 2 and 3 are a spread: Standard reading order: 1, 2-3, 4, and so on. Reversed reading order: 4, 3-2, 1, and so on.

Removing unused page thumbnails from the File Transfer Folder

Info: This information applies to Content Station 11.4 or higher.

The thumbnails that are used for displaying the page layouts in the Publication Overview are stored in the File Transfer folder of Enterprise Server.

To make sure that the File Transfer folder is regularly cleaned up, it is recommended to verify that the Enterprise Server Job named TransferServerCleanUp is active and scheduled to run on a regular basis. For more information, see Working with Enterprise Server Jobs.

Note: In Content Station versions 11.3 and earlier, this clean-up was triggered by the Publication Overview itself when a specific action was performed by the user. However, the Publication Overview had to wait for this task to be completed before it could continue, thereby often resulting in slow performance. This action has therefore been removed since Content Station 11.4, meaning that the cleanup action needs to be run as a separate step.

Adding a custom use to the Publication Overview flag

When Content Station is used together with a planning system, layouts that need attention are marked by the planning system with a red flag. This flag appears in the thumbnail of the layout in the Publication Overview Application of Content Station.

A custom use for this flag can also be configured. When triggered, the flag is colored yellow.

For more information, see Adding a custom use to the Publication Overview flag in Content Station Aurora.

Adding custom integrations

Custom integrations can be added to the Publication Overview to make functionality such as the following possible:

• Printing the full Publication Overview to PDF
• Download all layouts as a PDF

The integrations appear in the form of actions in the menu located at the top right of the Publication Overview (the triple dot button). Creating sub-menus is also supported.

Actions and sub-actions can have an icon and/or a label and can be separated by a line.

For more information, see Adding custom integrations to the Publication Overview of Content Station Aurora.

Preventing page previews from being used as thumbnails

Info: This feature requires Content Station 11.18 or higher.

By default, when the zoom level exceeds the maximum size of the page thumbnails (by default set to 255 pixels), the Publication Overview grid view loads the page previews instead of the page thumbnails. Because the file size of page previews can be quite large, performance (loading times) can be negatively affected.

To prevent the Publication Overview grid view from loading page previews (even when the maximum thumbnail size is exceeded), add or enable the following option:

• Prevent page previews from being used as thumbnails

This option can be set in the Management Console (requires Content Station 11.32 or higher) or directly in the configserver.php file of Enterprise Server as a Server Feature.

Tip: (For Enterprise Server 10.1 or higher only) Easily manage and configure settings of all configuration files by adding them to a single configuration file.

Note: To make sure that the page thumbnails do not become too pixelated by zooming in on them too much, limit the maximum zoom level by setting the PublicationOverviewMaxGridViewZoom option (also as a Server Feature, see the comments in the configserver.php file).

Controlling the maximum zoom level for page thumbnails

Info: This feature requires Content Station 11.32 or higher.

The Zoom slider can be used for increasing and decreasing the size of the page thumbnails. The default zoom level ranges from a minimum of 25 pixels to a maximum of 15360 pixels.

Depending on the zoom range, one of the following files are used for displaying the pages:

• Between 25 and 255 pixels: small thumbnails
• Between 256 and 15360 pixels: large page previews

The default value is 500 pixels.

On some systems, the large page previews can take time to load, resulting in a negative effect on the performance of the Publication Overview application.

To prevent the large page previews from being loaded — and thereby improving the performance — the zoom level can be restricted to the maximum size of the small thumbnails (255 pixels) by adding or enabling the following option:

• Control the maximum zoom level for page thumbnails

This option can be set in the Management Console (requires Content Station 11.32 or higher) or directly in the configserver.php file of Enterprise Server as a Server Feature.

Document history

• 20 February 2019: Updated section 'Preventing page previews from being used as thumbnails' by adding information for Content Station 11.32.
• 20 February 2019: Added section ' Controlling the maximum zoom level for page thumbnails'.
• 19 September 2018: Updated section 'Preventing page previews from being used as thumbnails' by making it clearer how and where the option should be configured.