Overview

This page walks through one complete product: a four-page A5 event programme your customers personalise with a cover photo, their event details, a welcome message, the running order and a thank-you page. It covers the essential steps in order and links to the detailed guide for each part, so you can see how everything fits together before going deeper.

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Step-by-step

1. Design the programme in InDesign

   Start with a finished design. This programme is four A5 pages (148 x 210 mm) with a 3 mm bleed, set up as single pages rather than facing spreads: a cover, a welcome page, the running order and a back cover. It has two layers: Background holds the fixed artwork on every page and is locked, and Editable holds what the customer personalises (a cover photo frame and the text frames). Give each frame a clear name in the Layers panel and use a fixed line height rather than Auto. For documents with spreads, see Exporting Spreads using Invent.

   Locked artwork underneath, editable frames on top

   

2. Open the Infigo Invent panel

   Invent works through one panel with five tabs. Resources holds images, text and colours that variables can use. Variables holds the fields on the customer's form. Properties sets up the selected frame. Setup controls how the product behaves in MegaEdit. Export checks the template and writes the .mex file. The Export tab's summary already shows four pages. If you don't have Invent yet, see Setting up the Invent plugin for InDesign.

   The five Invent tabs, next to your design

   

3. Add a Clipart Set of cover photos

   In Resources, click Add Resource Set, type a name (here Event photos) and choose Clipart Set. Click Add Images / PDF to add the photos customers can pick for the cover, then Save. More detail: Image Variables & Clipart Resource Sets.

   Resources > Add Resource Set > Clipart Set

   

   Three cover photos in the set

   

4. Add a Text Library of welcome messages

   Click Add Resource Set again, name it Welcome messages and choose Text Library (it's on the second row of set types, so you may need to scroll down). For each option, type a Key (a short name such as Short welcome) and its Text, then click Add New Text. Tick Selecting this option will automatically create a dropdown variable for these resources and click Save. Invent creates a Dropdown variable with the same name. More detail: Text Library Resource Set and Dropdown Variables & Clipart Resource Sets.

   Choose Text Library

   

   Two welcomes, and a dropdown created for them

   

5. Add an Image Variable for the cover photo

   In Variables, click Add Variable and choose Image Variable. Name it CoverPhoto and add a label and help text. Tick Allow Image Upload so customers can upload their own photo, and tick Event photos under Allow Clipart Resource Sets to offer yours too. Click Save. More detail: Configuring image variables to accept clipart, uploaded images or both.

   Variables > Add Variable > Image Variable

   

   Upload, or pick from Event photos

   

6. Map the cover photo frame to the variable

   Select the cover photo frame on page 1. In Properties, set the frame Type to Image, then under Mapped set Type to Variable and choose CoverPhoto.

   Photo frame mapped to CoverPhoto

   

7. Turn the text frames into form fields

   Select the Event title frame. In Properties, tick Enable, click Link to new variable and choose Text Variable. Give it a name, a label and help text, and click Save. The frame's text becomes the default value. Do the same for the date and venue, the running order, the thank-you text and the website. For the other Text Variable options, such as character limits, see Configuring text inputs.

   Properties > Enable

   

8. Use Multi Line for long text

   The running order and the thank-you text are several lines long, so set their Mode to Multi Line. The customer then gets a larger text box and can add or remove lines. Keep short fields such as the event name on Single Line.

   Mode: Multi Line for the running order

   

9. Make long text fit its frame

   Customers can make the running order and the thank-you text longer, so tick Fit to box and Fit to box Wrapping on those frames in Properties. Fit to box resizes the text to fill its frame: it shrinks as the customer adds lines, and grows again if they remove some. With Wrapping ticked, the text keeps wrapping onto new lines; without it, a long paragraph is squeezed onto one line in very small type. Because the text always fills the frame, draw each frame to fit its default text at your design size. For the related Fit Width by Tracking option, see MegaEdit Problem Solvers: MegaScripts, Form Builder & Data.

   Linked, with Fit to box and Wrapping

   

10. Map the welcome text to the dropdown

    Select the welcome text frame on page 2 and tick Enable. Instead of linking a new variable, set Mapped Type to Variable and choose Welcome messages, the dropdown Invent made from your Text Library. Leave Fit to box off here: both messages fit the frame at the design size, and the frame is tall enough for the longer one.

    Welcome text mapped to Welcome messages

    

11. Lock the layout

    Customers change the content, not the layout. For each editable frame, open Properties > General and, under Restrictions, untick Allow Rotation, Allow Movement, Allow Resizing, Allow Z-order Adjustments and Allow Deletion.

    General > Restrictions

    

12. Give each page its own form

    In Variables, click Setup Forms, then Switch, choose Per Page Form and click Select. Now each page has its own list. For each variable in the Variable Pool, click Use, choose its page in Location (for example Bottom of Page: 3 for the running order) and click Add, then Save. In MegaEdit the customer sees only the fields for the page they're on. More detail: Building a form in Invent for use in MegaEdit.

    Switch > Per Page Form

    

    Each page has its own fields

    

13. Set the product behaviour

    In Setup > Field, untick Allow adding text fields and Allow adding image fields, so the programme keeps exactly the fields you designed. In Setup > Image, set a Minimum Image Resolution (150 here): customers are warned when a photo's resolution, at the size it is placed on the page, falls below this value. For every Setup option, see Invent Problem Solvers.

    Setup > Field

    

    Setup > Image: Minimum Image Resolution

    

14. Validate and export the .mex file

    In Export, click Set Export File and choose a folder on your computer, not one synced to OneDrive or a similar service. Click Start Validations and fix anything it flags, then click Export and confirm the Media and Font License Confirmation. Invent saves the document and writes the .mex package.

    Start Validations

    

    Export the .mex

    

15. Create the MegaEdit product and upload the .mex

    In your admin area, go to Catalogue > Products > Product ManagementAn area of Infigo where administrators can create, edit or delete products on a Storefront. and click Add new. Type the product name, set Product type to MegaEdit, use Upload Invent Package to add your .mex file, then click Create. More detail: Creating a MegaEdit product with Invent template.

    Name, MegaEdit type, Invent package

    

16. Describe, price and categorise it

    On the product, add a short description, set the price on Product variants and map it to a category on Category mappings, then add a picture on Pictures. For pricing options, see Pricing Products with Basic, Tiered and Pricing Scripts. To set how many pages a product allows, see "How to Add a New Page?" in MegaEdit Problem Solvers.

    Name and short description

    

    Price on the product variantAn area in the specification of each Infigo Product, generally concerned with the technical elements of the Product.

    

    Mapped to Brochures

    

17. Check it as a customer, page by page

    Open the product on your storefront as a customer. Page 1 shows only the cover fields. Select Image offers Images (photos the customer uploads) and Cliparts, where your Event photos set is listed under the product's name. Use the arrows under the programme to move between pages: page 2 shows the welcome dropdown, page 3 the running order and page 4 the thank-you text and website. Each page's form changes with it. For the rest of the editor, see Introducing the MegaEdit editor interface.

    The programme in the Brochures category

    

    Page 1: only the cover fields

    

    Choosing a cover photo: Select Image, Cliparts, then the Event photos set

    

    Moving through the pages: each page has its own form

    

    Page 3: a line added, the text shrinks to fit

    

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