Storing and Editing Publication Templates

After creating your publication templates, you need to save them in the STEP Workbench and, in order to use them to build pages from within your InDesign client, on your local computer.

Storing Publication Templates Locally

Publication templates must be saved locally (on your own hard drive or other locally accessible file location) before they can be used to mount products from within InDesign using standard 'drag and drop' functionality. Save the templates as standard InDesign (.indd) files to a directory or folder on your machine.

Storing Publication Templates in STEP

Publication templates must be saved to STEP for the following reasons:

  • At least one publication template must exist in STEP in order to create a publication. (The exception to this is if you create a publication by using a Publication Excel import. However, the publication cannot be used until a publication template is linked to it, as the Publication Excel import merely creates the publication structure. Refer to Importing Publications in Excel (here) for more information.)
  • Templates stored in STEP can be opened and edited by any user who has access to the same STEP environment, in essence treating STEP as a 'cloud' storage solution.
  • Publication templates must be stored in STEP in order to use Print Proof View functionality. Refer to the Print Proof View section of this guide here for more information.
  • Publication templates must be stored in STEP in order to use the Print Flatplanner and Print AutoPage components.
  • Publication templates must be stored in STEP in order to create Flatplanner page templates in the workbench.

To store a publication template in STEP:

  1. Save the publication template on your local hard drive as a standard InDesign file.

Note: STEP will not let you save a template to the workbench unless it is first saved locally. However, once the template is saved in STEP, you may delete the local file if you do not plan on using it later for drag-and-drop page mounting.

  1. Click on STEP > Save Document to DB ....

  1. The Save Document to STEP Database dialog displays.

  1. Select the publication group where you would like to save the template.

Note: Templates can only be saved to publication group folders; they cannot be saved into publications or section folders.

Determining which publication group to save your publication templates into is a matter of user preference. Common choices are to save all publication templates in a publication group that is devoted solely to publication templates, or to save publication templates in a publication group along with their associated publication(s).

  1. Choose Save as Publication Template from the dropdown list near the bottom of the dialog.
  2. Check the Close document and delete local copy box to delete the local copy of your template once you save it to STEP.
  1. Click OK. The publication template is saved in STEP.

Opening and Editing Publication Templates

If a publication template needs to be altered after it is saved to STEP, it must be opened from the STEP Structure View panel within InDesign. This is to ensure that your system recognizes the template as the original file, as publication templates previously saved to STEP contain an embedded, 'hidden' STEP ID. If the template is opened from a location on a local drive and saved again to STEP, the original file will not be overwritten—STEP will recognize this template as a new file.

To open and edit a publication template:

  1. Open the STEP Structure View panel in InDesign.
  2. Browse to or search for the publication template to edit.
  3. Right-click on the template and select Open Document from the menu.

  1. Make the necessary edits to the template, then save it on your local drive. (All templates must first be saved locally before they can be loaded to STEP.)
  2. Follow the steps outlined in the previous section of this topic ('Storing Publication Templates in STEP') to save the template back to STEP. Make sure that you save the template back to the same location from which it was opened.
  3. The updated template will overwrite the previous document on STEP and will not need to be relinked to any publications or products.