Banner pages

In printing, a banner page is a page that may be printed before a print job or before each part of a print job. Banner pages are similar to slip sheets, except that slip sheets are blank, while banners normally contain information such as the date and time, user and job name.

Here's how to add banner pages to your print job in OL Connect.

1. Group documents. If you want the banner page to appear only at the start of the job you can skip this step, but to make it appear before each part in a separated job - a job segment, document set... -, the output needs to be grouped at the appropriate level.

   You can do this in the Advanced Print Wizard (select File > Print, then click Advanced) or in a Job Preset.

   Select Use grouping. Then make the settings on the Grouping options page.

   Tip: Also select Include metadata and set meta data tags if you want to print meta data tags on a banner page (see Variable text on a banner page).

2. Enable banner pages. You can do this in the Advanced Print Wizard (select File > Print, then click Advanced) or in an Output Preset.

   On the first page of the Advanced Print Wizard or Output Preset, select:

   • Separation

   • Additional content

   Click Next until you get to the Separation options page, where you will find the Banners option. To enable banner pages, select where you want them: in front of your job, job segment, document set, or document.

   To have a banner page as the start of every output file, set Banners to the same level as the Separation Settings.

3. Add content. Click Next until you get to the Additional Content page. This is where you can add content to the banner page. To learn how to add dynamic content, see Variable text on a banner page.

   Note: It is important to set a condition on each piece of additional content. Additional content will appear on each page if no condition is set. To make content appear only on banner pages, enter page.banner in the Condition field. (See also: How to set up conditions.)

   Note: The position is set as a distance from the left and from the bottom of the page.

Variable text on a banner page

The information on a banner page usually contains variable data like the date and time, job name or job ID. You can include document information variables in your banner page texts by using Content variables.

Content variables provide access to a number of predefined properties, as well as to any meta data tags set in the Meta Data options page (in the Job Preset or Advanced Print Wizard).

Note: Meta data tags set on the Job level are not accessible in banner page text (or any other Additional Content).

Metadata tags can be filled with text or with the value of a data field or runtime parameter.
In order to use meta data tags based on runtime parameters, these runtime parameters must be created in the Runtime Parameter Options page of the Job Preset or Advanced Print Wizard.
Remember to also set the actual value of the parameter in the automation tool that you use.

Examples

Date and time

To add a timestamp, you can use the ${system.time} variable and format it as explained in Formatting date and number values. .

Example: Created: ${system.time, "yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm"}

The formatting string in this example can be changed to your preference. For instance, ${system.time, "d MMM yy hh:mm", fr} will return the date in French (note the third parameter: fr).

Job name or file name

If the job is separated into multiple jobs, segments, document sets or documents, you can include the job name or file name - depending on where you are printing to - on the banner page using the name property.

This property is only available at the actual separation level. So, the following example can only be used when separating the job on the document set level:

Example: Job name: ${set.name}

When printing to a Windows Printer or LPR Queue, this variable contains the job name specified in the Job Name field on the Print options page.

When printing to a directory, this variable contains the Job Output Mask (specified on the Print options page) without the extension.

Job owner

If the job is separated into multiple jobs, segments, document sets or documents, and it is printed to a Windows Printer or LPR Queue, the owner property contains the job owner name specified in the Job Owner Name field on the Print options page (in the Output Preset or Advanced Print Wizard).

This property is only available at the actual separation level. So, the following example can only be used when the job is separated at the job segment level.

Example: Job name: ${segment.owner}

Note: When printing to a directory, this property contains an empty string.

Number of pages and documents

In the output variables count.pages, count.documents, count.sheets, and count.sets, banner pages are included in the count.
To exclude them from the number of pages and documents, subtract the cover pages and documents from the total number of pages and documents, using the output variables: coverPages and coverDocuments, respectively.

Example: Total number of pages in the document set: ${set.count.pages - set.count.coverPages}
Total number of documents in the document set: ${set.count.documents- set.count.coverDocuments}

Job ID or Job Set ID

The ID of the Job or Job Set can be added to the banner page as follows.

Example: Job id: ${job.source.name}

Banner pages and inserter marks

Banner pages are often not fed into the inserter, so they should not get any inserter marks.

Inserter marks added using the Add Inserter Marks feature (with .HCF files) never get added to a banner.

If banner pages are fed to the inserter, and the inserter marks are added through Additional Content, you need to add a condition to the inserter marks so that they don't appear on the banner pages.

Tip: The condition page.content evaluates to true for all pages that are part of the content, which banner pages are not.

Banner pages and impositioning

When combined with impositioning, the banner page is added to the impositioned job. It always takes the same paper type as the page it is inserted in front of. For instance, when impositioning A4 2-up on a landscape A3, the banner page will be landscape A3.

Banner pages and duplex printing

Banner pages always take the same duplex/simplex setting and paper type as the page they are inserted in front of.

In case of duplex banner pages, the banner page content also appears on the back of the banner page, unless the condition states that the page must be both a banner page and a front page.

Example: page.banner && page.front