Print Designer: Digitization Request

A digitization request is the sheet that goes with a photoduplication job: who ordered it, which item to capture, and how the finished scans should be produced and delivered. Staff print it from a photoduplication request; the scanning team works from it. The Print Designer is where you decide what that sheet looks like.

When you'll use this

• You're setting up Aeon and want the digitization sheet to carry your own instructions and layout.
• The scanning team needs a field the sheet doesn't show — a sub-location, a reference number, one of your custom fields.
• You want more than one digitization layout and to choose which is the default.
• You're moving off the Aeon 6 PrintDigitizationRequest.docx and want to rebuild or import it.

This is the same designer used for every print template

The digitization designer is one mode of Aeon's print designer. The Request, Callslip, User, Invoice, and Invoice Statement templates all use the same canvas and tools — only the available fields and the sample preview data differ. If you've designed a callslip, this works identically.

Opening the digitization request designer

1. Open the Customization Manager.
2. In the left navigation, under Designers, choose Print Designer. It opens on the Request template.
3. Print Designer expands into one entry per template type — Request, Callslip, User, Invoice, Invoice Statement, and Digitization Request. Choose Digitization Request.

The designer auto-selects the default template and loads it onto the canvas — Aeon's built-in one is named Default Digitization Request. If no templates exist yet, you'll see "No DigitizationRequest templates found" with a Create Template button.

You need the Designers capability to edit

Creating, renaming, duplicating, deleting, importing, exporting, or saving a template requires the Designers configuration capability. Without it you can still reach the page and look at templates, but the save and template-management actions are blocked. Generating a Preview takes either the Designers capability or View access to Requests. See Roles & Capabilities.

Use a real screen

The designer needs room to work. On a phone-sized screen it shows "Larger Display Required" and asks you to switch to a tablet or desktop.

How the designer is laid out

With a template open you have a toolbar across the top, a panel on the left, and the page canvas filling the rest:

Area	What it's for
Toolbar (top)	The template selector and its ⋯ menu, undo/redo, page size and orientation, records-per-page, group/ungroup, Preview, zoom (50% / 75% / 100% / 125%), the save controls, and a ? button that opens the keyboard-shortcut list.
Left panel	Two tabs — Fields and Insert — for adding content to the page (see below).
Canvas (center)	The sheet itself, drawn to scale with rulers. You arrange everything here by dragging.

You edit a piece of the sheet by selecting it — a small floating toolbar appears just above the selection with that element's settings. Nothing you place is permanent until you save, and the save indicator always tells you where you stand: Saved, Unsaved, or Saving....

What the built-in sheet contains

Aeon's Default Digitization Request is a good map of the parts, and usually easier to adapt than to replace:

Section	What's on it
Heading	The title Digitization Request, the Transaction #, the date, and a barcode of the transaction number
Customer Information	Name, username, organization, department, email, phone, fax
Item Information	Title, subtitle, author, volume, edition, pages
Order Options	Document Type, Format, Service Level, and Shipping Option — how the scans should be produced and delivered
Special Request	The researcher's free-text instructions for handling the material
Researcher Notes	The researcher's most recent note, placed as a template string

Adding content: the Fields and Insert tabs

Everything on the sheet is an element. The left panel gives you two ways to add one.

The Fields tab

A digitization request prints from a transaction, so its field list is the transaction set — the same one the request slip and callslip use:

Transaction Fields first (transaction number, date, status, item title, author, call number, location, sub-location, site, reference number, special request, document type, format, service level, and the rest), then User, Researcher, Institution, Activity, Appointment, and Staff Fields — plus a Custom Fields group if you've defined any transaction custom fields.

Each field carries a small badge for its data type (STRING, NUMBER, DATE). Type in the Search fields... box to filter.

• Click a field to drop it on the page. It lands as a labeled row — the field's label next to its value.
• Hold ⌥ Alt while clicking to drop the value alone, with no label.
• Drag a field onto the canvas to place it exactly where you want.
• To add several at once, ⌘/Ctrl-click each field, then drag them on or use Add to page.

The panel reminds you of this at the bottom: "Fields land with a label — hold ⌥ Alt for the field alone. ⌘/Ctrl-click to select several, then drag or add them as one block."

On the canvas, fields show realistic sample values — transaction 12345, Sample Collection Title: A Historical Analysis, Volume III: The Early Years, author Johnson, Mary A., Document Type Manuscript, Format Physical, Service Level Standard, Shipping Option Hold for Pickup — so you can judge spacing before printing.

The Insert tab

The Insert tab holds the building blocks that aren't tied to a single field:

Element	What it puts on the sheet
Text	A static label that prints exactly as typed — a heading, or a fixed handling instruction
Field	A single data value, unbound at first — you choose which field after placing it.
Barcode	A scannable barcode generated from a field value, by default the transaction number.
Line	A horizontal rule — the built-in sheet uses these to separate its sections.
Rectangle	A box or border.
Image	A logo from the image gallery.

Below those, an Auto Fields group prints values about the printout itself rather than the request: Page Number, Page Count, Current Date, and Printed By.

The Tables group isn't part of this sheet

A Tables group offers two repeating tables — Billing Charges Table and Payment History Table. Aeon offers them on every print template, this one included, but the built-in digitization request doesn't use either: it's a production sheet, not a bill. If you want charges on paper, the invoice is the template built for it.

Editing an element

Select an element and its floating toolbar appears above it. What the toolbar offers depends on the element:

• A field starts with a button showing the bound field's name and a chevron — hover it and it reads Change field. Click it to open a searchable field picker and choose a different field; or double-click the field on the canvas to jump straight into that picker. Then come the text-styling controls: font family and size, bold, italic, underline, alignment, and text color.

  

• Format (the sliders button) opens a small popover: a Format menu — None, Currency, Number, Short Date, Long Date, or Date & Time — plus Prefix and Suffix boxes, hinted with "e.g. $" and "e.g. %". Picking a field also applies a default format for its data type.

  

• Text offers typography controls; double-click a text element to edit its words in place.

• Line and Rectangle offer shape styling — Colors, Stroke color, and Fill & corners.

• Image and Barcode offer their own source/appearance controls.

• Visibility conditions (the eye button) controls when the element prints — see Hiding an element that doesn't apply.

• Position & size (the four-arrows button) places the element precisely: X and Y, Width and Height — all in inches — plus Rotation presets of 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°, and vertical-alignment buttons.

  

• Duplicate (⌘D) and Delete (⌫) finish the toolbar.

Arranging and fine-tuning

• Move an element by dragging it; resize it with its handles.
• Nudge a selection with the arrow keys — hold Shift for a larger step.
• Select several with Shift-click (or ⌘/Ctrl-click); a floating align/distribute toolbar appears, and you can Group them (⌘G) so they move as one. Ungroup with ⌘⇧G.
• Standard editing shortcuts work on the canvas: copy (⌘C), paste (⌘V), duplicate (⌘D), delete (Delete/Backspace), select all (⌘A), and undo / redo (⌘Z and ⌘⇧Z).
• To move around without the mouse: Tab cycles through the elements on the page (⇧Tab reverses), F6 cycles between the panel and the canvas, and Escape clears the selection.

Press ? anywhere in the designer for the full shortcut list on screen.

Page setup

• Page size — Letter, Legal, A4, or A5.
• Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.
• Records per page — the grid button (it reads, for example, 1 per page). A digitization request is normally one per page; the grid matters more for label-style templates.

Hiding an element that doesn't apply

Not every request fills every field — a volume, an edition, a researcher note. Rather than printing a stray label with nothing after it, hide the element when its data is blank. The built-in sheet leans on this heavily: most of its fields carry a condition.

1. Select the element and open its Visibility conditions popover (the eye button). With nothing set it reads "Always shown. Add conditions to hide this element for certain records."

2. For the simplest case, turn on Hide if empty — the element drops off any sheet where that field has no value.

   

3. For anything more involved, click Edit conditions... to open the Edit Conditions dialog, headed "Hide this element when:". Until you add one it says "No conditions defined. Click "Add Condition" to create one." Click Add Condition, choose a field and an operator — is empty, is not empty, equals, does not equal, contains, is greater than, or is less than — and a value where one's needed, then Save. With more than one condition, the element hides when any of them match.

   

Any element carrying a condition gets a small amber badge with a crossed-out-eye icon in its top-right corner, so you can see at a glance which parts of the sheet are conditional. Hover the badge and it tells you how many conditions the element has — or "Hidden: Conditions not met" when the element is one the current sample data would drop.

If you're recreating an Aeon 6 template, this is where the hidden Word IF field codes are rebuilt — visually, instead of in toggled field codes.

Previewing before you commit

Click Preview in the toolbar at any time. Aeon renders the current template to a PDF using sample data and opens it in a dialog headed Preview: followed by the template's name (for example Preview: Default Digitization Request). From there you can Download the sample PDF or send it to your Print dialog. Preview reflects the canvas as it stands, including edits you haven't saved yet.

Saving and managing templates

• Save with the toolbar's Save button or ⌘S; the indicator switches to Saved.
• Discard changes with the discard button that appears next to the save indicator while you have unsaved edits — it reverts to the last saved version.

Switching templates discards unsaved edits

The designer tracks unsaved changes per template. Save before you switch to a different sheet, move to another template type, or import — selecting another template loads its saved state and your in-progress edits are not kept.

You can keep several digitization request templates and mark one as the default. The template selector on the left of the toolbar switches between them, and its ⋯ menu manages them:

• New Template — start a fresh sheet.
• Duplicate — copy the current one as a starting point (the copy is pre-named "… (Copy)").
• Rename — give it a meaningful name.
• Set as Default — mark which sheet Aeon reaches for first. Only one template per type is the default; setting a new one clears the old, and it's per type — marking a digitization request as default never changes which callslip or invoice is default.
• Export / Import — download the template (with its images) as an .aeon-print-template.zip package, or load one back in.
• Import from Word Document… — bring a Word template in (see below).
• Delete — remove the template.

Bringing a Word template across

Coming from the Aeon 6 desktop client, you don't have to rebuild your PrintDigitizationRequest.docx by hand.

1. Open the template ⋯ menu and choose Import from Word Document….
2. Pick your existing .doc or .docx file.
3. Aeon parses it, converts the merge fields it recognizes into designer fields, pulls in images, and creates a new digitization request template — then shows an Import Summary of what came across.

Review the import, especially unmapped and IF fields

• Importing creates a new template and switches to it. If you have unsaved edits, Aeon warns you first — they'll be lost, so save before importing.
• Unmapped fields: merge fields Aeon can't match to a known field come in unmapped and carry a warning badge on the canvas. Hover one and its button reads "Unmapped field from import — pick a field" instead of Change field. Select each and choose the right field from the picker.
• Conditional IF fields are not converted. Rebuild that logic with element conditions.
• Always Preview an imported template before making it the default — spacing usually needs a touch-up.

How the sheet you design gets used

Print Digitization Request lives in the request toolbar's Print dropdown, and also in the More menu. It appears only for photoduplication requests — a request that has photoduplication, or one whose status is In Photoduplication. On an ordinary request the action isn't offered at all.

Choosing it opens a print dialog showing a live PDF of the sheet. If you keep more than one digitization request template the dialog shows a template picker; with only one there's nothing to choose. When the picker appears, Aeon pre-selects, in order: the template that staff member last used, then the one you marked default, then the first available.

Printing this sheet doesn't change the request

Unlike printing a request slip or a callslip, printing a digitization request writes no entry to the request's history and doesn't move it to another status. It's a production document, not a workflow step.