You can manually launch a publication at any time, running the export and print process to create a single document in any of the supported formats with specific slicer options selected. You might want to do this to preview your final document; checking that your data reads correctly, your branding follows the corporate styles, and your content is clear and well-structured. When printing an inline email publication, the platform produces the underlying HTML that would be injected into the body of an email.
Important: Although you can build your publications manually (as described in this topic), you are most likely to set up schedules and distributions to build your different publications for different distribution groups and with different slicers. This task is, therefore, considered part of your "design time activity." For information about the more common tasks, seeScheduling and Distribution in Publish Pro.
Opening the Print & Export dialog
The Print & Export dialog matches most of the other printing dialogs and functionality throughout the app. For more information, see Print and Export.
Quick print (Status Bar)
Publish Pro includes a status bar above the canvas when you are editing your publication:
Publish Lite includes the print option on the ribbon:
- Click Print (blue arrow) to launch the Print & Export dialog for the current publication.
"Run" the publication (Ribbon)
The large Run (or execute) button appears in the upper-left corner of the workspace (yellow arrow, above). Clicking this option in either Publish Pro or Publish Lite launches the Print & Export dialog for the current publication.
Note: Pressing F2 on your keyboard runs the same function as clicking the large Run button.
Printing the publication
Once you have the Print & Export dialog open, you can set up your publication details as needed:
- From the Output tab, select document format and any settings associated with the format.
- Click the Slicers tab and choose the values you want your slicers to take in the published document.
- Click Export.
Tip: You should select the typical output for your publication when it is distributed, we recommend building a PDF.
Note: The preceding example shows a simple drop-down for selecting a Country filter.
Pyramid builds the publication in the format selected and with the slicers applied.
Note: The preceding example shows a drop-down slicer. The slicer type may, alternatively, be a date picker or tree, but you can only ever select one slice.
Print and Export dialog
Output tab
Select the options relating to your publication format.
Note: If your publication is an inline email, the only option in the Output Type list is Email (HTML). For details describing how to create an Email Publication, see Building an Inline Email Publication.
Pages
You can print your entire publication, the current page of your publication, or a subset of selected pages:
- All pages: Print the entire publication (default).
- Current Page: Print the page that is currently open on the canvas.
- Selected Pages: Specify which pages you want to print. Use the text field to specify the page numbers as a comma-separated list or range. For example,
1,2,3or1-3prints pages 1, 2, and 3.
Add Bookmarks (PDF only)
When you are building publications as PDFs, either manually or as part of a schedule or subscription, you can select the Add Bookmark option to create a "document outline" that reflects the headings in your publication. Your readers can then use the hyperlinks in their PDF's document outline to navigate the document.
- Click here for more information about bookmarks
Add Link-back
When you are building publications, either manually or as part of a schedule or subscription, you can select the Add Link-back option to create a link between the visuals in the publication and the "live" version of the same visuals in Pyramid. This allows your readers to click a visual in, say, their PDF to open the latest version of that visual. Once open, they can dynamically interact with the visual, changing slicer selections, and using the options on the context menus as needed.
- Click here for more information about "link-back"
Other options
PNG, Power Point, and Word
- Image Quality: Select whether to incorporate images at low, medium, or high quality.
Excel
- You can show or hide the title and breadcrumbs for visuals, freeze worksheet panes, ignore styling, and merge common cells.
For more information, see Print and Export.
CSV, JSON, XML
- Show unique names: Include unique names for each value.
- Show caption as column header: Include the caption as a column header. Where this option is not selected, the column header caption is null.
- Remove value based filters: Where a value-based filter has been applied to data, select this option to export the entire dataset rather than only the filtered values.
- Delimiter: (CSV only.) Indicate which character should be used as a delimiter in the CSV. This can be one of Comma, Pipe, Semi Colon, Space, and Tab.
Note: Exporting and printing to JSON, XML, and CSV is not available in the Community edition.
Slicers
For each of the slicers used in your publication, you need to pick the value that should be used when the document is built. For example, selecting Mexico from the countries slicer when building a document for your Mexican team. It is important to note that you can only select one value for each of the slicers when you are manually building your publication.
Note: If the slicer is attached to a mini-tab container with conditional display, the slicer selection will determine which of the Mini-Tabs to render.
Single-Select Drop-Down
Where the slicer is a drop-down, you may select a single item from it as follows:
Tip: You can use the Search facility at the top of the drop-down to filter its contents.
Date Calendar
Where the slicer is a date calendar, you can select a single date from it:
Single-Select Tree
Where the slicer is a tree, you can a single item from it:
Related information
This topic described how to manually publish your publication, you may also want to:
- Create a Schedule - Create a schedule that indicates when Pyramid should build and distribute the publication automatically.
- Subscriptions in Publish - Subscribe to receive a print of the publication for a given data selection and format.
Data Source Authentication
If you’re using Windows Authentication or SAP Logon Tickets to connect to your data source, you may be prompted to enter Authentication credentials when saving your changes.
- Click here to learn more about Data Source Authentication.