Assignments

The basis for this remarkable collaboration is assignments. Assignments are another type of container. Rather than images or text, however, assignments contain frames (other containers) that themselves contain text or graphics. More accurately, assignments are like book files. They’re effectively an index of other files. Whereas INBK book files index INDD InDesign documents, assignments index INCX InCopy documents, which you, the designer, generate from the frames in your InDesign layout. Assignments and their indexed INCX documents are delivered to editorial and opened in InCopy. As opening a book file in InDesign gives you access to the individual layouts connected by the book file, opening an assignment in InCopy puts all the stories and frames it connects in front of the editor.

Before we get too much further, allow me to introduce the dramatis personae in Table 12.1.

Table 12.1: File Types Involved in the InDesign-InCopy LiveEdit Workflow
File Extension	Description
.indd	An InDesign document.
.incx	A single story file created as part of an assignment. Users do not open these files directly.
.inca	An assignment file that connects one or more INCX documents. When opened in InCopy, the assignment will array all stories assigned to the user in a list for easy editing.
.incp	A packaged assignment generated by InDesign and destined for InCopy. The package contains the assignment, content, and linked assets in a single file and is easily emailed.
.indp	A packaged assignment generated by InCopy and sent back to InDesign. The package contains the assignment, content, and linked assets in a single file and is easily emailed.

Adobe calls assignments and the InCopy documents managed files. At least, that’s the term in CS3; it changes with each version. “Managing files,” in my experience, is something all together different and more comprehensive than exporting a story from one application and editing it in another. Therefore, I don’t–and won’t in this chapter–refer to them as “managed files,” but I wanted you to know Adobe’s term.

Let’s go hands-on, and I’ll explain creating and using assignments to set up a collaborative workflow as we actually build an assignment.

1. Open or create a suitable InDesign document. Choose one containing a page with one or more graphic frames and two or more unthreaded text frames. The text frames may be threaded or stand-alone, but you want at least two frames that are not connected to each other.

In setting up assignments in a real project, you can use any page containing any number and type of frames. However, to complete this particular exercise and learn what you should, we’ll need to work with a page containing specific elements.

Figure 12.5 shows a page suitable for this exercise. It has several independent text frames, including the three-part title, the byline, the pullquote in the outside rail, and then the main story, which threads through the horizontal frame, the two-column frame beneath, and on to later pages. There are also two image frames in case we want to let editors fill in their own photos in InCopy. (Maybe the interview subject’s headshot, but I would probably leave the ghosted background art for the designers to handle.)

Figure 12.5 A page containing multiple frames ready for assignment to editorial personnel

2. Choose File > User to open the User dialog (see Figure 12.6). Here, you’ll set options that identify you within the collaborative workflow. When you check out stories and frames for editing, anyone else who tries to check them out will be alerted that you, whatever user name you enter, already have the content checked out. Any notes you add to the stories will also bear your user name and be bracketed by rectangles in the color you select from the drop-down menu. By entering a unique user name and choosing a unique color, you let your collaborators know who to come to with questions or comments. Everyone in the workflow–in InDesign and InCopy–must fill in a name before the InCopy LiveEdit workflow will function, and they should coordinate to choose unique colors for ease of reference.

My user name field says Pariah Burke (InD) because InCopy has an identical User dialog, and I differentiate between work done in InDesign and InCopy with the parenthetic suffix.

Figure 12.6 The User dialog identifies you in the collaborative workflow.

When you’ve entered your user name and chosen a color, click OK.

3. Open the Assignments panel from Window > Assignments (see Figure 12.7). Here’s where all the magic happens. As I said before, it’s a lot like a Book panel. Instead of external documents, however, the Assignments panel manages stories and image frames within a document. At the top of the panel is your document. Beneath it, you’ll see an empty entry for unassigned InCopy content. As long as the document contains any frame not part of an InCopy assignment, the Unassigned InCopy Content entry will be there. In other words, get used to it.

Figure 12.7 The Assignments panel

Let’s get a real assignment onto the list and begin the process of handing some of editorial’s content back to them.

4. In the bottom of the Assignments panel, click the New button. Up will pop the New Assignment dialog (see Figure 12.8).

First, give your assignment a name. Both you and the editor will see the assignment name, and it will be used as the basis for exported filenames, which you can see reflected as you type the assignment name in the INCA file path in the Location for Assignment File section. So, give the assignment a meaningful name like Let’s Talk Page. As you type, you’ll see the proposed path to the file in the Location for Assignment File section update to include the assignment name. You can change the location if needed (see two paragraphs hence).

The Assigned To field is optional but lets you specify who will take on the assignment. If you name the assignee, set that person’s particular user color as well. Note that InDesign and InCopy do not communicate about assignee names and colors, so it’s a good idea to let the InCopy user choose his color first. Then he’ll need to inform you of his color choice by phone, e‑mail, or carrier pigeon so that you may set the same color within the assignment–or not. The Color field is entirely optional and exists solely to give you, the InDesign user, a visual cue in the Assignments panel of who owns what content. Assignments in the panel will be tinted to the assignee’s color, but that’s where the utility of this field ends.

Figure 12.8 The New Assignment dialog

When you create an assignment file, an INCA document will be written to disk. Each story added to the assignment will be exported as an INCX. The Location for Assignment File section tells you where on your computer (or the network) these files will be saved. Clicking the Change button enables you to browse your system for a new place to save the documents. If your editorial department collaborators are on the same network, set the Location for Assignment Files to a shared folder on the network, one to which you, your fellow designers, and the editors have both read and write access. If your editors work remotely from other locations, you’ll need to make use of packaged assignments, which we’ll discuss later in this chapter; for now, choose a convenient location on the network or your computer.

The Include section is extremely important. Here is where you determine how much of the layout InCopy users see when they open the assignment and work with it in InCopy’s InDesign-like Layout view. Story and Galley view, which do not show the layout, are unaffected by the Include options. Your choices are as follows:

• Placeholder Frames: If chosen, this option makes solid gray boxes of all frames not directly a part of the assignment. Any content within those frames will be hidden from InCopy users’ view. Any frames that are in the assignment–including graphic frames–will be visible and editable in InCopy’s Layout view.

Recommendation: Choosing Placeholder Frames is very much like setting InDesign’s display performance to Fast Display, with the same benefits: less distraction, and pages draw to the screen very quickly. If editors find themselves distracted by page elements that are not theirs, or if they report that InCopy moves sluggishly while they edit, consider using the Placeholder Frames option.

• Assigned Spreads: Assignments may consist of multipage threaded stories as well as multiple disconnected stories spread across several pages. Therefore, with the Assigned Spreads option, an InCopy user has the ability to see in InCopy’s Layout view all the assigned and unassigned content from those pages (in spreads). Any pages or spreads that are not part of the assignment will be excluded. Of course, although visible, unassigned content will not be editable in InCopy. Like InDesign’s Typical Display display performance mode, images included in the assignment to InCopy users are low-resolution proxies ideal for onscreen viewing and suitable for output on a desktop printer. The images and graphical elements are not, however, of a high enough quality that editors should rely on them for fine detail.

Recommendation: Assigned Spreads is already the default option, and I recommend that you consider using it most often. One of the key benefits to the tight integration between InDesign and InCopy is the ability for editors to see and write in the real WYSIWYG layout page within InCopy. Sending full views of assigned spreads gives editorial a window on the layout that, in most cases, helps them better visualize the impact of, and limitations on, their copy. Usually it benefits the publication overall; however, in some cases it can be a hindrance. Some editorial staffers find that looking at an in-progress or finished page is confusing (even though they don’t have to look at it; InCopy has two other views that hide the layout).

• All Spreads: With this option, the entire document, not only the spreads containing assigned frames, will be sent and viewable in InCopy’s Layout view. The InCopy user will only be able to edit the content assigned to him, however. Choosing this option generates larger files and may cause sluggish InCopy performance on computers with less RAM and hard drive space.

Recommendation: I only recommend using the All Spreads option in assignments for those who absolutely must see the entire document–namely, top of the chain editors. For most lower-level editors, it’s overkill and can slow down InCopy running on low-spec computers.

Let’s leave discussion of the Linked Image Files when Packaging check box option to the section “Collaborating with Remote Editors” coming up.

When you have all the options for your first assignment set, click the OK button.

5. Although you now have a new assignment in the Assignments panel, it’s still empty, devoid of assigned content. On the document page, select one frame and go to Edit > InCopy > Add Selection to Assignment. You’ll see the assignment you just created on that list; choose it as the destination for the selected content. If you haven’t recently saved the document, InDesign will kindly prompt you to do so, and then it will export the content to an INCX file, which is indexed by the INCA assignment file. The INCX InCopy document will be created in a Content folder beneath the location you chose for the INCA. For instance, if you chose to save the assignment to your desktop in a folder titled MyDocument Assignments, the INCX will be saved to MyDocument Assignments\Content.

6. In the Assignments panel, your assignment will now list the assigned frame. It will also show a yellow, out-of-date caution sign beside the assignment name. InDesign does not automatically update assignments as it does INBK book files. Select the assignment in the panel’s list and choose Update Selected Assignments from the panel flyout menu, which will write the change (the new INCX to index) to the INCA file.

If you and your editors are on the same network, call up an editor and tell her where to find the assignment. When she opens the assignment file (the INCA, not the INCX story file) in InCopy, she can edit the frame content all she wants. She can be editing in InCopy while you work on the layout in InDesign–even while you make changes to the frame size and positioning! When one of you saves your respective documents, the other will be notified and given the opportunity to update the view onto the other’s content.

Congratulations! You’ve just assigned content to an editor. You were a good foster parent for the story, but it was time. You just returned the copy to the custody of its rightful parent. Now the editor will take care of raising the story to maturity while you focus on your baby, the layout.