Senior Field Engineer

As Senior Field Engineer at DPCI, Rob Underwood is responsible for a wide range of services including training, technical support, and systems integration.

The co-author of six Adobe training books, Underwood is an Adobe Certified Print Specialist, an Adobe Certified Expert in InDesign, Photoshop, and Acrobat, and Certified Technical Training (CTT). In addition to articles on the Creative Suite, Rob also writes on K4 Editorial System.

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February 25, 2009

K4 Tips: Creating Run Sheets from a Query

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A sometimes-tedious task necessary for the newspapers and magazines is the maintenance of a run-sheet or story budget for each issue. The person responsible for this document has to conduct regular meetings and correspondence in order to keep the document updated.

What if there was an easier way?

If you're using K4, there is.

Much of the information that needs to be tracked is already in K4 as metadata, the rest can be configured as custom metadata. With all of the information maintained in the database, it's as simple as creating a query to return these results and organize them for you. If you need a physical document to bring to a meeting, K4's "Make Document from Query" functionality can be used to generate that document.

Here's how to do it:

The first step is to check what data that is tracked on the run sheet already exists in K4. Some examples of things that may be tracked on a run sheet are Story Name, Author, Editor, Researcher, Status, Deadline, amongst others.

Some of these values are not default fields in K4 and therefore must be created. The K4 Admin page is used to add Metadata fields. After logging in to the K4 admin interface, click on the metadata link under Administration > Publication. Clicking Find will show what custom metadata has been configured.

Clicking find will show all custom metadata fields that have been configured.

To create a new piece of metadata, click on the Metadata link again and click New. Use the form to create a new piece of metadata. Name the field appropriately, for this example we will create the author metadata field. Since we are creating a run sheet to track articles, we want our metadata to only apply to articles, so articles are selected next to Used For. In the Data Type Interface drop down there are several options; a simple entry field, a pop up menu, a checkbox or entry field, a decimal number, or a date, time or date and time. For the Author field we want to use a controlled drop down list of our known authors so that we can get easy and accurate search results. If we allowed individuals to enter their own names, misspellings or variations could throw off our search results. We add these values in the value list box separated by a pipe (ex: Author 1|Author 2|Author 3)

Fill out the form to configure your additional metadata fields.

Repeat the process for any other fields that you will need on your run sheet (IE Deadline, Editor and Researcher fields)

Note: The key to the run sheet working is that the metadata is entered consistently. In some cases it makes sense for the person who owns the run sheet to create and assign out articles so that they know all of the custom metadata information is entered correctly.

The next step is to configure an advanced query to locate the items on the run sheet. This is as easy as going to the fly-out menu in advanced query mode and selecting New Query.

Create an advanced query that will locate the articles that should be on the run sheet.

In the New Query dialog box, enter your criteria. If the run sheet covers the entire magazine, you can create a run sheet query for the current issue. If the run sheet is for only a section of the publication, you could create a query that returns results only for that section. The important thing is just to create a query that returns all of the items that would normally be on your run sheet.

Once the results have been returned, you can create a set of column settings to display and sort the information appropriately for the run sheet. All of the extraneous columns can be hidden by right clicking (or ctrl clicking) and selecting hide from the menu that pops up. Then the columns can be ordered left to right so that the information is displayed in a logical fashion. Next, sort the columns by clicking on the header of the first column you wish to sort by. Then shift click on the next column to sort by that column next. You can sort out up to 5 columns if you so desire. So for example, you could first sort by Status, then by Section, then by Assignment. Clicking the small icon that appears in the header bar next to the column name will change the direction that the sort is performed in.

Once the column settings are set appropriately for your run sheet you will want to save them. Do this by following the header row over to the arrows all the way to the right. Click on them and then choose New Setting. Call it column settings

Once the columns have been adjusted and sorted appropriately for the run sheet, they can be saved so that they can be called by the query.

Now go back and edit your Run Sheet query to call the Run sheet column settings. When you choose the Run sheet query from your query drop down the correct column settings will automatically be set.

Edit your Run Sheet query so that it calls up your new column setting.

The final step to utilizing K4 to manage your run sheets is to use the make document from query option so that you can print out the run sheet for meetings or to send out updates. This is as simple as running the query, then from the fly-out menu on the query panel selecting Create Document from Query. This will open a new document with a table with your query results in it. You can now print this document, create a PDF of it, or even check the document in to K4.

Select Create Document from Query from the Query Panel Fly-out menu.