In this video tutorial we are going to see how to use the Hot Folder app for Flipbooks Online.
Transcript
The hotfolder Makes it easier and faster to get your content online with this workflow tool. The hotfolder tool allows 3D Issue to watch a folder on your computer for new PDFs and automatically converts and uploads them into flipbooks.
A key benefit of this is you can add multiple pdfs to the folder, these will be processed automatically allowing you to work on other tasks. You can have them then ready to edit and add features to or have them publish automatically.
Once you have installed the hotfolder app and launch it you will be prompted to login using your flipbooks account details. You can then set the Input Folder – This is where you will place your pdfs into to start the creation process. Next you can select whether you want the publications to fully processed and uploaded online as part of the process, or whether you want them to be edited in flipbooks and perhaps checked over before you then manually upload.
So once logged in for the first time, your hot folder is ready to use. If you select it from the tray here you can see some options. Let’s take a look at the Publication settings.
Firstly you will see the Brand selection menu. The flipbooks application comes with 1 brand template however you may have purchased more – these will be displayed here. You can select which Brand you want to change the settings for.
The structure options reflect the options that can be set in the flipbooks online editor, so for example you can set the magazine type, icon colours, navigation and view modes. The centering of back and front covers and also reading from right to left options can also be selected. These options you choose here will automatically apply then to any pdf you place for conversion into the hotfolder.
The next set of options are in the appearance tab. Here you can select which background to have applied, the pre-loader option, Intro and theme.
Finally in the publication settings you can select the features. These are the features your end readers will have access to in the flipbook reader, simply select or deselect which items you want to or don’t want to display.
SO let’s take a look how you use the hot folder to automatically create the flipbooks. If we go to the hot folder options in the tray again, select the ‘open 3d issue folder’ This will take us to the directory, it includes here the input folder, which is where you can place the pdfs you want to auto convert, the queue, and the output folder which contains completed pdfs that have been converted.
If we jump into the input folder you will see a folder with a number – this is our user id. If we select this you can see then the brand folder – or if you have multiple brand folders you will see them listed here.
So all you do is copy and paste the pdf or multiple pdfs you want to convert into the default publication folder within the brand folder. This will now start to be created and the hot folder settings we set just now will be used to apply our preferred settings. You can see the progress in the queue if you want to check.
Once the pdf has been converted a pop up notification will display and you can then click on the link to view online if you selected to have the process enabled completed in the settings, or you can then go ahead and edit in the flipbooks online.
Another useful feature of the hotfolder is you can log in with multiple users on the same workstation, so people can use the one workstation to upload their different publication types. If you do use this then you will see multiple folders in the input folder – you will see it uses the user id as an identifier. Once uploaded it will use that users publication settings, so users can have different looks for their online flipbooks.
All publications that have been created using the hotfolder can be found in your publication list ‘my issues’ in your flipbooks account, so they are ready for you to make any adjustments or view.