Improvements for the Datamerge and Automation Workflows

[Fabricio]

Hello, I have some suggestions on how to improve the Datamerge Tool 

More Data Types:
Instead of only images or texts wound be nice so add tree other options: colors, values and booleans. Colors could be assigned to a fill, stroke or effects, values could be used for transformations, and effects values, and booleans to activate and deactivate layers

To implement it will be necessary a implementation for reference fields, it can be useful not only for the datamerge, but to define variables that can be used on the document. For example I define my color pallet and size of shadows as variables and when I change the variable it will change for all the document.

Find and Replace:

In my workflow I need to replace text with icons and character styles. I use the # to define an image substitution and text between [ ] to be bold, as I show on 18:30 of this video. It works using a regular expression.

But would be nice to configure a document with rules on how to replace text, and a way to find and replace text with inline image. Today I do it manually, and have the problem that when I paste an image on the text it ignores the document preference and paste embed (not linked)

Repetition:

Would be nice to use a column on the spreadsheet to define the number of similar objects (in my case cards). Today I repeat manually the cards duplicating the lines in the csv, but I had to be careful to edit all the instances of the same card. Affinity could handle it as symbols or with page repetition. Other way that can be useful is defining a rule in the name of the files indicating the quantity of each one when placing objects and name de pages of the document using the datamerge (but links need to ignore this part of the file name)

Edited November 19, 2022 by Fabricio

[Fabricio]

Formatted Text

Use tags to indicate paragraph and character styles <p style="nameStyle"></p> or <NameStyle></NameStyle> or <p=NameStyle></p>

Inline Images

Use tags to add inline images to the text <img=image.png>

Master Selection

Use a special column to define the Master Page to use for the Datamerge. In my use case I have some variations for card templates:

 

[Fabricio]

Page or Object Name

Set the page ou object name based on one column of the file

[CesarB]

Those are great and relevant suggestions  Data merge is incredible, and saves so much time. But I've been facing the same kind of situations while creating cards sheets, that those suggestions from Fabricio would solve, and make data merge even better.

Sometimes you want the same structure but with a slight visual difference, like a color of some object that changes depending on the line of the source data. Being able to put fields (for merge) for other things than frame text/image would be awesome. For instance puting a merge field inside the box for hex color of a given layer. Currently you would have to create different masters to do such a thing. Making master selection variable could also be a way to "solve" some of those situations.

Being able to add inline images inside text with data merge would be awesome. Maybe using the symbols system somehow ? Along some basic formatting tags.

[Fabricio]

On 3/22/2023 at 7:50 PM, CesarB said:

For instance puting a merge field inside the box for hex color of a given layer. Currently you would have to create different masters to do such a thing. Making master selection variable could also be a way to "solve" some of those situations.

I found I workaround for color, I save some images with the color that I want and use them with a blend mode on the layer to tint the frame of my cards and use a mask to only tint the card frame

 

For boolean I was trying with a mask image for true or false, But Affinity does not work with Picture Frame as mask, it's very buggy 😥

 

[LouieX]

I would still like to see filter options for the tool - e.g. "if this field is true or has this and this value" then write the value - otherwise....

[Fabricio]

6 hours ago, LouieX said:

I would still like to see filter options for the tool - e.g. "if this field is true or has this and this value" then write the value - otherwise....

Would be nice if I could activate or deactivate layers based on a boolean field.

But I think that more complex formulas are better to work on the spreadsheet software. I use formulas to add the file extensions, activate or deactivate some image fields and convert values into multiple image fields (for example: on my card I have a field to define the card level and two fields that use that value to define if a circle image is placed on the bottom left of the card)

[CesarB]

On 3/27/2023 at 12:09 PM, Fabricio said:

I found I workaround for color, I save some images with the color that I want and use them with a blend mode on the layer to tint the frame of my cards and use a mask to only tint the card frame

Thanks for the tip, that's what I was planning to try !

[DieterW]

Regarding boolean maybe that may help:

• Make groups of alternative design elements (e.g. textboxes with different sizes)
• Place a picture frame on top of the elements in each group
• Set the blend mode of this frame to ERASE
• In the data source you need to have a separate column for each group, i.e. for each ERASE picture frame
• Create a Designer file with page size of 1 cm/inch and fill it with a black rectangle (I think any image type would work, even raster images, but since the image will be scaled in extreme ways I think vector based is more reliable).
• Depending on other data in the data source you fill all but one of the ERASE columns with a link to the designer file. So you but a link in those columns, i.e. for those groups in APub, you want to hide.

[DieterW]

However, there are many features needed and I support more or less all your suggestions, but the missing support for text formatting is unbearable. Currently the only way is to use some kind of tags and then after importing you need to find and replace those with regular expressions. This is very cumbersome and you have to do it after each and every update.

So, please, please, please, dear developers! Such a feature is really needed as this is first and most hurting limitation you run into if using data merge! And I think it could be done very simple, at least as a first step.

1. Just provide the possibility to format text similar to HTML tags, or any syntax you like, e.g. <Style1>text</Style1>.
2. On import you remove all those tags, and apply the text style (regardless if paragraph or character) with the same name as the tag name (e.g. Style1) to the text between the tags.

With this simple algorithm you would give us a huge relieve, a very huge indeed!!!