The FTP Monitor is an add-on feature, and it is not available for all clients.
📖 This guide explains:
What is an FTP Monitor?
An FTP Monitor allows you to upload PDF documents to a monitored folder. PDF files found will automatically be processed and created as Flipbooks. This eases the burden of bulk upload, or giving a designer an easy way to upload to Flipbooks.
Please note that, while we support FTP, at this time we do not support SFTP servers.
How to set up an FTP Monitor in iPaper
Need the same PDF but in 50 languages created as Flipbooks? Simply drag n' drop 'em to your monitored folder!
Setting up FTP Monitor requires a few steps to get it set up, but once complete, you can drag and drop all your PDFS to it, and iPaper will automatically create Flipbooks from them.
Here's how:
Create an FTP server
First step to using our FTP Monitor is to of course have an FTP Server for us to monitor.
⚠️ In order for iPaper's FTP Monitor to be able to work, the server should be accessible from public network, should have hostname or IP address which is resolvable over public DNS.
Create a new FTP Monitor
Now that your FTP server is up and running, it's time to direct the Monitor in iPaper to monitor it:
In iPaper, click on Flipbooks from the vertical menu on the left.
Click on Modules to open a menu of the available modules.
Select FTP monitor. You will then be greeted by a window asking you to create a new FTP Monitor:
Click on the Create FTP monitor button to set up your FTP monitor. Later, any existing FTP monitors will be show here as a list.
Clicking on the button will present you with a number of fields required to set up your FTP monitor, divided into Basic, and Additional settings. We'll go through all of these in the next section:
Basic settings
This is the name of your Monitor. As you can have multiple FTP Monitors running simultaneously, we recommend that you name it according to what FTP server it is monitoring.
Select the folder location where the PDFs from the FTP server should be created as Flipbooks.
Direct the Monitor to the FTP server's host address.
Remember, that in order for iPaper's FTP Monitor to be able to work, the server should be accessible from public network, should have hostname or IP address which is resolvable over public DNS.
The username used to log in to the server.
The password used to log in to the server.
Check this box if you want the FTP Monitor to scan any subfolders on the FTP server.
💡 Pro tip: to make sure your Flipbooks are created with the right settings, design etc., utilize inherited settings on the folder! Read more on those here:
Additional settings
There are also a number of Additional Settings you can set up for your FTP Monitor:
Check this box to import any hyperlinks from the base PDF.
Check this box to use a specific Enrichment Automation configuration.
Selecting this box will add your new Flipbook directly to an existing archive.
Selecting this box will set a cap on the number of archived items.
If you have a branded domain on the folder, you can select this box to make sure to use the root by having it as the default Flipbook.
By checking this box, you can send a notification to an email when the monitor uploads a new PDF.
Your FTP Monitor is now set up and ready to use.
Add PDF files or folders with PDF files to the FTP server, and they will automatically be created. You can see an example below, of a file being added to an FTP client:
⚠️ Please note that we generally do not support files with special characters. That means that you should only use the characters a-z and numbers 0-9 in file names: special characters such as æ, ø and å may cause the FTP Monitor to fail or ignore those files.
The FTP Monitor runs on a 30-minute cycle when scanning for new files. As soon as the Monitor finds a new file, it will automatically start uploading and processing it as a new Flipbook:
💡 FTP monitor is a complex, but automated way of creating new Flipbooks. If you just need a simple way to let outside users upload the occasional file? Consider Simple Upload:
Take your Flipbook from flat PDF to engaging digital shopping experience
Understand how this, and other tactics, can help you attract and inspire shoppers, while also capturing buying intent and converting to a sale, in our Success Framework.