An Enrichment Automation can make your Flipbooks engaging and shoppable in seconds.
We will custom build it for you to accommodate your specific Flipbooks (PDFs) and data source.
Here is a video showing you how to use a basic Enrichment Automation.
How does it work?
Whenever a PDF is run through the iPaper system, all PDF text, hyperlinks and metadata, is saved, along with the location where each individual word is found on each page.
The Enrichment Automation is capable of looking up every product ID found in your PDF and matching them with data.
When a match is found between the PDF and the data source, one or more enrichments will be created. Typical enrichments include, shop links, external links, pop-up frame links, pop-up image gallery links and many more.
What will you need to get started using an Enrichment Automation?
PDF Tagging
As mentioned above, your Enrichment Automation will need something to grab onto when creating your enrichments.
It is possible to create an Enrichment Automation that will place enrichments on a page number basis, if the data source includes page numbers. But that will place the enrichments in a fixed or random position.
The best option is tagging the PDF with text or hyperlinks.
The PDF text can be visible or hidden (transparent or sent to back), reside in a separate PDF layer, or be included as text-based Adobe Acrobat comments.
Product IDs can contain spaces (if they must) but, NEVER line breaks, and they must not overlap with other text.
Data source
The iPaper Enrichment Automation supports the following types of data:
Excel
CSV
XML
JSON
A few exceptions apply, but if your data complies with the format in which it is presented, most data sources can be read.
Favorite among data sources, for us, here at iPaper, is the Google Merchant feed standard. See an example here, in the iPaper Sample Feed.
When using a feed, the data is most often updated with live product data from your ecommerce platform. And using the Google Merchant standard gives you options: Create hyperlinks or shop links, add images, display variants and more. Most of the mentioned options are, however also available using other data sources.
Please note: The Enrichment Automation will download a fresh feed every time it is used, but when feeds take more than 5 minutes to download, the process will time out. So, consider using a service that will periodically update a file, stored on a server, and not generate a new file upon every request, as that can take time.
See our articles on Excel Data Templates and using Google Sheets to host your data here.
Using Enrichment Automation
Enrichment Automation can be applied in four ways:
While creating your Flipbook.
While changing your PDF
(Destructive - Existing enrichments will be removed before new ones are created)Using the Update Enrichments function (your manually added enrichments will be retained, and your automated enrichments are updated)
Via Auto-update enrichments, once every 24-hours (Only your data source can be altered here, as the Enrichment Automation configuration from last manual processing is used.)
Configure your Enrichment Automation
Whenever you use your Enrichment Automation, you can configure it's settings via UI properties. Here, you can change data-source(s), swap out CTA icons and other custom settings.
Changing your configuration only affects future flipbook updates
Enrichment Automation creates a snapshot of how your PDF, data and configuration combine in the moment of processing.
Changing your data or configuration does not affect your enrichments, until you process your flipbook with that Enrichment Automation again.
Your changes are saved here until next time the Enrichment Automation is used to process a Flipbook.
To recap: The Enrichment Automation can be used on a new Flipbook, including new settings, immediately after one processing, without affecting the former in any way.
Applying an Enrichment Automation
The Enrichment Automation box is clicked, changes are applied via the pencil icon, the changes must then be saved, and the Enrichment Automation must be selected.
See it here, where one change is applied while using the Update Enrichments function:
Now, get automating!
Please contact us if you have questions.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Have a great day :)