Working with InDesign Documents

Cumulus provides special support for InDesign documents. This support is based on specific modules which allow:

Cumulus’ enhanced support for InDesign documents is provided for documents of versions up to InDesign CC.

When cataloging, Cumulus can capture general document information. If you have installed the Cumulus DocWatch Plug-in for Adobe InDesign on the machine where the InDesign documents are created and edited, Cumulus can also capture specific document information. (For details see “DocWatch Plug-ins for InDesign”.)

Special modules for InDesign documents are:

The Cumulus DocWatch Plug-in for Adobe InDesign enables Cumulus to embed the metadata of an InDesign document into the XMP (EXtensible Metadata Platform) part of the document. The Cumulus InDesign Filter and InDesign AssetStore can make use of such metadata and capture information on InDesign documents when they are cataloged or previewed. The InDesign AssetStore requires such metadata to extract pages in order to provide separate records for these pages.

The Cumulus DocWatch UI Plug-in for Adobe InDesign adds a new entry to InDesign’s Preferences menu, Cumulus DocWatch. (For details see “DocWatch Properties”.)

The Cumulus DocWatch Plug-in and the Cumulus DocWatch UI Plug-in for Adobe InDesign must be installed on each computer where the InDesign documents you want to catalog are created or edited.

• If you are using the Cumulus InDesign Client, the proper DocWatch Plug-in and the DocWatch UI Plug-in for your Adobe InDesign version are installed automatically with the InDesign Client installation.

• If the Cumulus InDesign Client is not installed on your system, you must add the DocWatch Plug-in and the DocWatch UI Plug-in manually to your InDesign installation.

DocWatch (and DocWatch UI) Plug-ins for various Adobe InDesign versions are provided with any Cumulus standard installation. You find them in the Adapters folder in your Cumulus Client installation folder.

1. (Windows:) Copy the CumulusDocWatch folder for your InDesign version to the Plug-Ins folder of the Adobe InDesign installation.
OR
(macOS:) Copy both the CumulusDocWatch [xx].InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI [xx].InDesignPlugin files for your InDesign version to the Plug-Ins folder of the Adobe InDesign installation

• For InDesign 2020:
CumulusDocWatch 2020.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI 2020.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC 2019:
CumulusDocWatch CC2019.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC2019.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC 2018:
CumulusDocWatch CC2018.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC2018.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC 2017:
CumulusDocWatch CC2017.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC2017.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC 2015:
CumulusDocWatch CC2015.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC2015.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC 2014:
CumulusDocWatch CC2014.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC2014.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CC:
CumulusDocWatch CC.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CC.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CS6:
CumulusDocWatch CS6.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CS6.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CS5.5:
CumulusDocWatch CS5.5.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CS5.5.InDesignPlugin

• For InDesign CS5:
CumulusDocWatch CS5.InDesignPlugin and CumulusDocWatchUI CS5.InDesignPlugin

The Cumulus DocWatch Plug-in for Adobe InDesign extracts the following information from an InDesign document and saves them to the XMP section of the document:

By default, the DocWatch Plug-in extracts a preview of each page of an InDesign document. Especially for large documents, this may increase the amount of collected metadata significantly. In order to reduce the amount of collected metadata and thus improving the overall performance, this behavior can be configured. The DocWatch UI Plug-in adds a new entry to InDesign’s Preferences menu, Cumulus DocWatch.

1. In InDesign, select Preferences > Cumulus DocWatch.
The Cumulus DocWatch Properties window is displayed.

2. Select whether there shall be a preview for each page of a document, or for the first page only.

3. Select the desired quality of the preview (the higher the quality, the higher the amount of data to be stored).

NOTE: Export options
In order to increase the quality of generated PDFs via the Cumulus InDesign Client, users of Cumulus 11.0.1 or 11.0.2 may want to activate the Embed images when exporting to ‘Adobe PDF (Print)’ format option (which is deactivated by default for performance reasons).
Starting with Cumulus 11.0.3, this option is obsolete, because PDFs are now always created with high quality images.

Based on the information stored in the XMP section, the InDesign AssetStores enables Cumulus to create one record for each page of the InDesign document during the cataloging process. All these records are created in addition to creating a record for the entire document. The records will be assigned to the corresponding document as “contained”. A category for each document will automatically be created and the records are assigned to these categories.

NOTE: If InDesign AssetStore is not activated for the Asset Handling Set used, Cumulus will just create one record for the entire asset.

The Cumulus Filter for Adobe InDesign captures the following information from an InDesign document:

Based on the information stored in the XMP section, the InDesign Filter can also capture the following information:

The Cumulus InDesign Filter allows you to define properties of assets cataloged with this filter. Under Preferences > Asset Handling Sets > Asset Formats tab, select the InDesign Filter entry and click on Properties. The Filter Setup dialog opens.

You can decide whether the thumbnail and preview for an asset should be created from page or spread. Note that thumbnail and preview creation is only possible for the entire document and not for individual pages. Another setup definition enables Cumulus to extract the text contained in the file to the Document Text record field. If this option is activated, you can enter the maximal number of characters you want to extract.