Background Information
For Phase I of Distributed Production, the BLOX Total CMS client for Adobe InDesign will not support uploading documents with advertising in place until the penultimate process of the Pages workflow. Even if the remote user has access to the ads, they will be removed from the page at check in until the penultimate process.
This, might, mean that a site should consider the process names as well as the overall processes of the Pages workflow. This is a browser based option at Desktop > Applications > Settings > Workflows and not all users have site based permissions to view or edit those workflows. Here is an example of a site's Pages workflow process:
A sample of a site's Pages workflow processes. There isn't any know hard limits of the number of workflow processes a site can have, but there are definitely practical limits. In addition, there are some automatic applications of the first process when using BLOX Total CMS > Documents > Advertising > Create Pages... and when placing an asset on a page the page's workflow will be advanced to the 2nd process. Distributed Production users won't get ads to place until the page has reached the penultimate process. And the page is considered complete when it reaches the final process.
Advertising Paths for Remote Users
Unlike for a normal or a Local user, if the advertising paths don't use browser based OS specific root for the advertisings paths. They will based upon the Distributed Production Remote path for tcms_purghed. Based on the OS that means that the paths will likely be something like:
On MacOS either:
- ~/tcms/tcms_purged/Advertising/
- ~/tcms/tcms_purged/ domain /Advertising/
On Windows either:
- %userprofile%\tcms\tcms_purged\Advertising\
- %userprofile%\tcms\tcms_purged\ domain \Advertising\
…where domain is the active domain the user is logged into.
These paths become a moot point however because ads won't automatically be imported until the page reaches the penultimate process of the Pages workflow. In addition, the BLOX Total CMS system provides no method of syncing the actual location of the ads to this remote storage location.
So What is the Workflow?
It is expected, but not required, that the advertising composition staff who dummy each edition will be working in office as a Local or normal user. They can then create the pages, but as has always been the case with Enhanced Mode active, the ads aren't actually placed on the pages until the pages are opened by the first user. This isn't to say that the ads aren't imported into the unsplit _BU document, just that the live pages don't get ads until the page is opened.
If a page is opened by a Remote Distributed Production user, no atempt is made to import the ads until reaching the penultimate process of the Pages' workflow. The Ad Placeholder frames, however, will automatically be added without any user interaction.
When a page has reached the penultimate process of the Pages workflow, then Ad Statuses can be used to import ads providing the ads are accessible. The accessibility would best be handled by having the ads imported in office by a Local user.
However, if the Remote user's VPN access is suitable, the ads can be imported from the mounted file server. This won't be speedy, it's part of the reason for the creation of distributed production, but it is likely workable.