Step 3 - Method 2: Installing and using the InDesign Extension for Collaborate

Method 2: Downloading Assets via InDesign Extension (recommended)

We recommend using our Collaborate InDesign Extension because it makes it easy to download content from Collaborate directly into InDesign, as well as upload the finished layout back to Collaborate for review.

The InDesign Extension works with InDesign versions from CC2014 and up. Older versions of InDesign are not supported.

To enable either version of the InDesign Extension, you’ll need to follow these instructions.

Installing Collaborate Extension

For InDesign CC2014 and up

Here’s how to install the InDesign extension for the latest version of InDesign (Indesign CC 2014 10.0 and above):

• Download the Collaborate InDesign plug-in Adobe Exchange Marketplace.
• Download the install tool. We use the open-source tool ZXPInstaller to install the plug-in. You can download and install the ZXPInstaller from here: http://zxpinstaller.com/

NOTE: Mac OS X users need to allow the tool to run for the first time, so click Open when you see the message below. If the installer won’t run and a warning is displayed instead, then navigate to the Applications folder, right-click (or Command-click) on ZXPInstaller, and select Open from the menu that appears.

NOTE: If you receive below message while installing ZXPInstaller, You need to go to your Security Settings in System Preferences on your device and and you have to allow plugin access privileges and then it will allow you to download ZXPInstaller.

• Run the ZXPInstall tool and drag the plug-in file you downloaded earlier into the window like the one below at left. After a few moments, you will see the status message seen below at right.

• Close the ZXPInstall tool.
• Open the plug-in in InDesign under:

Window --> Extensions--> Issuu Collaborate

Uninstalling Collaborate Extension

To uninstall Stories Extension

1. Login to adobeexchange.com
2. Click on My Exchange
3. Click Uninstall in-front of Stories Extension

Using the InDesign Extension

Here’s how to enable the Collaborate extension for InDesign:

1. Open up InDesign and pull down the Window menu. Under Extensions, choose issuu Collaborate.
2. A Collaborate panel should appear and you can log in with your issuu profile (username or email).

Initially, the Layout tab is active and the flatplan for the chosen issue is now shown. You can see the status of the layout on the the colored bar at the bottom of each page:

Articles and ads are shown on the pages as well, with an icon next to the title, indicating its status.

Near the top of the window, you can select the Content tab.

For Contributors working on a publication’s layout, it is helpful to go to the Content tab to ensure that all the assets uploaded to an article are included when downloading via the extension.

Downloading content

Here’s how to download content into InDesign:

1. Select the pages you want to download and click the Download button in the bottom right of the Collaborate panel in InDesign.
2. The content will be downloaded to your computer and placed in the currently open InDesign document, right on the page in the InDesign document corresponding to the one selected in the extension.

File Sync, Layout and Production Status

• The File Sync Status icons indicate if new, unsynced content is available.
• The current status of the local content compared to the version on the server is indicated by an icon next to each page in the Layout view

•  All add-on files that InDesign supports (copy from the Collaborate text editor, images, PDFs, Word documents, etc.) will be automatically imported into InDesign. 
• If unsupported files were added to the article (such as a spreadsheet, among other files from digital tools), you’ll see them on the Content tab as well.
• Initially, the Layout tab is active and the flatplan for the chosen issue is now shown. You can see the status of the layout on the the colored bar at the bottom of each page.
• NOTE: "Not selectable" state is shown for items in pages that aren't actually available in your publication. For instance, if your publication on Collaborate has 20 pages, but the InDesign document has only page 1 through 10, then all the contents on pages 11 to 20 will be marked as "not selectable".

Uploading layouts

Once you are done with the layout for a page, select the page in the Collaborate panel and click Upload in the bottom left corner.

When you upload a layout, you can choose to add a comment to it and even notify a team member.

Here’s a tip: Both the Upload and Download actions can be performed on several pages at a time.

To do this,

1. Simply click the pages that you want to upload or download; the marked pages have a darker background.
2. You can use the usual mouse shortcuts (Shift-click, Command-click on Mac or Control-click on Windows) to select multiple pages at once.

Working with Paragraph Styles in InDesign