Adding a cover page to every document in a set

Two hundred documents go out Thursday. Each one needs a cover page bound on the front, filled with that document’s data, and the combined file named to the customer’s convention. Nobody budgets time for this work, because each document only takes a few minutes. Two hundred documents is a different story, and it repeats at every issue.

Here’s how to run it manually without losing your week, and the points where it stops being manageable.

The method

Generate the covers in one pass. Mail merge from your register, one cover per document, out to PDF. Name the cover files with the same key as the document files: `1234-001-cover.pdf` next to `1234-001.pdf`.

Combine in bulk. With disciplined naming, Acrobat’s Action Wizard or a small script can pair each cover with its document and merge them. Without disciplined naming, this is a human opening four hundred files two at a time.

Rename to the customer’s convention. Their file naming rules are part of the specification, and a submittal with wrong filenames is a submittal that comes back. A bulk-rename tool driven by your register columns beats doing it by hand.

Count pages. A quick check that every output file is exactly one page longer than its source catches the pairing mistakes before your customer does.

Where it stops being manageable

The mixed set. Not every document takes a cover. Some take a stamp on the drawing instead, some take both, some take neither, and the rule varies by document type. The batch process handles the uniform case; a person handles the exceptions, from memory, per issue.

Locked files. Manufacturer manuals routinely arrive locked, and locked files refuse the merge. Those get printed to a new PDF or handled some other slow way, one at a time.

Re-issues. The second issue isn’t the whole set, it’s an awkward subset: the twelve documents that changed. Someone has to know which twelve, regenerate just those covers with current data, re-bind and re-name just those files, and not touch the rest.

The math. A few minutes per document is the honest number. It just multiplies by the document count, every issue, for the life of the project.

Where DocBoss comes in

In DocBoss, whether a document takes a cover page, a stamp, both or neither is a setting per document type, and the covers are applied as the submittal is built, filled with each document’s current data and named to the customer’s convention. Where a stamp is called for but the drawing has no room for one, the cover page is applied instead of leaving the document unmarked. Locked manufacturer files get their cover pages anyway. The work stays the same size whether the issue carries twelve documents or two hundred.

Bring your naming convention and your worst locked manual to a demo and watch what happens to them.