Print Designer: Call Slip

A call slip is the paper slip staff print and carry into the stacks to pull a requested item. The Print Designer is where you decide what that slip looks like: which fields print (call number, item title, location, the patron's name), where they sit on the page, what's in bold, whether a barcode appears, and how many slips fit on a sheet. Aeon includes a default call slip, so you don't have to touch this — most sites start from the default and tweak it once.

You design the call slip here; staff actually print it later from a request (or a batch of requests) using the Print Callslip action. This page covers the design side. For the printing/workflow side, see Printing Call Slips.

When you'll use this

• Your call slips are missing a field you need in the stacks (a sub-location, an EAD number, a custom field) — add it here.
• You want call slips to print two- or four-up to save paper — set the records-per-page grid.
• You want a barcode on the slip so retrieved items can be scanned back in.
• You're moving from the legacy Word/mail-merge templates and want to rebuild the slip visually instead of fighting merge fields.

This is the same designer used for every print template

The Call Slip designer is one mode of Aeon's print designer. The Request slip, User card, Invoice, Invoice Statement, and Digitization Request templates all use the same canvas and tools — only the available fields and the sample preview data differ. If you've designed a request slip, a call slip works identically. The call slip's field list is the full set of Transaction, User, Researcher, Activity, Appointment, and (if you've defined any) Custom Fields.

Opening the Call Slip designer

1. Open the Customization Manager.
2. In the left navigation, under Designers, choose Print Designer. It opens on the Request template by default.
3. Print Designer expands into one sub-action per template type — Request, Callslip, User, Invoice, Invoice Statement, and Digitization Request. Choose Callslip. (The browser address ends in /customizations/print-designer/callslip.)

The browser tab reads Print Designer: Callslip while you're editing call slips.

You need the Designers permission to edit

Creating, renaming, duplicating, deleting, importing, or saving a template requires the Designers configuration capability. Without it you can still reach the page and look at templates, but the save and template-management actions are blocked. Generating a Preview also requires either the Designers capability or View access to Requests.

A large screen is required

The print designer needs room for the palette, canvas, and properties panel. On a phone-sized screen it shows a Larger Display Required message instead of the editor — use a tablet or desktop.

The layout

Once open, the designer has four regions:

Region	What it's for
Toolbar (top)	Pick which call slip template you're editing, set page size/orientation, set records-per-page, zoom, undo/redo, group/ungroup, Preview, and Save.
Elements palette (left)	The building blocks you drag onto the slip: Text, Field, Barcode, Line, Rectangle, Image.
Canvas (center)	The slip itself, drawn to scale with sample data so you can see roughly what will print.
Properties (right)	Settings for whatever you've selected — the field name, font, size, position, conditions, and so on. It slides open when you select an element.

"Tables" don't apply to call slips

The palette shows a Tables section (Billing Charges, Payment History) only for templates that have tabular data — invoices and statements. A call slip is a single request, so it has no tables and that section won't appear. Everything on a call slip is text, fields, lines, shapes, barcodes, or images.

Picking and managing call slip templates

You can keep more than one call slip layout (for example, one for the reading room and one for offsite retrieval) and mark one as the default.

The template selector sits at the far left of the toolbar; the ⋯ (more) menu next to it holds the management actions:

• New Template — start a fresh call slip from a minimal default layout.
• Duplicate — copy the current call slip (named "… (Copy)") so you can experiment without touching the original.
• Rename — change the template's name.
• Set as Default — make this the call slip Aeon pre-selects when staff print. Only one call slip can be the default; setting a new one clears the old. The default is shown with a small default badge in the selector.
• Export / Import — save a template (and its images) to a .aeon-print-template.zip file, or load one. Handy for copying a slip between a test and production site.
• Import from Word Document… — bring in a legacy .doc/.docx call slip. Aeon parses it, maps the merge fields it recognizes, pulls in images, and creates a new call slip template, then shows a summary of what converted, what was skipped, and what needs your attention. Fields it can't map are flagged so you can fix them.
• Delete — remove the template.

warning

Importing a Word document creates a new template

If you have unsaved changes when you choose Import from Word Document…, Aeon warns you that importing creates a new template and switches to it, and your unsaved edits will be lost. Save first if you want to keep them.

Building the slip

Adding fields and elements

Drag an item from the Elements palette onto the canvas, or click it to drop it in the center. Then select it and adjust it in the Properties panel.

For a call slip the workhorse is the Field element — a placeholder that prints live data from the request:

1. Drag Field onto the slip.
2. With it selected, open the Field section of the Properties panel and use the Field Name picker.
3. The picker is grouped by category — Transaction Fields, User Fields, Researcher Fields, Institution Fields, Activity Fields, Appointment Fields, Staff Fields, and Custom Fields if you have any. Pick the field you want, for example Call Number or Item Title.
4. Optionally set a Format (for dates and numbers) and a Prefix/Suffix (for example a # before a number).

Common call slip fields: Call Number, Location, Sub-Location, Item Title, Item Author, Item Volume, Transaction Number, and the patron's Last Name / First Name. On the canvas these show realistic sample values (call number MS 1234.5, request #12345, item "Sample Collection Title: A Historical Analysis") so you can judge spacing before printing.

Use Text for fixed labels that never change ("CALL SLIP", "Pull for:"), Line and Rectangle for dividers and boxes, Image for a logo (chosen from the image gallery), and Barcode for a scannable code built from a field — by default the Transaction Number.

Moving, sizing, and aligning

• Drag an element to move it; drag its handles to resize.
• Select several at once with Shift-click (or Ctrl/Cmd-click), then drag them together.
• Nudge with the arrow keys (hold Shift for a bigger step).
• Group elements that belong together (toolbar group button, or Ctrl/Cmd+G) so they move as a unit; Ungroup with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+G.
• Copy/Paste (Ctrl/Cmd+C / V) and Duplicate (Ctrl/Cmd+D) repeat elements.
• Undo/Redo (Ctrl/Cmd+Z / Shift+Z) and the toolbar arrows step through your changes.

Hiding fields that are empty

Not every request fills every field. Rather than printing a stray "Volume:" label with nothing after it, you can hide an element when its data is blank.

With a field selected, open the Conditions section of the Properties panel and turn on Hide if empty. For more involved rules, click Edit to open the Edit Conditions dialog and build conditions there. (This replaces the hidden Word field codes and IF/THEN merge rules from the legacy templates — same idea, done visually.)

Page setup and printing multiple slips per sheet

In the toolbar:

• Page size (Letter, Legal, A4, A5) and Orientation (Portrait/Landscape).
• The records-per-page button (it reads "1 per page" by default). Open it to set Rows and Columns and optional gaps, then click Apply. Setting 2 rows × 1 column, for example, prints two call slips per sheet; the popover shows you the resulting cell size. This is the modern equivalent of a multi-up label sheet.

Previewing

Click Preview in the toolbar to generate a real PDF of the current call slip filled with sample request data (request #12345 and friends). It opens in a dialog titled Preview: template name where you can Download the PDF or send it to your printer with Print. Preview is the reliable way to confirm fonts, spacing, and page fit before staff rely on the slip.

Saving

Your edits are local until you save. The toolbar shows the state — Saved, Unsaved, or Saving…:

• Save (or Ctrl/Cmd+S) writes the template to Aeon for everyone.
• The Discard changes button (the circular-arrow icon, shown only when you have unsaved edits) reverts to the last saved version.

Switching templates discards unsaved edits

The designer tracks unsaved changes per template. Save before you switch to a different call slip, change template type, or import — selecting another template loads its saved state and your in-progress edits to the current one are not kept.

How the call slip you design gets used

When a staff member opens request #12345 and clicks Print Callslip (in the request toolbar), Aeon opens a print dialog showing a live PDF of the slip. If you keep more than one call slip template, the dialog shows a template picker; with only one template there's nothing to choose. When the picker is shown, Aeon pre-selects, in order: the template that staff member used last, otherwise the one you marked as default, otherwise the first available. So the call slip you design here — especially the default — is what your team prints day to day.

Printing a call slip records history, and the first print moves the request

Every print writes a "Callslip Printed" entry to the request's history. The first print also advances the request: the toolbar shows Print Callslip only while a request is in a pre-retrieval state (Awaiting Request Processing or Awaiting Activity Processing), and from there the dialog's buttons read Print & Route to In Item Retrieval and Download & Route to In Item Retrieval — printing or downloading moves the request into In Item Retrieval. Afterward the toolbar action becomes Reprint Callslip, which reprints the same slip without changing status. That workflow behavior lives with the request toolbar, not the designer — see Printing Call Slips for the details.

Editor review — remove this callout (and the HTML comment below it) before publishing

A few things still need a human pass:

• Screenshots needed: (1) the full designer on the Callslip type (toolbar + palette + canvas + properties); (2) the Field Name picker open, showing the category groups; (3) the records-per-page popover; (4) the Preview dialog; (5) the Print Callslip dialog showing the Print & Route to In Item Retrieval button.
• Cross-link target: confirm the final path/title of the "Printing Call Slips" workflow page and fix the link references on this page once that page exists.

The full generation metadata — sources, files read, and verifications, i.e. the detail a tool like Claude would need to regenerate this page — is in the HTML comment directly below this callout. When this page has been reviewed and approved, delete both this callout and that comment; a page with no Editor-review callout is one that's done.