Print Designer: Request Slip

The request slip is the page Aeon prints for a request — the sheet that travels with the material or sits in the stacks while it's pulled, showing the title, call number, transaction number, researcher, and whatever else your reading room needs on paper. The Print Designer is where you decide what that slip looks like.

You work in a visual, drag-and-drop canvas built into the web staff client: open a request-slip template, lay out the page the way you want it to print — drop a title, place the call number, add a barcode — preview it, and save. Aeon renders the slip to PDF and staff print it straight from the browser.

If you ran Aeon before version 7, this replaces the Microsoft Word mail-merge model entirely. There is no .docx template on a file share and no Excel data source to point at — everything lives in Aeon.

When you'll use this

• You're setting Aeon up and want the printed request slip to match your house style.
• Staff asked for a field on the slip that isn't there (a custom field, the appointment time, a second call-number line).
• You're moving from the old desktop client and want to recreate your existing PrintRequest.docx layout — see Bringing an existing Word template across.
• You need more than one request-slip layout (for example, a full slip and a compact one) — the designer supports multiple named templates.

This is the request slip, not the call slip

Aeon has six separate print template types: Request, Callslip, User, Invoice, Invoice Statement, and Digitization Request. This page covers the request slip. The call slip uses the Print Designer: Call Slip, which is the same designer pointed at a different template type. The two slips are independent — editing one never changes the other.

Opening the Request Slip designer

The Print Designer lives in the Customization Manager.

1. Open the Customization Manager and, in the left nav, expand the Designers group.
2. Choose Print Designer, then its Request sub-item — the six template types (Request, Callslip, User, Invoice, Invoice Statement, Digitization Request) appear as sub-actions under Print Designer. The designer opens at /customizations/print-designer/request.
3. Aeon loads the request-slip templates and selects the default one automatically. If no request-slip template exists yet, you'll see "No Request templates found" with a Create Template button.

Requires the Designers permission

Creating, editing, renaming, duplicating, deleting, importing, and exporting print templates all require the Designers configuration capability. If your role doesn't have it, you can still open the page, but the save and template actions are blocked by the API. Previewing a template additionally works for anyone who can view requests, since previewing pulls request data.

Use a real screen

The designer needs room to work. On a phone-sized screen it shows "Larger Display Required" and asks you to switch to a tablet or desktop. Plan to do template design at a desk, not on a handheld.

How the designer is laid out

Once a template is open you're looking at three areas plus a toolbar:

Area	What it's for
Toolbar (top)	Pick the template, set page size and orientation, configure records-per-page, zoom, undo/redo, group, Preview, and Save.
Elements palette (left)	The building blocks you drag onto the page: Text, Field, Barcode, Line, Rectangle, Image, and any Tables.
Canvas (center)	The page itself, drawn to scale with rulers. This is where you arrange everything.
Properties (right)	Appears when you select an element. Shows that element's settings — its field, format, position, style, and conditions.

The save indicator on the right of the toolbar always tells you where you stand: Saved, Unsaved, or Saving….

Adding elements to the slip

Everything on the slip is an element. You add one in either of two ways:

• Drag it from the Elements palette onto the canvas where you want it, or
• Click it in the palette — Aeon drops it in the middle of the page so you can position it from there.

The element types are:

Element	What it puts on the slip
Text	A static label that prints exactly as typed — e.g. "Special Collections Request" or "Do not reshelve."
Field	A live value pulled from the request — e.g. the transaction number, item title, or call number. This is the workhorse of a request slip.
Barcode	A scannable barcode (or QR code) generated from a field value, typically the transaction number.
Line	A horizontal rule for separating sections.
Rectangle	A box or border, with optional fill.
Image	A picture from the image gallery — usually your institution's logo.
Tables	A repeating table. For the request slip these are mainly relevant on billing-style layouts (Billing Charges, Payment History); a plain pull slip rarely needs one.

Placing a data field — worked example

Say you want the transaction number printed near the top of the slip:

1. Drag Field from the palette onto the canvas. A new field lands showing a placeholder value.
2. With the field selected, look at the Properties panel on the right.
3. Under Field, open the Field Name dropdown. Fields are grouped by category (transaction fields, researcher fields, activity fields, appointment fields, your custom fields, and institution/system fields). Choose Transaction Number.
4. The element now prints the request's transaction number — for request #12345 it will read 12345.

Repeat for the values your reading room needs: item title, author, call number, location, researcher name, request date, and so on. Every field shown in the picker is available because the request slip is built from the request's own data — there's no separate data-source file to choose, unlike the old Word/Excel setup.

Formatting a field

Each field has a Format setting in its properties: leave it on the default, or choose currency, number, short date, long date, or date-time for date and money fields. You can also add a Prefix or Suffix (for example, a $ prefix on a charge, or a % suffix). This is the web equivalent of the old Word date-format switches — no field codes to toggle.

Arranging and fine-tuning

• Move an element by dragging it. Resize it with its handles.
• Nudge a selected element with the arrow keys (hold Shift for a larger step).
• Select several elements with Shift-click (or Ctrl/Cmd-click), then Group them from the toolbar so they move as one.
• Standard editing shortcuts work on the canvas: copy (Ctrl/Cmd+C), paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V), duplicate (Ctrl/Cmd+D), delete (Delete or Backspace), select all (Ctrl/Cmd+A), and undo / redo (Ctrl/Cmd+Z and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z). The toolbar also has Undo and Redo buttons.

Page setup

The toolbar controls how the physical page is shaped:

• Page size — Letter, Legal, A4, or A5.
• Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.
• Records per page — click the grid button (it reads, for example, "1 per page"). For a normal one-slip-per-page request slip, leave this at 1. If you print compact slips several to a sheet, set the Rows and Columns and an optional Row Gap / Column Gap, then click Apply. Aeon shows the resulting cell size and how many records fit per page.

Showing a field only when it has a value (conditions)

A common request: "don't print the Special Request line when it's blank." The designer handles this with conditions.

1. Select the field element.
2. In Properties, find the Conditions section.
3. For the simplest case, flip the Hide if empty switch — the element disappears on any slip where that field has no value.
4. For anything more involved, click Edit to open the Edit Conditions dialog ("Hide this element when:"). Add one or more rules — for example, hide the photocopy note when a flag field equals a certain value. When you set more than one rule, the element hides if any of them match.

This is the web replacement for the old hidden Word field codes (the ALLOWPHOTO-style logic that printed "DO NOT PHOTOCOPY" conditionally). You build the same behavior visually instead of in toggled field codes.

Conditions on a whole group

If you group several elements together, you can put conditions on the group so the entire block shows or hides as a unit — handy for an optional section like billing details or a shipping address.

Previewing before you commit

Click Preview in the toolbar at any time. Aeon renders the current template to a PDF using sample data and opens it in a preview dialog, so you can see real-looking values (a sample transaction number, title, researcher, dates, and your custom fields) laid out exactly as they'll print. From the dialog you can Download the sample PDF or send it to your Print dialog.

Preview always reflects what's saved on the server, so save your changes first if you want the preview to include your latest edits.

Saving, and managing multiple templates

• Save with the toolbar Save button or Ctrl/Cmd+S. The indicator switches to Saved.
• Discard unsaved edits with the discard (counter-clockwise arrow) button that appears next to the save indicator while you have unsaved changes; it reverts to the last saved version.

The designer supports more than one request-slip template. Use the template menu (the ⋯ button next to the template selector) to:

• New Template — start a fresh request slip.
• Duplicate — copy the current one (named "… (Copy)") as a starting point.
• Rename — give it a meaningful name.
• Set as Default — mark which request slip Aeon selects first. Only one template per type is the default; setting a new one clears the old.
• Export / Import — download the template (with its images) as a .aeon-print-template.zip package, or load one back in. Useful for moving a layout between sites or environments.
• Delete — remove the template.

Which template prints?

When staff print a request slip from a request or queue, Aeon uses the default request-slip template unless they pick another. Set the layout most of your staff should use as the default. Printing a request slip is logged on the request's history as Request Printed.

Bringing an existing Word template across

If you're coming from the desktop client, you don't have to rebuild your PrintRequest.docx by hand.

1. Open the template menu (⋯) and choose Import from Word Document….
2. Pick your existing .docx (or .doc) file.
3. Aeon parses the document, converts its merge fields to designer fields where it recognizes them, pulls in images, and creates a new request-slip template — then shows an import summary of what came across cleanly, what was converted, and what it couldn't map.

Review the import, especially unmapped and conditional fields

• Unmapped fields: Word merge fields that Aeon can't match to a known request field are imported as unmapped and flagged with a warning badge on the canvas. Open each flagged field and pick the correct Field Name in its properties to clear the warning.
• Conditional (IF) fields are not converted. Word IF merge fields — the kind that drove "DO NOT PHOTOCOPY"-style conditional text — are skipped during import and listed in the summary. Rebuild that logic with element conditions in the designer.
• Always Preview an imported template before making it the default. Word and the web renderer aren't identical, so spacing usually needs a touch-up.

This replaces the old Word/Excel workflow

There's no longer a PrintRequest.docx on a share, no RequestsPrintQueue.xlsx data source, and no per-machine Word installation requirement. Old guidance about editing Word templates, choosing a data source, or printing only from the desktop client does not apply to Aeon 7 — the request slip is designed and printed entirely in the web client.

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

One thing only an SME can settle, plus screenshots:

• Default-template-on-print claim: confirm that staff-side request-slip printing actually selects the default designer template. The print dialog/trigger component was not read for this page — the "Set as Default" single-default behavior and the "Request Printed" history string are verified in code, but the assertion that printing picks the default is inferred from those, not from the print-trigger UI.
• Screenshots needed: (1) the full designer (toolbar + Elements palette + canvas + Properties); (2) the Field properties panel showing the Field Name picker; (3) the Edit Conditions dialog; (4) the Preview PDF dialog; (5) the Import from Word Document… summary.

The full generation metadata — sources, files read, and verifications — 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.