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• • September 4, 2013 at 2:47 am #65164
    Pei Chiu

    Participant

    Hi

    At work we regularly need to make and amend bespoke org charts various of team members. The problem with something like this is that it can be very time consuming, especially when team members change at the last minute etc.

    I noticed that InDesign is able to bring in Objects (whilst I don’t quite understand fully, but am aware that it may be able to bring in pre-set templates?), and have also noticed a feature called ‘Data Merge’. I was wondering if we were to create a database of say all our staff members, and tying that in with Objects, whether the whole process could be automated.

    So instead of manually inputting content for a picture, name, job title, department, telephone, email etc. we could just type a name, and all of that would be already set ready to be brought into a document.

    As the content for this is usually created as a bespoke document, I’m not saying that this process could be fully automated, but was just wondering if anyone knew of any scripts that may be able to resolve this?!

    Thanks

  • September 4, 2013 at 6:37 am #65168
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I’ve never seen an org chart script, but I’m sure that someone could create one.

    Otherwise, it’s a relatively manual process. I wrote about some tools for working with org charts here:
    https://creativepro.com/building-an-org-chart-or-flowchart-in-indesign-part-1.php

  • September 18, 2013 at 4:56 am #65358
    Pei Chiu

    Participant

    Thanks David!

    The main aim of this would be to avoid doing everything manually, so if there is a script almost like a magic wand, that you can say to it “here is a list of people”, the script will ask back “how would you like them to be laid out?” and after you tell the script how, it would populate an org chart with all of the photos, contact details and other relevant information.

    I’m aware it won’t be possible for the whole process to be fully automated, but anything that could be done along those lines to remove all the tedious repetitiveness would be a great step forward.

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