Associate ContentCrank pagetypes to InDesign Template pages. Pagetype mapping can be overriden in a later step for certain pages by mapping on pagelevel. If most pages of a type need the same template, pagetype mapping is the way to go.

Blockfieldmapping wires available blockfields or express data from your ContentCrank to textframes or imagelinks in your IDML templates.

Select all pages you want to export. By ticking the 'include subpages' checkbox you can include all childpages of the selected ones. The best practice to handle multiple documents with similar content pages is to create a pool of original pages about recurring content. Documents work best if they consist of a parent overview page and aliases of the original pages as children. This way the original pages are the only ones to keep up to date and the page order and combination can be separated from editable content. And you only have to select one page and tick one box when exporting.

Since you now have a list of pages to export, you can override pagetype mappings and blockfieldmappings for certain pages.

ContentCrank will create a complete packaged InDesign folder for you, except fontfiles. The exported zip archive will contain an IDML file and a links folder with all images and linked files.

Most documents just need to be checked and written out as pdf files in InDesign. Depending on how the template spreads and pages were designed, the document may need some adjustments to be printable. If you have the correct template design for a corresponding content structure, any thinkable document can be made 99% printable by export.

ContentCrank is designed to give you both, the advantages of automation and the freedom of design choices and content structure. We could create pdf files directly from html, but this way you'd need to rely on the export to 100% (which you still can do!) but there are some things the export itself cannot accomplish. Things like balanced breaks, manual kerning in headlines, image crop placement, pagination and chapters and final preprint preparations need to be done manually and checked by a professional.

ContentCrank will get you as close as possible to a finished document dataset, while keeping everything open to editing - just like a usual indd file. But better: you'll recognize that a lot of new styles are added with exporting. These are the styles your ContentCrank pages and texts used but you did not have in your template. The added styles are designed and used in a way that allows global editing and changes.