Start Publishing Run

To start a publishing run, you must specify the product (or publishing group) and delivery method (route, mail, or both) that will be processed in the run. Circulation assigns the publishing date according to the calendar that was set up for the product (for information about defining calendars, see Publishing Calendar in the Setup Manual).

It is assumed in this discussion that processing will be done for each product’s publishing day in calendar date order. For example, if a product publishes seven days a week, and the last publishing day was the 3rd, the next publishing day will automatically be the 4th.

Circulation has certain rules that govern publishing days:

1. To start a publishing run, the previous publishing run must be ended for the product and delivery method (see End Publ Run).

2. You can have more than one product in an active publishing run at the same time. Transactions for the two products are processed independently, and all reports are run separately.

3. You must specify a delivery method for the product (mail, route, or both). This enables you to process mail transactions separately from route transactions and can help speed the flow of the publishing run.

4. You cannot set up successive publishing days for the same product and delivery method in the same publishing run. For example, the Star route deliveries for Friday cannot be in an active publishing run at the same time as the Star route deliveries for Saturday.

5. You cannot enter transactions for dates that have been through final Transaction Processing (unless the requested date falls within the allowed backdating period designated by Business Rules).

6. You can process both mail and route delivered transactions for a product together, provided the next publishing day is the same for both. If it is not, you can still do route and mail publishing runs at the same time, but they must be entered as separate items and processed separately.

7. If processing route-delivered transactions separately from mail, you can have separate publishing runs for different editions (see A Note on Editions).

8. When starting a publishing run for a publishing group, if publications that are part of a publishing group have already been started, they will be included when running bundle tops, truck manifests, and other options for the publishing group.

As an example of how you would plan publishing runs, suppose your afternoon newspaper, the Tribune, publishes Monday through Saturday, but a reduced staff works in the Circulation department on Saturday. To do all route and mail processing during the period Monday through Friday for the Monday through Saturday publishing cycle, you could set up publishing runs as follows:

You may wish to process mail transactions on a different schedule from route transactions, so that mail subscription processing can be completed and mailing labels can be printed to meet an earlier deadline. For example, if you must produce mailing labels the day before delivery day, you could set up the following schedule of publishing runs. This example also includes a sister product (the Star) that publishes only on Sunday.

Note that you could process route transactions for the Star at any convenient point, but once you have closed the publishing run containing the route transactions for next Sunday’s Star, you can no longer process route transactions for that publication. Given the above schedule, associates could not accept mail transactions (unless they were backdated) for that Sunday’s Star after publishing run #9 has been closed on Thursday. They could, however, continue to process route transactions for the next Sunday’s Star until publishing run #12 closes on Friday.

To start a publishing run:

• Select Start Publ Run from the Publishing menu to display the Start Publ Run window.
• Complete the following fields.

  Field

  Type

  What to enter

  GROUP

  setup

  If applicable, select the publishing group whose run should be started. If you enter a publishing group, the publishing run will be started for all products defined in that group.

  PRODUCT

  setup

  Enter the product whose publishing run should be started.

  DELIVERY METHOD

  predefined

  Specify the delivery method: mail, route, or both.

  PRODUCT NAME, PUBLISHING DATE

  display

  Circulation displays the product name and its next unprocessed publishing date for the delivery method you specify in the previous field.

• When you have entered all of product/delivery method combinations, click OK.

• Click Continue to begin the publishing run(s).

If other publishing runs have been started, they will be displayed, but you will not be allowed to modify or delete them.