Table of Contents
Overview
Generating a Complete PDF
Generating a Custom PDF
Adding Curriculum Pages to a Catalog PDF
Accessing Catalog PDFs
Add “Download PDF Version” to Your Top Navigation Bar
Example PDF
Related Articles
Overview
Generating a PDF of your catalog – and making it available for download for anyone who visits your page – is quick and easy for administrative Coursedog users.
You can also generate a custom PDF for reporting or archival purposes.
Note that in order for a page to appear in your PDF, it needs to be included as a link in a navigation on your catalog website. Learn more about Editing Navigations.
Generating a Complete PDF
How to Do It | Making PDFs Available for Individual Departments
Making PDFs Available for Courses and Programs
How to Do It
Step 1: Navigate to Catalog > Settings > Catalogs.
Step 2 (Optional): If you wish to modify your PDF, click “PDF Settings”.
Step 3 (Optional):
Determine if you would like to include departments, programs and/or courses in your PDF by checking the corresponding box.
As shown below, the Catalog PDF displays courses and programs as part of the department. As a result, the department page must be published for departments, programs, and courses to be included in the PDF Export.
Step 4:
Check “Include Course Set and Requirement Set Reference Material” if you wish to include a list of all courses that are part of course or requirement sets.
If checked, each Course Set and Requirement Set will link to a section at the end of the PDF; that section will list out the courses for each set.
If unchecked, users who download the PDF will see the names of Course and Requirement Sets, but not detailed information for each.
Step 5 Optional):
Select Display Format settings.
The “Condensed” option reduces the amount of white space in the PDF, particularly between lines of text.
The “Use Website Font” option means your PDF would use the same font as your website.
Step 6 (Optional):
Adjust font size as needed.
The font size setting in the PDF refers to pixels, not to font “points”. So, 16=16px=12pts, 12=12px=9pts.
Step 7: Select “Save”.
Step 8: Click “Generate PDF” under the actions tab of the catalog you wish to export.
Step 9:
Click “Generate”.
The PDF will then be sent to your email.
Note that custom fonts will not be applied to the PDF.
Making PDFs Available for Individual Departments
You can give visitors to your public site the ability to download PDFs for individual departments (shown below).
Department PDFs follow the settings established for the main PDF available on your public site. This means they are ONLY generated when a department has a department overview.
This option will automatically appear on the department’s page, provided you generate a complete PDF (i.e. “Include the entire catalog content in generated document” is toggled to the right) and “Include Departments” is checked under “PDF Settings”.
Making PDFs Available for Courses and Programs
You can give visitors to your public site the ability to download PDFs for individual courses and programs.
Users can also download a filtered list of programs and courses from the program or course index (e.g., catalog.coursedoguniversity.edu/courses).
Course and Program PDFs follow the settings established for the main PDF available on your public site. This means they follow the template associated with your course/program pages.
This option will automatically appear on course and program pages, provided you generate a complete PDF (i.e. “Include the entire catalog content in generated document” is toggled to the right) and “Include Courses and Programs” is checked under “PDF Settings”.
Generating a Custom PDF
Overview
Administrative users also have the ability to create a custom PDF for administrative, accreditation, and/or archival purposes.
The PDF linked on your public webpage will continue to be the most recently generated complete PDF, regardless of when a custom PDF may have been created.
How to Do It
Step 1: Navigate to Catalog > Settings > Catalogs.
Step 2: Select “Generate PDF”.
Step 3: Switch this toggle to the left (“off”) to NOT include all catalog content in the PDF.
Step 4:
De-activating the toggle will bring up an index of all catalog content for that catalog scope.
Select the specific items you want to include in the custom PDF.
Step 5:
Click “generate” to create the PDF.
It will be emailed to you.
Adding Curriculum Pages to a Catalog PDF
Overview
When you add Curriculum pages to your catalog PDF, as indicated in Step 2 under “Generating a Complete PDF”, the order of the PDF generated is: custom pages, department pages, program pages, and course pages.
Courses and programs added to the PDF are restricted by the course and program filters defined within that catalog.
Identifying Fields
When Curriculum pages are added to your catalog, the following fields are used:
Courses
Title is: {subjectCode}{courseNumber} {name}
Credits:
Default view is {numberOfCredits} {description}
This display can also be configured to match the online catalog view by using {minCredits <> macCredits}
Programs
Title is: {name}
Degree Designation: {degreeDesignation} {description}
Accessing Catalog PDFs
When you generate a PDF of a catalog, it will be accessible in three ways:
A PDF will be emailed to you as soon as it is generated.
You can select “Download” at Catalog > Settings > Catalogs for a copy to download to your computer.
It will be made available to users in the footer of the public catalog (unless you have opted to hide that option, as indicated here).
Add “Download PDF Version” to Your Top Navigation Bar
Overview
If you so choose, you can make the “download pdf” option more prominent by placing a link to it on the navigation bar.
Any PDFs added via the below process will not automatically link to newly generated PDFs, and you will need to update the link if you regenerate the PDF.
How to Do It
Generate PDF version of the catalog.
Right click on the link in the footer.
Copy the URL.
Create an External Link on your navigation bar, label it “Download Catalog as PDF”, and use the copied link as the URL
Example PDF
Catalog PDFs have a two-column layout for the course and program pages.
An example layout is shown below.
