Batch Card Printing

WHAT IS BATCH CARD PRINTING?
What is Batch Card Printing? Batch card printing is a way of printing non-chip cards directly from your web browser. The only thing you need is a card printer connected to your computer, your NCDB and an up-to-date version of standard web browser. Batch card printing feature prints data for each card on one page of a .pdf file. From this .pdf file, you print data directly on your cards. Note that if your cards contain any kind of contactless chip, using Batch card printing isn’t good way for you. Batch card printing supports bardcodes (several types) and QR codes, into which you can encode your data.

WHAT IS BATCH CARD PRINTING?

What is Batch Card Printing? Batch card printing is a way of printing non-chip cards directly from your web browser. The only thing you need is a card printer connected to your computer, your NCDB and an up-to-date version of standard web browser. Batch card printing feature prints data for each card on one page of a .pdf file. From this .pdf file, you print data directly on your cards. Note that if your cards contain any kind of contactless chip, using Batch card printing isn’t good way for you. Batch card printing supports bardcodes (several types) and QR codes, into which you can encode your data.

Adding next pages Using “Add Page” button at the very bottom, you can also add third, fourth, etc. page of your cards. However, adding pages is relevant only for virtual cards used within the mobile application created by GTS Alive. Only this application is able to display further pages. If you don’t use this application, only the first and second page is relevant for you. Adding placeholders For each page of your design, a set of buttons for adding placeholders is present. These are “Add Text”, “Add Image” and “Add Barcode”. When choosing any of them, new placeholder is added into your design. Note the “Properties” window on the right side, where you can define specific properties of your placeholder. TEXT For text placeholder, you can choose several values that will be displayed as content of the placeholder when the card is printed. Names of the values are self-explanatory. The only value that can lead to confusion is “CUSTOM”. This is designed to display values stored in custom fields (see further).

Position – you can define the position of the placeholder manually, just using drag&drop, but you can also define it more precisely using the offset (in milimeters) from Left and Top of the design borders.

Font Size – you can adjust the size of text within specified placeholder using 0,1 step. Default size is 3.

Font Color – black, white and grey text color are available

Alignment – text alignment according to the placeholder

Rotation – text rotation. Please make sure your design meets ISO standards before you overuse rotation.

Important note: when the defined width of the placeholder is too short, the text that goes outside its borders will be cropped. Take this into account when defining your placeholders! In case you want to delete the placeholder, just mark it with your mouse and click “Remove Placeholder” button.

CUSTOM Custom fields Custom fields are special type for optional data that can be defined differently to fit needs of every card issuer. Through custom fields, basically any value or more values can be attached to a specific card holder or card. This can be for example name of study course, student ID, blood group, card serie etc. Custom fields should reflect the “real world” – information that are tied to a person should be bound to cardholders, whereas information tied to card should be defined as card bound. Values for custom fields can be added using the API for external issuers (most recommended way for External Issuers), or manually in edit mode of cardholders/cards. How to define new custom fields? Custom fields can be defined in NCDB -> Cards Issuers -> Custom Fields

When creating a new custom field, several things need to be defined:
Field Name – use some self explanatory name
Field key – this key is used as the identifier in the API request or in batch card printing
Bound to Card or Bound to Card Holder. This means to which entity the custom field is assigned.
Active – without selecting this checkbox, the custom field can’t be used
Optional – custom fields can be mandatory or optional
CCDB export – sometimes you need the custom field value to be exported into CCDB, sometimes it’s enough to save value for custom field within NCDB and no export is necessary
Anonymize – when the cardholder or card are anonymized, should also value for the custom field be removed?
Further, you need to define for which card issuers the custom field should be used. One custom field can be assigned to more card issuers, and also every card issuer can have more custom fields assigned. Use the integrated whisperer to help you find correct card issuer from the list.

Below is the picture how to assign your custom field to a text placeholder when creating new card design. All accessible custom fields are displayed and you can just click them to add. You can also put more custom fields into one placeholder, even in combination with standard text. We are aware that Custom fields problamatic is complex and the short text above doesn’t cover it completely. In case you have some specific questions about custom fields and how to use them, feel free to ask us using our Service Desk (support@gtsalive.com).