Fact Sheet Fusion Help
Fact Sheet Fusion supports most media types. Media that is not considered Internet friendly such as Tiffs, Bitmaps etc will be automatically converted and optimized when exported.
Supported media include:
Images | Videos | Sound | Office Formats | Other |
| JPEG | AVI | MP3 | Word | |
| PNG | MPEG | WAV | Excel | |
| GIF | MP4 | M4P | PowerPoint | |
| BITMAP | MP2 | OGG | ||
| TIFF | MPV | OGA | ||
| M2V | FLAC | |||
| M4V | AIFF | |||
| 3PG | 3GP | |||
| WEBM | WMA | |||
| MOV | ||||
| QT |
Before media can be added to a project you must first create a Media Category to hold it. There are several ways in which to add media to a Category.
1. Select the media category you wish to add media to then select ‘Add’ from the Media menu (shortcut key combination is Ctrl+space). Or you can right click in an empty area of the media panel and select ‘Add’ from the pop-up context menu, or click the add media button on the media panel toolbar.
You will then be presented with a media browser dialog.
When adding media you can select one or multiple items in the media browser dialog. To select multiple media items you can use either the Ctrl key or Shift key. The Ctrl key allows the individual selection of images, while the Shift key allows images to be selected in blocks.
Once you have selected your preferred media they will then be copied to your Fusion database media store folder and listed within the selected Media Category.
2. You can use drag and drop to add media from a Windows application, such as File Explorer to the selected Categories media panel. A copy of this media will be automatically copied across to the fusion database media store and listed in the selected Media Category.
3. Use copy and paste to add media from internal or external sources of media to the media panel. You can use the in-built Windows clipboard for adding media items to a Category. When copying media from an external source such as Windows File Explorer use the Copy command (Ctrl+C), then select the desired category and paste the media to it using the menu, context menu or keyboard command (Ctrl+V). For moving media internal to the Media Manager see the Moving Media topic.
For information about attaching media to Topics, Entities and Glossary Terms please see the Media help topic.
To the right of the Media Categories list is the media list. Media items found in the selected category will be listed here. There are a number of options available to view media.
The media renderer offers six different themes to display the media. The choice of media renderer is completely up to the individual user. No one theme offers any additional functionality, it only affects the look of the media list. To change renderer just select the preferred one from the drop down list. The new theme will then automatically be applied. Your preferred choice will automatically be saved once the form is closed.
There are several media views that can be applied to the media list. They are:
The gallery view will render the selected image in the middle of the image list, while the media items are rendered as thumbnails horizontally below. You can move between the media items by clicking on the thumbnail image with your mouse or simply using the left and right arrow keys.
The thumbnail view thumbnails each media item in a grid. Media items can be selected by the mouse or navigated by using the arrow keys.
The details pane lists each media item as a file listing, with detail on the file name, media dimensions and file size.
The media thumbnails can be displayed at three different sizes. Use the thumbnail size slide bar to adjust the thumbnail size. Your preferred size will be automatically remembered when the form is next opened.
The Fact Sheet Fusion Media Manager is a centralized repository for media for all projects within the loaded Fusion Database. It allows images and other media such as Office document, PDFs and videos to be added. Details such as captions and copyright only need to be entered once against each media item. When a media item is then added to a project element (entity, topic, glossary etc) it automatically inherits the assigned library settings and values. Of course if you need to customize these settings on an individual case by case basis, this is possible. To override the library settings, you just set the media item to be derived. You may switch between library and derived settings at anytime. More information on this is outlined below. You can also double click on any media item to view it. Images have an in-built image viewer that allows you to preview and adjust image and text watermarks.
You can access the Media Manager via the main interface via the Edit…Media Manager menu (Ctrl+M), or via its icon (
) on a toolbar.
Media Manager help topics:
One or more media items can be linked to Entity Topics (An Entity Topic is the combination of the selected Entity and Topic) or directly to the Entity. Normally media that is attached to an entities topic is shown within the section relating to that topic in the fact sheet, while media attached to the entity are shown either at the top or bottom of the fact sheet. The layout of the media will vary depending on the export template selected. You can flip between the Entity Images and Topic Images using the tabs at the bottom of the media panel.
For more information on media please see the Media topic or the Media Manager topic.
The Properties panel located at the top right of the main interface will show the properties of the currently selected item within the interface (e.g. Topics, Entities and Media). Properties can be edited by clicking on the property value on the right hand side of the property label. Depending on the type of property it may be as simple as choosing between true or false, or selecting from a drop down list. For other properties it may be more complex, requiring free form text. Each property when selected will show a help snippet at the bottom of the property panel, describing what it does. The property panel width can be adjusted by selecting the left hand border and dragging to the desired size. The height of the properties panel can also be adjusted by selecting the border below the help snippet and dragging it to the preferred height. For more details about each property please see the relevant help section (i.e. Entity Properties, Topic Properties, Media Properties)
PreviewThe preview button automatically exports the selected entity as a fact sheet using the current export settings. Once the export has completed, the fact sheet will be loaded into the default web browser or PDF reader (depending on the export output type). If the minimum export settings have not yet been entered the export dialog will be automatically opened. The export settings then need to be adjusted before the preview can be completed.
ExportThe Export button will open the Export dialog allowing you to adjust the various export settings and perform a full export your fact sheets. See the Export help topic for further information on exporting fact sheets.
Glossary ManagerThe Glossary Manager button opens the Glossary Manager dialog allowing you to enter glossary sets, terms and definitions for your fact sheets. See the Glossary Manager help topic for further information.
Media ManagerThe Media Manager button will open the Media Manager dialog where you can add, edit and remove media associated with the fact sheets. See the Media Manager help topic for further information.
Image Watermark ManagerThe Image Watermark Manager button opens the Image Watermark Manager dialog where you can manage the image watermarks and their default settings for your project. See the Image Watermark Manager help topic for further information.
Use this tutorial to jump start your understanding of Fact Sheet Fusion and all the new features of version 2. This outline is not intended to replace the Help documentation and will deal more in broad concepts, rather than the step by step how to.
First – before getting to Version 2, let’s look at the differences between version 1 and Version 2. For those of you who have experience with Fact Sheet Fusion v1, you will remember that you first have to name and open a file and then you enter a list of topics and a list of entities and then type in or paste in text for each topic/entity combination and add images and captions for each entity, using the same dialogue frame.
With Fact Sheet Fusion version 2, entering topics/entities and text is much the same as with version 1. The main difference is how you deal with images. In Fact Sheet Fusion v2 there is a separate Media Manager that enables you to import and edit images, add watermarks, etc. You can then add images from this media database to a specific project database.
So now let’s look at the way in which this new version of Fact Sheet Fusion is structured (see Fig. 1)
A Fusion database holds one or more projects. Projects hold the fundamental data associated with creating your fact sheets (i.e. Topic headings, Entities and their text content.) Each database has its own media library: projects within that database can then utilize images and other multimedia items from than common database. Projects within a database don’t need to be related in anyway, but they normally will be.
Therefore, if you are just starting or if your intended (new) project is completely unrelated to any existing database projects (that is, they are unlikely to share topics or media) then it is probably best to create a new database.
Once a Fusion database has been created you can create one or more projects.
The most common reason for creating multiple projects within a database are likely to be where the entities in the different projects are related, don’t share topic headings but may share common media.
It is possible to create all your projects within the one database to share a media library, even if they are completely unrelated. There is no functional disadvantage in doing so.
If you have common entities that share (many) topics headings, but you need to manage groups of discrete entities you can achieve this in a single project via the Subset feature. For example, if you had a large project containing plants species, you may want to have the ability to separate these species into groups such as weeds, natives, rainforest species, aquatics etc. Subsets will allow you to make these assertions and export them as separate sets of fact sheets, if desired.
Once a project has been created you can proceed to open it, rename it, delete it or import an older version 1.x databases into it.
You can import a v1.x database into a project anytime, though normally this would be done at the beginning of a project. The import dialog will allow you to select which Topics and Entities you wish to import, along with the media and glossary. It also offers a feature to clean any content in the older database that may be contaminated with undesirable formatting (e.g. MS Word HTML) that will override the export templates.
Importing MS Word documents, HTML pages or Lucid key data is done via the Content Import option accessible in the main interface.
To import a v1.x Glossary you need to assign a name (label) to the glossary. This is called a glossary set. The glossary features in version 2 has been greatly expanded and will be covered in more detail further below.
Importing will not create duplicates in your project. If for example you were to mistakenly select to import a topic that had been imported previously the import process will not overwrite the existing records for matching entities.
If you’ve not used version 1.x before and are new to Fact Sheet Fusion then it is important to understand how data is managed. The three main points of data are:
To start entering fact sheet content you first need to create one or more Topics and at least one entity. Once these have been created you can begin entering text. The fact sheet text is saved against the currently selected Topic and Entity. Think of this as a database record (which it is!).
There is no need to remember to save after making changes. Fact Sheet Fusion automatically saves changes when you move around the topics and entities. In fact there is no save button – there’s no need!
Whenever you click on or select a Topic or Entity (or media items) you will see on the top right of the main interface a properties window. These properties give you various options and control over how they are dealt with during the export process. For example you can hide the Topic Label as a heading but still retain its content in the fact sheet.
Fact Sheet Fusion supports a diverse range of media attachments such as images, video, sound, PDFs, and Office documents. The way Fact Sheet Fusion now handles media is a large change from the first edition. Media within Fact Sheet Fusion is held at the database level and can be accessed by all the separate projects held within that database. This means that you only need to write captions and apply watermarks, among other properties, once and these details will be used whenever you attach the media item in a project.
While managing media at a global level reduces workload and removes duplication issues when managing multiple related projects, Fact Sheet Fusion still allows you to customize the media each time it is attached within a project, if needed.
The Media Manager, as the name implies, allows you to “manage” your media items. You can think about the Media Manager as a “library”.
To add a new media category either select the ‘Add’ option from the Categories menu, or right click in the Media Categories list and select ‘Add’ from the pop-up context menu. The add category dialog will appear.
Enter the category name and click the add button. The new category will be added below the currently selected category.
Media categories will be automatically created for you when add a new Entity. The automatic media category name will be the same as the Entity.
To add media, select the ‘Add’ (
) button from the Media panel toolbar, or right click in an empty area of the media panel and select ‘Add’ from the pop-up context menu.
To associate media against an Entity, Entity Topic or Glossary term click the attach media button () in the main interface window for Entities or Entity Topics. Or via the Glossary dialog. This will load the Media Manager to allow you to select one or more media items. If you have selected to add media to an Entity the Media Manager will automatically load the matching category for you. Once you have selected the media you wish to attach, click the large Add button located at the bottom of the Media Manager.
By default when a media item is attached to an Entity Topic or to an Entity the “library” edition is used. All of the media properties, such as caption, photographer, copyright text, thumbnail image and watermark are inherited from the library copy. In most cases there is no need to re-enter the caption or adjust its settings as it’s already been done.
However, there may be circumstances where you do need to customize the details of a media item. For example, change the preferred watermark or customize the caption just for the current instance in the loaded project. In this scenario you can set the attached media item to be “derived” from the library. That is the media item still references the same file, but uses a different set of media properties. This leaves the global library edition unchanged, but allows a customized instance for use in the current project.
The main data entry interface allows easy editing of media properties that are global or derived. It’s just a matter to changing the view between the two states. This can be done above the properties panel (when a media has been selected). You can select to view the Library (global) properties of a media item or the derived (custom) properties.
If you have switched to the derived view you still need to tell Fact Sheet Fusion that the media item is to use a derived copy of the properties, otherwise every media item viewed would use a derived copy. You set a media item to be derived by setting the ‘Media Object Derived’ property to ‘True’.
Any edits to media properties within the Media Manager are global in nature.
If you set a media item derived status back to false (e.g. return to using the library properties) the derived properties will still be kept in case you want to use the derived properties again.