What this is about
Eturnity offers the standard pages of the offer PDF in two designs: the new PDF design and the previous one. The new design has a different layout with a cover page and cover image, and its document templates apply to all of your company's languages. If your company still works in the previous design, Eturnity enables the new one on request. An administrator can see in the settings, on the Branding page, whether your company already has the new design: only then is there a Cover image section. Switching costs nothing.
Once it is enabled, your company has both designs. Your existing pages, document templates and projects stay as they are; you switch an existing project yourself, variant by variant. An administrator decides with the Default template in which design new projects start. Eturnity usually sets up new accounts in the new design straight away; then you do not need to switch anything.
What changes in the PDF
Cover page: New is the page “00 Cover Page”, with a cover image across the full width that you upload for each branding.
Header and footer: At the top of each standard page are the name of the variant, the page title and your logo; at the bottom, the date, project reference and page number. The coloured footer bar of the previous design no longer exists.
Colours: Your brandings still apply; you do not create the logo and colours again. However, the colours take effect in other places, for example in charts, icons and total rows.
Pages and languages: The pages of the new design have names of their own, such as “01 Offer overview” or “11 Terms and conditions”. Each page applies to all languages, and its texts in the PDF follow the project's correspondence language. In the previous design, each language has its own pages.
Your own pages: In the new design, Eturnity places your custom pages as an image on an A4 portrait page; in the previous design, it attaches the file unchanged.
What the design means for setting up branding, custom pages and document templates is summarised in the article “Setting up your offer PDF”, in the section “New and previous PDF designs”.
Requesting the new design
Only Eturnity can enable the new design; you cannot turn it on yourself in Expert, not even as an administrator. The Use new design switch, with which you then switch projects and create new templates in the new design, only exists once your company has both designs. Write to Eturnity Support by email at support@eturnity.com or in the chat that you would like to switch to the new PDF design. Switching costs nothing.
As part of the switch, Eturnity sets up the standard pages of the new design for the technologies that are active in your company, for example photovoltaics or heating, and usually also document templates in the new design. The switch does not change anything about your existing pages, document templates or projects.
If Eturnity has created a separate version of a previous-design page for you, for example with a changed layout or a changed fixed text, it only applies in the previous design; the switch does not transfer it to the new design. This also applies to terms and conditions that Support has inserted into the standard page. Mention such customisations in your request; Support tells you in advance whether a new customisation costs anything.
After enabling: adjusting the settings
These steps are carried out by a user with administrator rights. To find the pages: in the header, open the app launcher on the far left › Settings › in the left side menu, the Offer section.
Open the Branding page. The Cover image section now appears there. Upload the image for the cover page for each branding.
Open the Document templates page. In the overview, you recognise templates in the new design by “Multilingual” in the Language column; your existing templates still show their language there. Check the new templates and adjust the pages and order under Document configuration. If you cannot find a template in the new design or need another one, create it with Add new template; when doing so, switch on Use new design under Document design before you save, because after that the template's design can no longer be changed.
If a template in the new design contains the standard page “11 Terms and conditions”, remove it with the bin icon, unless Support has inserted your own terms and conditions there: by default, it is only a sample with a fictitious company and placeholder text. Your team therefore adds your own terms and conditions in every project, in every variant it offers, under Page order with Add page, because custom pages cannot be selected in templates in the new design.
Open the template in the new design with which new projects should start, tick Use as the default template for all projects. under Default template and click Save. Alternatively, select it in the overview in the Default column.
The Default template decides in which design new projects start. If a template in the new design is set as the default and one of its pages matches the technologies of the variant, Expert applies it the first time the Offers page is opened, and the project works in the new design. Without a default template, a new project whose page selection offers both designs starts in the previous design with the first matching previous-design template; your team then switches it like an ongoing project.
Your custom pages are kept; in the project, they can be selected in both designs. Because the new design places each page of such a file on A4 portrait, recreate files in another format in A4 portrait and upload them under Custom pages as a new page; an uploaded file cannot be replaced.
Switching a project
After enabling, existing projects still open in the previous design, and PDFs that have already been created do not change. You switch on the new design in the project itself, in every variant you offer, because each variant has its own page order. Any user who edits the project can do this. A new variant starts like a new project: with the default template, otherwise in the previous design. A duplicated variant takes over the pages of the original and therefore its design.
Open the project and the variant in it, and in the left side menu click Offers in the Offer group. In the Offer settings step, the Use new design switch is under Document design, above the Page order. If it is missing, the page selection offers only one design in this project; if, for example, your previous pages are not available in the project's correspondence language, the project already works with the new design without a switch.
Switch on Use new design. If the page order contains standard pages of the previous design, Expert asks “Are you sure?”. With OK, these pages are removed; custom pages and data sheets stay.
Under Select template, choose a template in the new design. Expert usually rebuilds the Page order from the template when you do this: data sheets stay and move to the end, custom pages are removed.
Add your custom pages, for example your terms and conditions, again under Page order with Add page and drag them and the data sheets to where you want them.
Click Save in the bar at the bottom. Only then does the change take effect.
Check the offer with Preview PDF (previous version: Preview).
Expert does not store the position of the switch separately but reads it from the saved pages: if, after saving, the page order contains no standard page of the new design, the switch is off again the next time you open the page. As long as your company has both designs, you can also switch a variant back the same way; after the confirmation prompt, the standard pages of the new design are then removed.
If pages are missing after the switch
With Use new design switched on, the page selection only shows standard pages of the new design; your custom pages still appear. If you miss a page you know from the previous design, there is usually one of these reasons:
The page has a different name. Search under Add page for the topic of the page; the pages of the new design have names of their own, for example “01 Offer overview” or “06 System: Components”.
Your company does not have the page in the new design. When switching, your company only receives the standard pages that Eturnity provides in the new design for your country or your partner network. You cannot add a missing standard page yourself; ask Support. Until then, you can leave the variant in the previous design.
The technology is not active in the variant. A page can only be selected if one of its technologies is active in the variant. Check the Active technologies column on the Variants page.
A licence was added after the switch, for example heating, e-mobility or energy management. Your company then only receives new-design pages for it, and they are not added to your existing document templates. An administrator adds them to a template in the new design under Document templates.
Check before sending the first offer
Go through the first offer in the new design once from start to finish with Preview PDF (previous version: Preview):
The cover page shows the cover image of the selected branding, and your colours take effect where you expect them.
The offer contains your own terms and conditions, not the sample with a fictitious company and placeholder text: as a custom page or, if Support has inserted them, on the page “11 Terms and conditions”.
Your custom pages and data sheets are complete and easy to read. In the new design, a file that cannot be loaded may be missing without a message or stay blank.
The page order contains all the pages your offers had so far, in the order you want.
If something is missing that you cannot add yourself, or if you have questions about the switch, write to Support by email at support@eturnity.com or in the chat.