When you have a good understanding of your data source, it is recommended for you to think about pagination before you even begin to add content into your Document Template.  Pagination is highlighted, in detail, in the Pagination section of the documentation.  However, you should know why you we recommend that you consider this as one of your first steps.

 

Before you even begin your design, we recommend using pencil and paper to draw out what your document will consist of.  Questions such as the following should be presented when thinking about your document results and pagination:

 

-  Does my document contain headers and footers?  If yes, do these change from page to page?

-  Does my document contain content or formatting in the left or right side regions?

-  What are the page dimensions that I need for my document?  Do these dimensions change at all?

-  What orientation should my document output be?  Does this change from one page the next?

-  Do I want certain pages of my documents to be repeated or displayed based upon my data source?

 

By asking yourself questions of this nature, you will begin to build your document before actually designing it in the BI Publisher.  Perhaps you may even want to sketch  pages and mark with dimensions and headers and footers.  This will provide a great reference for you as you work with Pagination to create different layouts and page sets accordingly.

 

You can read more about layouts and page sets in the Terminology section of the help documentation.  We recommend this practice of thinking about pagination as a  means to assisting you in designing the layouts and structure before even adding content to your Document Template.  The next step is to actually think about your content and consider any dynamic behavior.