Workfront InDesign plugin uses wrong file extension

[bpeat]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to bring this up and our project manager also reached out through our Workfront support account, but hopefully someone will see this and realize it IS an issue.

The newest Adobe Workfront for InDesign plugin (version 3.2.50) has an issue that makes the plugin basically useless. There's a function that lets you push files from InDesign into Workfront. The issue is, you can choose PDF or PDF-PRINT. When you choose PDF, you get the "interactive" export, where you can't add things like crop marks. That option uses the correct file extension on the file it creates: .pdf

The issue is when you choose PDF-PRINT as the format option. This brings up the regular export options, including crop marks...but it makes the file extension .pdf-print instead of .pdf, which breaks the file. Workfront still creates a proof, so that works, but if you click on the file name, it downloads it like it does with a Word file because the main WF documents system doesn't know what to do with a .pdf-print file. When you do download it, unless you change the file name so it ends with .pdf, it won't open and appears broken.

What surprises me is that an official Adobe plugin actually writes a non existing file extension, breaking all sorts of functionality. The work around is to...NOT USE the plugin lol. That or you can export normally to your desktop and then use the plugin to upload an external file, but that wastes time.

Looking at the code in the plugin, it looks like maybe the programmer saved time be hard coding the list entries (PDF, PDF-PRINT, EPS, JPG) to the file extension, so whatever you choose is what gets tacked onto the end of the file.

I really hope this gets fixed soon as we're just starting to test this workflow and so far, I can't really recommend it to any of our designers to use since I'd have to give them workarounds for anything that needs crop marks or other special export options.

[bpeat]

Okay, I realized I was harsh in saying it was rendered "basically useless" but you get the idea lol!

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Don't know if you work on Mac or PC - but on PC you can re-assign extension to a specific application - so you can just let system know that when you double click on a file with "pdf-print" extension - you want it to be opened in Acrobat or whatever you fancy. 

[bpeat]

You can, but that doesn't fix the issue long term. Now I have to tell everyone in our company to do this. And anyone outside too. I know how to do this for me, but that's not a great fix for something that shouldn't be creating pdfs with .pdf-print extensions in the first place.

[bpeat]

We just got a response from Adobe that the plugin is working as designed. That means an Adobe product that generates files with incorrect/non-existant file extensions is considered working as designed. I asked if Acrobat would now open .pdf-print files, and the answer is no. What universe am I living in? An official Adobe system spits out files that have to be renamed for anyone to use properly (except for the proof tool, which thankfully does work in WF with these files). Seriouslty Adobe, what the heck is going on?!