Pageflex, a division of Bitstream Inc. and a leading developer of enterprise variable data publishing and web-to-print solutions, announced today the release of Pageflex Storefront 7.0, which now incorporates the graphic design industry-standard Adobe InDesign CS4 Server and offers sophisticated customization of graphically-rich documents through a Web browser. This latest release of Pageflex’s award-winning Web-to-print offering is especially welcome to customers that have elaborate graphic design needs and large volumes of existing Adobe InDesign documents. Pageflex Storefront 7.0 is part of a larger release of Pageflex 7.0, the enterprise solution that also includes Pageflex Server and Pageflex Campaign Manager, and which offers customers feature enhancements across this product range.
“This release fundamentally moves Pageflex Storefront from being a printer-centric Web-to-print product to being a brand management solution for corporate marketers, whether they use it internally, through their print service provider, or through an advertising agency. By supporting variable Pageflex documents, InDesign documents, Adobe PDF documents, and HTML emails, Pageflex Storefront becomes a media center that is accessible from anywhere, supports a wide range of document customization needs, and enables cost-saving automated workflows,” says Anna Chagnon, Bitstream President and CEO. “Our strong partnership with Adobe has been critical to opening our product line up to support a wider range of document formats and community of users.”
With this major release, companies that have standardized on Adobe InDesign now have the opportunity to better manage their processes for personalizing and versioning marketing materials. Pageflex Storefront provides marketers, corporations, franchise organizations, and print service providers with an easy, flexible and scalable solution for creating an online site to manage personalized and customized documents. Users can easily configure Pageflex Storefront to automate many critical steps in the Web-to-Print workflow and eliminate bottlenecks in the traditional document production process. The addition of support for Adobe InDesign documents expands the gamut of graphic design styles that can be produced.
“We are delighted that Bitstream has chosen to make Adobe InDesign Server available to their Pageflex Storefront customers, giving them the ability to manage, customize, and order even the most graphically rich of documents from within Pageflex Storefront,” says Chris Kitchener, product manager for Adobe InDesign Server. “Companies that implement Pageflex Storefront with InDesign Server will have the ability to develop powerful business automation workflows that both protect their brands and maintain the sophisticated creative designs that designers achieve daily with Adobe InDesign.”
Automating Workflows
“Pageflex Storefront 7.0 is all about giving our customers more options for managing their document workflows. Customers can choose to use our existing powerful document composition engine, called Pageflex NuDoc, or use Adobe InDesign Server. To help differentiate the options our customers now have, we’re bringing back the NuDoc name to describe the powerful document customization engine that we’ve developed here at Bitstream over the past twelve years,” says Chagnon. “We will work with customers to understand which composition server best meets their business needs. We anticipate that some customers will actually find it advantageous to run both servers with template designs in each format intermixed within their storefront.”
Pageflex has used its expertise in variable data composition to enhance Adobe InDesign. Concurrent with the release of Pageflex Storefront 7.0, the company has also released Pageflex Studio ID, a desktop variable data publishing (VDP) plug-in for Adobe InDesign CS4. Adobe InDesign templates are designed and configured in Pageflex Studio ID on a Windows or Macintosh computer, packaged, and uploaded to Pageflex Storefront. There is no conversion to a Pageflex format. The templates retain all of the design and variable richness they have in Pageflex Studio ID.
“Traditionally we have customers that have expended substantial resources in converting InDesign documents to the Pageflex format so that they can benefit from the robust variable composition features we offer,” explains Jeff Perk, Director of Product Management at Bitstream. “By embracing InDesign as part of our product mix, we enable these customers to streamline their workflows by staying entirely in the InDesign environment without sacrificing the business benefits they gain by automating document versioning tasks with the power Pageflex offers.”
A Release That Meets Customer Needs
Adobe InDesign users in Macintosh environments will be able to directly upload templates packaged on the Macintosh to the Microsoft Windows-based Pageflex Storefront. No conversion process is required.
“While end users have always been able to use a Macintosh to visit a Pageflex Storefront online site and customize a document, the Pageflex software for making templates has always been only available on a Windows platform. This has limited our appeal to the large community of Macintosh devotees in the graphic design community,” explains Chagnon. “We are very excited that our Studio ID plug-in to InDesign can be used on a Macintosh or Windows system. The two platforms are equivalent in how they produce templates for use in Pageflex Storefront.”
Excitement for the release of Pageflex Storefront 7.0 has been building for some time. In March Pageflex Storefront 7.0 won two Best of Show Awards at the ON DEMAND Conference & Exposition. The awards were in the Web-to-Print and the Document Creation Software categories. It was the only product to win in more than one category.
Carl Carter, Services Director at ROI Distribution in the UK, a Pageflex reseller and experienced user of graphic arts technology, describes the new capabilities with Adobe InDesign by noting, “Brand creativity is key for organizations, but so is reaching the market with the right message, as one without the other has little measurable success. The forged relationship between Pageflex products and Adobe InDesign creates a marriage of creative wonder and variable desirability. Through this relationship, both brand integrity and message are delivered with one comprehensive solution - a solution that allows creatives to be creative and marketers to market without the need to compromise. No longer are the two most powerful industry assets separate but become a unified offering with greater capability.”
Pageflex 7.0 Enhancements
The immediate release of Pageflex 7.0—which includes Pageflex Storefront, Pageflex Server, and Pageflex Campaign Manager—includes a wide range of customer-requested enhancements.
Ability to setup a schedule for Pageflex Campaign Manager to automatically generate and send future personalized email messages.
Added support for use of Pageflex Storefront and Campaign Manager with a wide range of newer Web browsers.
Modernization enhancements to the Pageflex Storefront and Pageflex Campaign Manager user interfaces.
User requested enhancements to the published APIs enabling additional automation capabilities.
Expanded options for configuring how emails are sent from Pageflex Storefront and Pageflex Server.
Expanded site management capabilities for Storefront Administrators.
For more information about Bitstream please visit http://www.bitstream.com.