Last week, our Xinet interface E6 hit a major milestone - 15 Million page views! Since its launch 4 years ago, we've watched with awe as our users adopted, extended, evangelized and brought the best out of the NAPC product suite (and our development team). Click here for a free trial copy!

Across 6 continents (dang you, Antarctica), 137 countries, and all 24 time zones, People are working faster, smarter, and more efficiently, every hour and everyday. I've had hundreds of conversations with users, gotten ideas and feedback, and worked the agile process to get the best product to market swiftly. We started from scratch - an entirely new development team, an entirely new attitude, and one huge blank slate.

We knew speed was paramount. Feedback to user actions critical. A beautiful, easy to use interface a must have. Mobile friendly or stay at home. Always ready, well in advance of the latest Xinet version was a non-negotiable checklist item. Improving navigation across all interfaces and reducing clicks was also a flat out requirement.

Thanks to agile methods and a fantastic team, it all got done! We released and started getting feedback, our development group became an even more manic whirl of ideas and creativity. We attacked metadata entry: creating a simple, intuitive, all-in-one single screen entry point. We added multiple ways to send Supermail - from the finder, and from our 'steal a link' feature. Our eyes are always focused on making production and sharing of assets easier.

Next we created beautiful new themes that are interactive and customizable; built out a screamingly fast and stable SSO with the IdP of your choice; did a complete rewrite of AFR to rigidly enforce DRM. The snowball was rolling, gathering size and momentum. Integrating site creation, login, and theming in one single screen and admin interface. Creating an API that will never change, allowing easy-peasy creation of Xinet plugins.

vFolders (dynamic collections of assets) eliminates the need to manually notify folks of new assets or new completed work. Alongside the automatic application of metadata, new things show up in a users Virtual folder. Xray (top level DAM search without logging in) is our latest feature. Find something, and grab that preview for your deck on the fly. Or login and get the hi-res version. Heck, open the asset directly in the finder from search results.

In sum, thanks for your love, care, and feedback. E6 allows Xinet users to see further and more accurately into their work and production solely because we stand on the shoulders of giants - the user community. Thank you!

To mark this milestone, we'd like to offer a free trial to the entire Xinet community. If you're looking for more from your Xinet interface, take E6 for a spin. Self installable, lives alongside any Xinet Portal install, it "just works". We'd love for you see what we've been up to, and maybe make your work lives a fair bit better.

Click here to D/L a copy of E6 and prepare to be blown away.

It's been 3 years since I took the NAPC development team back under my wing. In that time we've rewritten our products, gotten amazing results for our customers as well as record sales, added new resellers, and had a huge surge in our market share as people have come to realize the NAPC difference.

Here's a quick review of what's been going on behind the scenes. I was going to make a fancy timeline, but we did so much so quickly I just couldn't wrap my mind around how to show it graphically.

 Yes! We hit the 3 Million mark for E6 usage!

How we started:

We implemented Agile, I became a signatory of the Manifesto for Agile Software. Agile is almost like CrossFit, you just can't help but tell folks you're into it. It's world changing, man...

We rebuilt product licensing from the ground up, planned out self installers and autoupdaters, automated version tracking of customer code, and about a bazillion other things you never see. Why should you care? We cut about 2.5 man weeks of labor a month when we were done. That's time we can perform QA, Document, and Code. The things that matter to YOU.

Once the foundation was poured and leveled:

We dove into the products- how they were used, and what could they become? We spoke to every customer, and discussed where we were heading. Some of these sessions got downright electric, as folks got what we were thinking, and the ideas were flying back and forth. A TON of where we are now came from that, so give yourselves a golf clap if you're one of the 200 or so folks I spoke with.

Here's a short list of major features that came from those calls-

Better info about version changes (thanks John)

Easier navigation without moving from the keyboard (thanks Evan and krewe)

More feedback (damn near everyone, but especially Charlie)

Documentation (emberassingly widespread, but the tip-o-the-hat goes to Carol)

Self updaters (thanks RP. I mean our resellers)

Drag and drop file management (Ginnie)

23 different SM improvements (Ginnie  ;)  )

A 'real' metadata interface (Emily and Dave)

Awesome uploader interface (Charlie and Emily)

Make AFR work (Todd, Kevin)

The list goes on and on. I was looking over my contemporaneous notes, and the thing that stands out is your desire to be part of the process, and help us to help you.

We dove into wireframing, blueskying, and figuring futures out as we were also doing final bug fixes for our existing suite. The developers mandate was to squash bugs, not put some scotch tape over 'em. After numerous insurrections were put down, this really started paying off. Again, the time we saved here allowed us to do what YOU care about, delivering amazing new tech that makes your worklife easier, better, and simpler.

The good stuff- releasing code:

Since we live and breath Agile, we started releasing code. First out the gate was the basics, with a couple ooh-ahh factors. Then we started adding in functionality as the market demanded. Turns out we're not mind readers, and things that seemed important to me no one else cared about. Alternatively, things that felt 'buried away' were actually key to production. Agile lets us react immediately as demand changes and evolves. Hey, did I tell you we do agile?

Oh, and of course we started a formal Beta program, so users could get in early.  I cannot thank the early adopters and Beta testers enough. Power users helping deliver powerful, rock solid features.

On a whimsical note, the developers made a video, showing the lighter side of the last 3 years :) We all love this stuff!

NOTE: mildly NSFW

A heartfelt thanks to all, and a bonus

I'd like to personally thank everyone involved, from the customers, to the developers, to the NAPC employees who  made this possible. We have a great team, one I'm incredbly proud of. Since you made it allll the way to the bottom, click this link if you want to beta our rewrite of CreativeBanks- CB5. We now give you a single interface to create and brand sites - CB5 is built into E6, so there's only one place to go. Fewer buttons, far less bouncing between screens, this cuts about 50% of deployment time from what's needed to rollout a landing page/E6 site.

2 Million pageviews, and record E6 sales in 2016!

We reached a milestone right before the end of 2016- 2 Million pageviews in E6, our Xinet interface!! Below is the top 1/2 dozen reasons to make the switch, and some ideas on how to get more out of E6 if you're already running it.

I personally do a lot of outreach to users, asking for feedback, and making sure they keep me and the developers 'honest'. We also ran a survey asking for feedback on the adoption and rollout process, making sure we kept as simple as possible in a complicated world. Below are some reasons to jump aboard, and maybe some ways of using the software you didnt know....

Top benefits to switching to E6-

1) Simple, simple, simple, sharing of files. The ability to send templated, preformatted emails with clickable links and previews of files from the desktop or a Browser is HUGE. Right click and BOOM. Done. #sharingiscaring

2) Advanced Batch Keyword Apply. Change metadata en masse on a bunch of files. This alone is worth the price of admission. Apply metadata to all, metadata to some, erase metadata. All in one view. Simple. Done. Oh, and you get the same interface on our 'Upload' page too! #cybrariansrock

3) Speed. E6 is fast. Really fast. When we were doing discovery on rewriting our interface, *everyone* said if we had to choose between a feature or speed, opt for speed. We heard you. Every new feature, every new design get's benchmarked and optimized for speed. Everytime. We were always performance geeks on the hardware side, it's translated to our software too. #screaminglyfast

4) Ease of Navigation. We've worked incredibly hard on the UX/UI. Minimal clicks to get anywhere, intuitive, easy to change interface. It's a very powerful, option rich software suite. Our mandate is to bridge the chasm between power users and the casual occasional user. We've seen interface and how to questions plummet in number since E6 came out, and our customers report the same. #easy-peasy

4) Feedback. Feedback. Feedback. We're manic about user feedback. Uploading, downloading, adding items to baskets, submitting forms, every interaction gives you positive acknowledgement of the action. One of the design criteria is a user never has to guess if they clicked a button, especially on a process that takes a while, like uploads or downloads. #feedbackisthenewfeature

5) Drag-n-Drop File Management in the browser. Move or copy files and folders from E6 with ease. No extra clicks, no 3 or 4 steps to get to where you need- drag 'em into the lightbox, navigate to their new home, and select copy or move. Done. #noway,yesway!

6) Ease of Administration. You can update to the newest version with a single click. We QA all releases, so you know you're getting rock solid improvements. Thanks to the modern architecture, no need to recreate sites after upgrade. Bob's your uncle, all sites are updated automagically. #youhaveadayjob

7) Ready for Xinet 19. Since 17.7.1, E6 has been ready on day of release for every Xinet upgrade. No waiting, no upcharges for compatability. And, if you have customized E6 on your own, we promise not to ever break anything. #readyoutofthegate

Between performance, features, and ease of admin, E6 is simply the best Xinet interface out there. #DAMawesome

If you don't have it already, get a free trial copy here:

Feedback and comments always welcome, the software is where it is mainly due to the vociferous, avid user base. Thanks to all for the tips, suggestions, and occasionally tough love!

We've been running a  Version 19 beta internally for a few weeks, and it's great stuff. Alongside major news about SMB support and SAML there are some really, really cool improvements in the display layer.

E6 of course will be fully compliant and able to take advantage of the new nuanced abilities provided by the upgrade right out of the gate. We'll also have a information-rich list view in E6 at the same time, for users that need to see lots of files on each page, with metadata and a preview. It's DAM good, if you have that need.

Join us and NP on the 1st, and see what all the fuss is about!

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See you on December 1st

    Welcome back from the holidays! To start your year off right, here's a list of some really cool improvements we've made over the last 2 months or so in E6, our Xinet interface. We're focusing on usability, performance, and generally easing the adoption of using a DAM system, both for casual and power users.

In no particular order, here's what we've been up to-

We released a new theme- 'Air'. It allows a single background image across all pages, custom volume and folder icons, and lots of other neat features. Check it out:

New 'uploader' plugin- a really nice interface for editing metadata on lots of files. It does drag and drop, and drag and select to choose the files you want some metadata applied to, etc... We'll port the code to Batch Keyword Apply in the next couple weeks, so your cybrarians will have a *much* easier time of setting and correcting metadata on groups of files. And of course, we kept the best bits from the original version- individual progress bars, feedback to the users.

'Steal a Link' in SuperMail- both when browsing in E6 and from the Mac desktop. You can now get a SM link copied to your clipboard to add into a personal email. We had lots of folks who didn't want to send a SM to themselves, then copy the link from there into their email client.

New versions comparison function- you can compare 2 files side by side and zoom in on them. Choose different versions of the same file, (even if the filetpes are different!) and compare them.

You can now export and Import E6 sites- Host to host, or on the same host. We had someone build a site on a Dev server in Cali, export it, and import it into the Prod server in Chicago. Cool stuff!

Gallery view- who doesn't love themselves a Gallery? We then added drag&drop to it, because well, drag&drop.

E6 AFR with SuperMail- with fine grained permission rights. It's awesome - reusing the SuperMail interface, it's 100% reliable (a marked improvement over the OOB experience). Check out Sully's video here: bit.ly/E6_AFR

True SSO- we built a SAML plugin for E6 that will work with any idP out there that 'speaks' SAML 2. It just works, as I like to say. 

Better Navigation- We're always looking for how to bump productivity and ease of use. We added in the ability to navigate up through higher levels using the breadcrumbs along the top. Little triangles of joy I call them. The developers try and tell me stuff like "it's built with AJAX, so no page load hit", but I just nod my head and enjoy the experience.

Internationalization- It's a global world, and people want a familiar touch. We fully support any and all date formats automatically, based on your browser's settings. If you're in the US, you see month/day/year. If you're in Europe, day/month/year. Text is easily customised too, everything can be translated usng a simple text file.

InPress plugins compatibilty- We wrote E6 with an eye towards openness and ease of integration. All InPress plugins are fully compatible with E6, as are all WebNative Basket plugins. 

Documentation- We're documenting everything on our online docs, usually the same day a new feature get's released. Click the help button on any page, and you go right to the correct help page for that subject.

    So, start the new year off right, and push that 'update' button in Elegant6.  Or,  jump the E6 install  line by dropping us a line - helpdesk@napc.com . Make the subject "E6 install" or "I need me some E6" (fastest response for that one), and the installation elves will get cracking.

              Make your users happy. Make your work life better. E6.

I’m incredibly excited to report the release of Elegant 6. It’s been a long, strange trip from it’s origin over 10 years ago as ‘Green’ - a simple, intuitive DAM interface for casual users.

Many of you have seen previews from the last couple webinars we’ve held, and some of you have been Beta testers (huge props to the Beta team!). For the rest of you, here’s what you can expect:

Performance- It’s fast. Really fast. Our Engineering, Performance and Metrics team have said it’s waaaay faster than Elegant 5, Exhibit, or anything else Xinet out there. That’s a technical term, of course.

Ease of use- we stripped out as many doodads as possible, removing buttons and confusing options for the user all over the place. Everything you see on the screen that is text is customizable, so you can make the buttons say what YOU want. Makes internationalization a breeze too.

Mobile friendly- Out of box we’re multitouch compliant. Pinch and spread away, the interface will zoom in and out, just as you’d expect. Sweet for quick reviews from the road.

Ease of use also translates into more feedback. We’re providing feedback all the time- from adding files to baskets, to browsing into empty folders, you always know what’s going on. And the new interface for uploading files is “light years ahead” (another technical term) of the current. No more users cancelling big uploads, or closing windows before their time.

Send supermail from the finder! Yep, a user can be browsing from the mac desktop, highlight some files, and send links to them without having to go to portal and repeat the operations. “Amazingly useful” is the least flattering comment we’ve gotten on this one.

12000% improvement in file management. OK, that’s an approximation. But real, robust file management through Elegant’s web interface is here. And it’s awesome.

Easy color theming- using online tools like Painstrap, it’s simple to create a color scheme to die for, and then slide it into Elegant 6. See previews of the new look  in the interface as you are applying and fine tuning. We got more than a little applause from the community for this one.

There’s dozens and dozens more, of course. Since we started from scratch it’s built with modern tools, making support a breeze. There’s a self updater, so you can see what’s new in the latest and upgrade yourself to get the latest feature set. We also built it so anyone with CSS skills can change the look and feel without having to pore over a Portal manual, and climb the steep learning curve of legacy software.

We’ll be in touch over the coming days and weeks, working with you on getting you into the future right now. Feel free to drop a line to helpdesk@napc.com with “Elegant 6 install” in the subject, and we’ll move you up the list (you deserve it for getting this far in a blog post!).

Here’s some common questions:

Any downtime for the install?

No, ‘course not.

Do all my users need to switch over right away?

Nope. Elegant 6 and Elegant 5 live next to each other.  E6 doesn’t even need portal to run, believe it or not. It’s that different!

Will my Elegant plugins/ custom CSS/ custom javascript port over?

Sadly, no. Given the vast difference in the code base, these kinds of things need to be recreated from scratch. That being said, we’ve included in E6 a ton of the plugins we’ve built over the years.

Is there a video I can watch?

Yep- right here: http://bit.ly/elegant6release

How much does this cost?

If you’re currently under support, Zilch. Zip. Nada. This is what support should go to- modernization and better code. We hate fixing bugs and retrofitting code too. So upgrade, and make your life better, already!