Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George Costanza’s wallet, over-stuffed with receipts, burst open like parade confetti? We laughed back then, because we could relate. We were still a paper world…in the 1990’s. 

Now, in 2014, we’re becoming paper-less. Trying to, at least. We have the option to pay bills online. We’re asked if we’d like the receipt for our new pair of pants e-mailed instead of printed. Schools deliver information through parent portals, instead of via notes stuffed into backpacks. 

In fact, most everything we do in business is paperless. Think of where your layouts are created (in a computer), and where general correspondence happens (in a computer). It would be silly and time consuming, now, to take out a piece of paper and a pen, write your client a note and send it in the mail. Right? You would look horrifically behind the times for one thing. And, for another, you’d for sure blow your deadlines. Communication would crawl to a snail’s pace and mistakes would inevitably happen.

 “That’s not us,” you say. “We don’t do business like that.”

But look. Right there on your desk; that pile of papers. Edits to a layout? And those three other stacks? Copy changes. How many rounds?  You’ve got staplers, too, of course. And red pens. Or maybe you’ve got a special color-coding system, just to help keep your sanity.  Good for you. But is it really?

How many times has your paper proof not matched the digital file? 

Even though you checked, double checked and triple checked the latest proof to the earlier proof, and then to the client supplied proof. The file on the server mysteriously changed. You don't know how, or when, or why, or by whom. You only know that somewhere along the way, a mistake was not caught in time. 

With 99.9 % of all print campaigns originating from, and being produced within, an entirely digital space, the only sure way to get it right is with a digital proofing platform that represents where the file lives. 

How do you keep track of who’s requesting what? 

Someone, (you're not sure who) made a comment to retouch out the logo. Someone else had a last minute copy change. On top of that, the client called to say that their website is about to change, and you need to update all of their collateral for the entire year to reflect the new look (yippee)!

Your magnificently organized file cabinet of duplicate paper proofs isn’t going to help anyone who doesn’t have a key to your office (or a view into the inner workings of your thought process). A digital proofing platform, however, tracks, captures and notifies the entire team at once of changes, all in an easily searchable way.

Has your client ever asked for a copy of everything you’ve ever produced for them in the last year?

Unfortunately, those assets were archived long ago. And some were specialty printed with spot colors, varnish coatings, white ink. How can they be converted? How much do they cost to be converted? Digital proofing gives you full access to your work, so you can do with it what you need, including printing, downloading and sharing the same file that went to the print vendor. And it doesn’t cost you a dime.

How often is a job approved, then suddenly "un-approved"? 

With paper proofs, routing a simple, last-minute text change, and expecting it to be a simple process, is impossible. Digital proofing gives you the option to "Approve with changes". 

How many unbillable hours have been wasted printing out paper proofs?

It’s costly to print layouts. Think about the paper and ink. Not to mention the time and labor. It’s also time consuming; taking hours or sometimes days to reach the person who requested it. A digital proofing solution can get a proof in front of your client in seconds!

The bottom line is, if you are still printing out layouts and routing them, you are not working efficiently. In this age of green thinking and instantaneous digital expectations, you cannot be George Costanza; forever tussling with a whirlwind of papers. Not so funny, anymore.

For more information about digital proofing solutions contact us at: echase@napc.com

Friends,

As a member of NAPC's customer-focused, technology-taming Customer Support team I passionately advocate and support our customer's [your] investment in Dalim Software's industry-leading solutions TWiST, DiALOGUE and ES.

Today, I'd like to share with you and perhaps get you thinking about customer-facing 'branding' opportunities within ES.

I would imagine that many of you ES administrators have already achieved some 'branding' knowingly or un-knowingly when you used the Customization-Theme Configuration feature to add your organization's logo to the Login Screen?

How about applying your own colors to the ES interface? Sure you have. Since you [may] have created a custom look and feel for your ES users and customers, why not consider applying your custom theme to some new, branded e-Mail templates!

Your ES 3 installation came with (8) e-Mail templates and (11) default Notification templates. For this exercise and introduction, we'll choose the File Event condition as our E-Mail template source and create a new template by modifying it.

First things first.

You don't have to be a programmer or .html wiz to edit the templates, so please, keep reading. If you are a wiz, consider sharing what you've learned with a coworker and helping them along. Regardless, everything you will need can be found in tools you use everyday and the 'know-how', trust me, you already have it.

Ready?

Let's start by identifying some 'parts' you will be adding to the template to achieve some enhancement. Color. You'll need to determine the hexidecimal value of the color you will be applying [ex:#bf2e1a] and a raster version of your logo. Your art or logo file should be in [.png, .gif .jpg] format using the RGB colorspace. Indexed or Greyscale colorspaces will also work.

Login to ES as an Administrator. Select "Administration" mode and then navigate to and open the File Event E-Mail template. In the message body, Select All and Copy to capture the entire message body. Launch your text-editing application and Paste the message body into a blank document. It's a good idea to perform Save As... "File Event" so you have a backup of the E-Mail template [for safekeeping].

In the message body, Find and Replace "#252525" with your color. Find and Replace "header.png" with the exact name of your logo [ex: my_logo.png]. So far so good? Now perform a Select All, Copy.

Switching back to ES...the File Event E-Mail template...

Click in the message body area and Paste your edited message body into the template. Click OK to close the template editor window, and then click Save to update your File Event template.

That's it, the editing is done.

On your ES 3 server, navigate to the "images" directory:

/symlnks/common/tomcat6.0/webapps/Esprit/images

Copy your logo into the "images" directory. [EOF]

Returning to ES, perform an action in ES that will trigger a File Event Notification condition, and check your E-Mail. There is your newly 'branded' E-Mail message!

Okay, before you get too excited (and waste alot of time designing a masterpiece) allow me to make an important point: ES 3 E-Mail templates must be under 2048 bytes. Yes, that's bytes. To put that number into perspective, this blog message would have ended six sentences ago at the [EOF] marker!

So friends, take care to keep your customization simple. And for you 'clever', self-reliant users who have jumped to the conclusion of overcoming the 2048 hurdle, let me be perfectly clear: I do not advocate 'hacking', so don't even go there...

The upside is, you can get some attractive results and stay under the 2048 limit with a bit of trial and error. So keep at it. I am confident that you'll be successful in adding a little style to your messages, even with the size restriction.

Now, the good news is, we all can also look forward to a better branded future in ES. That's right, the engineers at Dalim Software are aware of [yours, mine and] the marketplace's desire to design and compose attractive, branded E-Mail messages and have taken action to relax the size restriction in the next "dot-oh" release of ES...ES 4.0.

Stay tuned, my friends.

Scott