Online collaboration tools to optimize prepress workflows - 04/02/2010

Online collaboration tools within a prepress workflow have numerous advantages. Because of the interactive cooperation prepress costs are cut, the prepress cycle time is reduced and miscommunication is eliminated via platform communication and information sharing. What's more, tasks are easily assigned and distributed and the involved person is automatically notified. More important however: what collaborative prepress workflows have seen the light? What are the options? Let's find out by having a closer look at the options provided by the Vit2Print software suite.

Online prepress collaboration with Vit2Print

Vit2Print is a modular web based publishing suite that is rather flexible in the set-up of workflows. Depending on the customer's needs, the collaboration tools consist of several applications with specific flows. Below is a non-exhaustive list of collaborative prepress flows.

• Web cooperation: prepress and customers

  Online collaboration between a prepress department and customers starts already with a simple web2print webshop. Here is how it works in short: your prepress provides intelligent InDesign server templates online. The customer customizes those documents online, working directly in InDesign without realizing. Consequently the customer orders his newly created document to be printed. After which the order manager handles the order administratively in the web interface. All actors in the above story are automatically notified about their specific task.

  A second example of web cooperation between prepress and customers is an online proofing solution. A prepress person provides all relevant documents online. The customer is able to correct text and add sticky notes for additional remarks... until final approval.

• Online collaboration: prepress - translator - marketer

  Rather complex and difficult to manage workflows are those that have to handle the production of multilingual jobs. Allowing a translator, marketer and graphic designer to collaborate online in order to execute the job more effectively is quite a way to gain efficiency within prepress cycles. In fact, with our online translation management solution, it's the translator that puts the translation directly in the correct lay-out.

Collaborative prepress workflow demonstrations?

Want to gain efficiency within your prepress workflow? See how it works, request a demonstration!