VeeDeePee: get up close and personal with variable-data publishing (vdp)

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Darwin & InSite

Hidden in a corner of Kodak's drupa hall is Creo POD's incognito enclosed stand. While they're not opening the doors to the general punters, Creo POD together with Kodak has made some significant announcements at the show which impact Kodak and existing Creo POD distribution channels. In their booth, Creo POD demonstrated Darwin v3 integrated with Kodak InSite v4 together with a new digital-only version of their Prinergy workflow software.

It was immediately apparent that Darwin v3 is a huge leap forward from Darwin today. Current Darwin users will be familar with its functional but clunky workflow, usability issues and lack of cross-platform integration. Darwin v3 is set to change all that and so much more.

Darwin v3 is essentially a complete rewrite of Darwin as we know it. It still operates within the twin configuration of Darwin Pilot (used for managing data, business rules and variable resources) and Co-Pilot (the InDesign plug-in), but the new Pilot interface is quite refreshing. In addition, they've dropped their internal database architecture and have switched to the local file system of the workstation to manage project resources, making them more accessible to users. I've summarised all the key new features and functionalty areas below.

New UI
Creo POD completely rewritten the Pilot interface for Windows in .NET 3, which means they have to write interface separately for Mac. While this development approach may seem a little unusual, it's obvious that .NET 3 gives them some powerful user interface controls and file system integration for Windows users, which they could not achieve otherwise.

Usability
Alongh with the new user interface, Pilot is now a lot more usable. One example of this is the process to create a print-ready file, which until now has been a cumbersome workflow with many mouseclicks. While Pilot still invokes InDesign remotely, the new workflow is a lot more smoother and quicker to perform common user functions.

Rule Editor
While the controls in Pilot are essentially the same, they're now much easier to use and are presented in a slick interface. The Tools panel dynamically expands and collapses depending on which tool is selected, which gives it a rich-UI touch. But Pilot doesn't only look good, its a lot more usable too. The Rule Editor is very straightforward to use with their plain-English approach to authoring rules and you can define a single rule for multiple object types; text, colour, image, style, visibility and layout (page-based rules). Previously, if you wanted to use the same rules for different object types, you had to create multiple rules.

Pilot also provides the ability for users to hand-code business rules in JavaScript. Pilot uses JavaScript behind-the-scenes to define business rules, so When you create a rule through the user interface, it's actually creating JavaScript code. Darwin v3 gives you the ability to switch to a JavaScript view and edit the rules in native JavaScript. While this certainly isn't for the faint-hearted, it gives savvy JavaScript programmers the ability to write custom rules if required.

Darwin Pilot Rule Editor. Click image to enlarge.

Barcodes
Darwin has supported barcodes for while, but now the support is even better. An extensive list of barcodes are now supported out-of-the-box, I've never seen such a comprehensive list—there are several obscure ones in there. Users can define specific parameters for each barcode, which includes the barcode width and height, along with some advanced parameters. As barcodes are generated as individual EPS files, there are no barcode fonts to install and manage.

Darwin Pilot Barcode Support. Click image to enlarge.

Image Personalisation
While Darwin already supports generation of personalized images from Photoshop documents, you currently need to pre-generate the images before production. In version 3, images don't need to be pre-generated; Photoshop will generate them at the time of processing a print-ready file. In addition, WCS (Web Composition System) will now support image personalisation.

Charts
Darwin has added enhanced capabilities to their data-driven chart feature, which until now have been basic in appearance. They now look a lot more visually pleasing and support 3D views. Like image personalisation, WCS will also now support dynamic chart objects.

Creating charts in Darwin Pilot. Click image to enlarge.

Functions
One new tool to Pilot is Functions. This tool enables you to use functions such as AVERAGE and SUM as variable elements. Furthermore, these functions are stored as XML, so you can author your own custom functions saving them in the required XML schema.

New File Format
Creo POD has replaced the .darwin file type with .dvj (Darwin Variable Job). This new format is XML-based, so other applications can author .dvj files. In fact, InSite creates .dvj files when a new project is created.

Improved Library View
The library view in Pilot is now easier to preview, with document page thumbnails that can be enlarged or reduced as required.

Viewing project libraries in Darwin Pilot. Click image to enlarge.

InSite Integration
Darwin integrates into InSite, very well. Pilot lets you connect to IVDP (InSite VDP) and browse all the projects available on the InSite server. The screenshot below illustrates this, where the Pilot browser window appears next to InSite's project view. As noted earlier, InSite creates project (.dvj) files containing all the initial resources (data, etc), which can be accessed and opened directly from Pilot.

Browsing InSite projects in Darwin Pilot. Click image to enlarge.

Multi-Instance Servers
To date, Darwin has only supported InDesign Server SI (Single Instance) in WCS. As from v3, WCS will support InDesign Server MI (Multi-Instance) licences, to enable concurrent production of proof and print campaigns. In addition, InSite has the ability to support cluster configurations and WCS allows InSite to take advantage of clustering InDesign Servers for high-availability environments.

E-mail Campaigns
Pilot now features a 'Dreamweaver' option on the top menu-bar. This enables a Darwin project to be "packed" for Dreamweaver. The package is essentially a subset of the .dvj file, but only includes parameters that are supported by the Dreamweaver plug-in. While Creo POD were unable to demonstrate the Dreamweaver plug-in at drupa (it's not ready yet), they explained that it will function similar to the InDesign Co-Pilot. Once an HTML template has been tagged with variable elements in Dreamweaver, Darwin will parse the template through an e-mail engine and send it to selected recipients. It is understood that this feature is still in early development stages, but they do intend to include it in Darwin v3.

Extensibility
Darwin will offer an SDK to enable third-parties (e.g. DirectSmile) to develop plug-ins. These plug-ins will appear as 'tools' within the existing tool panel in Pilot.

InSite Campaign Manager
While Kodak already offers integration with WCS through InSite VDP, they are set to take this integration to a completely new level. Kodak started development just two months ago on Campaign Manager; a new InSite module. Campaign Manager is several products all rolled into one. It provides strong campaign management capabilities together with data analytics, data cleansing tools, PURL generation and more. Key Campaign Manager features are discussed below.

Data Cleansing
The data cleansing tools in Campaign Manager enable you to perform essential data cleansing functions such as de-duplication and formatting checks. In addition, it will be able to integrate with address verification services and others.

Project Management
Project management tools in Campaign Manager include a GANT chart which displays timelines for all the various campaign elements and dynamically updates as new elements (e.g. e-mail, PURL, etc) are configured in the campaign.

A campaign GANT chart in InSite Campaign Manager. Click image to enlarge.

Data Analytics
The data analytic tools in Campaign Manager are quite impressive. Once you've uploaded your recipient data, you can use analytical methods to segment your audience, using statistical methods such as Multivariate Interaction Detection (MID). Once you've defined the analysis method and various filtering parameters, Campaign Manager generates a graphical tree-structure of recipient segmentation, colour-coded to identify hot and cold leads. You can then select a segment group and target an offer just for them, with specific offers.

Displaying segmented data in InSite Campaign Manager. Click image to enlarge.

PURLs
To-date, Darwin has relied on third-party service providers for PURL generation. However, InSite Campaign Manager will now support PURL generation. While Kodak were unable to show this working on the Kodak stand, it appears that they intend deliver on the promise. Pages are tagged with variable elements in Dreamweaver and then uploaded to a separate web server where InSite serves database requests to and from the pages. Campaign Manager also includes a wizard-based survey builder for creating survey Web pages which post the data back from a personalised Web site to InSite.

Creating survey pages using a wizard using InSite Campaign Manager. Click image to enlarge.

Pricing
Creo POD has not yet announced Darwin v3 pricing, although they will continue to offer a Desktop and Pro version. Kodak are not in a position to share InSite v4 pricing at this early stage, although not surprisingly they told me it will be "very expensive". However, they are planning to offer InSite as licenced software and also as a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Availability
To date, InSite has been limited to Kodak channels. However, the intent is to "white label" InSite and OEM it to the channel market. As a result, current Creo POD channels (Xerox, Fuji Xerox, Konica Minolta, HP and others) will be able to sell InSite if they wish. InSite Campaign Manager v4 is scheduled for beta in Q4 with v1.0 shipping in Q1, 2008. Darwin v3 will be available ahead of InSite, slated for release in October 2008.

Summary
This is the most signficant software development that I've seen in a very long time from any VDP vendor. Creo POD are obviously committed to addressing the past limitations of Darwin and building a VDP platform for the future. It's interesting to note that Creo POD shared with me that their new focus isn't on the desktop software market, but server-based solutions, where Darwin is used together with InSite as a complete VDP solution. When you consider that InSite already offers asset management, proofing, workflow and web-to-print options through its modular architecture, the addition of Campaign Manager together with Darwin could make it a viable one-stop solution for all print applications.

InSite Campaign Manager will certainly position Creo POD apart from the crowd, as it's not just a VDP cross-media production engine with some reporting features bolted on the side, but a complete campaign management and production system which brings a unique offering to the market. I was surprised to see how complete the product was, as Kodak explained that they only started working on the product two months ago.

Other VDP vendors should sit up and take notice, as the development collaboration of Creo POD and Kodak on these two products, together with Creo PODs exisiting sales channels network, could have a significant impact on the VDP market in the very near future.

Posted on Friday, 30 May 2008 at 4:35 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/140