Pageflex 7.5

Pageflex, a division of Bitstream Inc. and developer of enterprise variable data publishing and web-to-print solutions, released Pageflex 7.5, which includes more than two dozen customer-requested product enhancements. The vast majority of the Pageflex customer base will benefit from this release with new features being added to Pageflex Campaign Manager, Pageflex Storefront, and Pageflex Studio. Additionally version 7.5 makes available a new module for Pageflex Server that gives customers the option of utilizing Adobe InDesign CS4 Server for their dynamic composition needs while continuing to benefit from the scalable load-balancing and queue-managing capabilities that Pageflex Server provides.

"The Pageflex 7.5 release has been customer driven. We focused on incorporating features and enhancements to make our customers more productive and their businesses more profitable," comments Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, Bitstream President and CEO. "Many companies use Pageflex directly with their customers, for instance, by using Pageflex Storefront to provide services through a Web-to-print site. This gives us a much more expanded audience. We kept this in mind as we put together version 7.5, and we sought to incorporate enhancements that make our customers? end users experiences more joyful."

Pageflex Campaign Manager enables the creation, execution, and result tracking of multi-channel marketing campaigns that include print, email. pURL, and web microsite components. The 7.5 release expands the scope of Pageflex Campaign Manager with these new features:

• Add-a-friend/self opt-in capabilities, including the ability to track opt-in campaign participants, which support creating viral campaigns, construction of trackable Forward To A Friend links for email and websites, or simplifying internal processes for adding fresh leads to a campaign.
• Ability to track undeliverable emails via integration with an SMTP server to better assess campaign response rates and to clean bad addresses from mailing lists.
• Availability of a Campaign Manager API supporting email/job scheduling, automated database updating for synchronizing with CRM systems, and custom report generation

"At AccuLink we're focused on continuously adding value to the communication solutions we develop for our customers. By offering marketing campaigns that include digital print, email, pURL, and microsite components we enable our clients to better engage with their prospects, strengthen their customer relationships, and measure the results of their campaigns," explains Rose Ehrecke, E-Commerce Director & Project Manager at AccuLink, a Pageflex customer and solutions-oriented, shortrun printer in Greenville, North Carolina. "The new Campaign Manager capabilities we will get with the Pageflex 7.5 release will allow us to create campaigns that extend our clients' marketing reach through add-a-friend word-of-mouth distribution and CRM data mining. I am excited to start working with this new functionality."

Pageflex Storefront is the company's award-winning Web-to-print and brand management solution. The popular suite adds new and expanded capabilities enabling customers to:

• Ship items in an order to multiple addresses
• Create and manage shipping address books
• Implement powerful multi-level approval workflows
• Easily copy or move products, forms, and assets between deployments
• Preview a sampling of the final documents when personalizing using an Integrated data list preview
• Format automated email notifications with rich content using HTML
• Reorder form fields using drag-and-drop in Pageflex Storefront Administrator
• Deploy flexible shopping cart customization options

Mark Sarpa, owner of Frecklebox.com, a business-to-consumer site utilizing Pageflex Storefront to offer personalized gifts for kids, expresses the excitement that many Pageflex customers have about the release of Pageflex 7.5. "Our Frecklebox business has really exploded, so we're always seeking ways to make our customers? online experiences more pleasing and our internal processes more efficient," he explains "I'm looking forward to the new capabilities we'll get with the 7.5 upgrade. For example, ease-of-use features like the ability for a customer in the shopping cart to impulsively change the quantity of personalized stickers she is ordering or to be able to send gifts to multiple addresses during the check out process are the type of features that help us retain customers and get positive word of mouth promotion."

Similarly in Helsinki, Finland the team at DMP-Digital Media Partners is anticipating the improvements that version 7.5 will bring to their business-to-business activities. "We are looking forward to upgrading our Pageflex Storefront installations to version 7.5," comments Pasi Korhonen, CIO at from DMP-Digital Media Partners. "We use Pageflex Storefront to help our customers manage their document customization and brand management processes. The new multi-level approval capabilities will simplify our communications with customers. By automating the review and sign-off communications we will be able to go into production faster and with more assurance that the printed document is acceptable to all stakeholders within a client company."

Pageflex Server Integration with Adobe InDesign CS4 ServerIn conjunction with the release of version 7.5, Pageflex also has integrated Adobe InDesign CS4 Server with its enterprise solution, Pageflex Server. Customers have the option of purchasing a license for the InDesign CS4 Server from Pageflex. Templates can be designed in Pageflex Studio ID, a variable data plug-in for InDesign, and then stored on the server. Pageflex Server manages dynamic composition requests coming from a web site or data file and provides load balancing and queue management. Final output of customized documents is produced by InDesign Server.

"Last spring when we announced the availability of Adobe InDesign CS4 Server for use with Pageflex Storefront, our Pageflex Server customers began calling to ask if they could incorporate InDesign Server into their Pageflex workflows also. Many of these companies receive InDesign files from their customers and expect that they will see productivity savings if they can use InDesign through out their entire document customization workflow," explains Magliocco-Chagnon. "We are pleased that we can extend our relationship with Adobe to include InDesign Server integration with our enterprise Pageflex Server product."

Pageflex 7.5 brings production enhancements to Pageflex Studio, the template design tool for all Pageflex server-based products, and the customized output that is generated from these Pageflex products. New capabilities include:

• Overprint can be defined at the item level for a selected text range (including rules if present), object fill, and object border
• A template-level configuration setting for overprint of text, object fills, and object borders
• ICC profiles associated with embedded JPEG and TIFF images are preserved (PDFs have previously preserved ICC profiles)

Pageflex 7.5 is available immediately from Pageflex and its resellers.