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Approval Manager 2011

Product Analysis



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CONTENTS

Executive Summary 1

Introduction 2

Proofing workflows 3

Approval Manager 2011; what it is 5

Workflow functionality 6

Proofer support 8

Revision support and audit trail 10

Scheduling 10

Conclusion 11

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Executive Summary

Online proofing is an evolution of traditional print proofing. It encompasses review and ap-

proval jobs and uses tools which workgroups can complete a proofing project with. These

tools are accessed through a web browser with an interface that is designed to makeproofing more streamlined and efficient.

Online proofing can be done with desktop software such as Adobe Acrobat, but with these

applications a considerable risk of losing oversight of the process exists. Most vendors of

online proofing systems therefore have developed systems that can be used efficiently by

workgroups without losing track of the process.

However, most of these systems are only efficient when small workgroups collaborate be-

cause of the lack of solid workflow functionality. Few support deadlines, although these

are essential to any proofing system that needs to fit in a publishing workflow. Additionally,these systems are almost exclusively dedicated to marketing content proofing.

The Approval Manager 2011 online proofing system we tested for this report is an excep-

tion to the rule. This system does support deadlines through scheduling capabilities. It

supports pushing jobs to the reviewers by e-mail, and it supports a number of proofers

that extend well beyond traditional content — for example, Approval Manager 2011 can be

used to proof prototyping software design.

Finally, this system is the only one that scales well, as it can also be upgraded to a full-

scale publishing system, Workgroups 2011.



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Introduction

Traditionally, proofing has been limited to a print-centric, colour-focused replacement for

contract proofing. Outside of printing processes, however, it can refer to a collaboration

process that runs during the conceptual phase of a creative project. Proofing in that senseequals the review and approval of creative projects and is a business critical process.

Creative content encompasses a large array of file formats and media types, including

documents, images, presentations, video clips, interactive content, web content, etc. The

need for and importance of proofing can vary depending on the market, the volume of

content and the number of people involved in the process.

Online proofing is a relatively new market of review and approval tools that are available to

workgroups. These tools are accessed through a web browser with an interface that is

designed to make proofing more streamlined and efficient.

The market is driven by very different companies in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, pub-

lishing, retail, financial, and other markets. Users of online proofing include:

Graphic designers#

Photographers#

Freelance writers#

Copywriters#

Software designers#

Lawyers and legal departments#

Those who are involved with the management of the process include:

Marketing managers#

Product managers#

Technical editors#

Compliance officers#

Online proofing enables a more efficient, controllable and audit enabled workflow. If manypeople are involved with the approval process, if time is a critical factor, or when a high

volume of content must be approved on a regular basis, online proofing is by far the only

technology that can cope.

In markets that are heavily regulated such as healthcare, pharmaceutical and financial

markets, online proofing is the only solution that can provide for the necessary audit trails.

Industries that use one form of proofing or another include engineering, healthcare, archi-

tecture, film making, photography, mapping and geospatial, software

development, legal, marketing and advertising, packaging and print.



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Proofing workflows

There are two basic online proofing workflows:

A designer or account manager shares a proof with a single group of reviewers who#

review, annotate, and approve.

An initial group of reviewers iterating revisions until they agree on a version they can#

share with one or more editors who approve.

The most common workflow includes a designer and perhaps an account or project

manager, and a client. Sometimes content is reviewed and approved in stages. Often, one

or more rounds of internal previews happen before the person or team responsible for ap-

proving the content even sees the first proof. This is common in healthcare and financial

services, so that the marketing department can produce near final content before sending

to technical or compliance staff for approval.

Some online proofing tools allow for proofing multiple file formats, including PDF, Flash,

MPEG, MS Word, and other files. A number of these tools also support more interactive

file formats such as HTML , animation files, and video clips.

Most of these tools, however, are based on a static file format like PDF for reviewing pur-

poses.

Except for the fact that Adobe has its own proofing system built into Adobe Acrobat,

“PDF” is not a system. It is a specification evolved from EPS. It was not designed as a

team collaboration, proofing and annotation solution. PDF is all about print. It does not in-

corporate a robust system for workflow, notification, approval, and project management.



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Like MS Office products, Acrobat/PDF was designed as a single user shrink-wrapped

product.

In order to be useful, an online proofing tool needs to be built around concepts of project

management and job management. To use Acrobat PDF for annotations, you must also

install a version of Acrobat that supports it. Every member of the team that wants to prove

and collaborate must have the correct version at every location she wants to work—office,

home, laptop, etc.

When proofing using an application like Adobe Acrobat, the workflow needs to be organ-

ised outside of the application, creating a risk of fuzzy agreements, and a lack of clarity

about responsibilities. Additionally, and perhaps even worse, such point-and-shoot solu-

tions don’t support the setting of due dates for proofing stages, which can lead to “drag-

ging one’s heels” when the work load is already considerable.

In contrast, a system like Approval Manager 2011 allows managers to easily find the stage

at which a proofing job stalls and therefore also the person or group of persons who are

responsible. He/she can then take appropriate action, e.g. by re-routing the job to other

reviewers with a smaller work load.

A new proofing workflow starts with 2 steps: production and an approval

stage (the customer of the project).



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Approval Manager 2011; what it is

Publishing and editorial systems both depend on a workflow in which review and approval

processes run along pre-defined paths. Approval Manager 2011 is like a publishing sys-

tem’s review and approval mechanism being taken out and packed into a stand-alonemodule, although far more flexible and easier to use.

Approval Manager 2011 is a project management solution that allows project managers to

route proofs across multiple stages on a web-based graphical dashboard. They can create

and edit workflows or routes on the fly and with a minimum of effort. In addition to its

workflow capabilities, Approval Manager 2011 also supports schedule management,

where each workflow stage can have its own deadlines.

The two types of proofing that were discussed earlier can be managed with Approval Man-

ager 2011. However, due to the flexibility of Approval Manager 2011, a third type of proof-ing workflow can be initiated with Approval Manager 2011 as well; one where any member

of a workgroup or outsider (like freelance contributors) with the right permissions can start

a proofing process based on a template a project manager has created. This allows de-

signers, writers, photographers, etc. to ask for approval instead of having to wait until an

editor or manager starts a new process.

Approval Manager 2011 can also be used as a module of Workgroups 2011, MetaCommu-

nications’ publishing workflow and collaboration system, which is a hosted modular

process automation and management solution.

The Approval Manager 2011 dashboard can be fully branded so that external users (such

as freelance contributors) and customers get to see your logo and colours instead of the

default MetaCommunications branding.

Features lacking in competing products

Approval Manager 2011 is a unique product in the online proofing market as it includes

functionality not found elsewhere. The most important capabilities we found competing

products to be lacking are:

Scheduling with due date alerts per stage#

Automatic synchronisation between external proofers (Acrobat, InDesign/InCopy,#

etc.) and Approval Manager 2011

Ability to proof “exotic” files such as Balsamiq Mockups with built-in proofer#

Workflow features such as scheduling, email notifications, audit trail, etc.#

Upgrade to a full-scale publishing workflow and collaboration management system#

available.

With its extensive file support and workflow functionality, Approval

Manager 2011 is more than a proofing software for marketing content.

For example, it can also be used as a prototyping scheduling and ap-



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proval system for software (or web) design and development. This allows an investment in

Approval Manager 2011 to return far higher yields than is possible with other solutions.

Workflow functionality Approval Manager 2011 is web-based; the client lives in a web browser. The user with ad-

ministrator privileges has access to a dashboard where he can create new proofing work-

flows using a connected diagram interface. This diagram represents the workflow through

which the asset that is to be proofed will be routed.

A diagram starts with a pro-

duction stage in which the

user uploads an asset that is

to be reviewed and approved.

As many review or approval

stages can be set up as neces-

sary. The project manager can

send an asset to the next re-

viewer using business rules.

There are three possibilities:

Manual routing#

Automatic send to next review stage if approved with#

changes

Automatic send to next stage only if approved without#

changes

The project manager can also send an asset back to a previ-

ous stage. Each stage can further incorporate multiple rounds. At the end of a stage, the

manager can force the workflow to start over with a new production, or can complete the

workflow himself.

All stages of a workflow are represented by in-

terconnected boxes with a name, due date and



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At each stage change the next reviewer can be notified by email that he has a review job

to accomplish. To-do lists as well as to-do list changes can be sent out on a regular basis.

Users can be notified immediately upon having taken action, etc. Reviewers or users can

be created by the manager on the fly. When a new user is created, he/she will receive an

email with a link for automatic login.

Once a user is logged in, he/she can check his dashboard for new review assignments,

but in general users are invited to participate to a review round or notified there is a review

job awaiting them. In other words, users do not have to constantly monitor Approval Man-

ager to find out if they have work assigned to them. The way Approval Manager 2011

works on this level is the same as with any good publishing workflow tool.

Less obvious is that Approval Manager also allows each user to start his/her own review

process. A user can create his own workflow the same way a manager can, for his own

documents. This approach is a little different from what publishing systems usually allow.

In most publishing systems, a user enters a file into the system after which it is automati-

cally pulled into the editing — and therefore proofing — process. This “all or nothing” ap-

proach can have several disadvantages, among which editor work overload may be the

most obvious.

One result of this all or nothing approach may be that assets that do not require approval

time, and a reviewers’ list. Approval Manager 2011 can also display review rounds in a dia-

gram which shows instantly how many review rounds have finished, how many are still

open, and the exact routing (back and forth) the asset has gone through . This is unique to

Approval Manager 2011.

Formatted email message generated and sent automatically

by Approval Manager 2011.

— e.g. photographs purchased locally from a freelance photographer

— nevertheless have to be “approved” explicitly in order to push them



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down the workflow to the publication production stage, while other assets find their way

into publications unnoticed — e.g. photographs purchased by a business unit in a country

with different legal requirements.

With Approval Manager 2011 this problem is largely accounted for as a user who enters

his own documents into the system explicitly asks for review and approval, and will nor-

mally not do so unless it is required.

The argument against this approach — that assets might be in risk of being missed this

way — holds no water as a manager can manually intervene in any stage of the process.

When Approval Manager 2011 is upgraded to Workgroups 2011, the entry of assets into

the system and the proofing requirements for each of them can further be set on an even

more granular level.

Managers can also manually intervene while a proofing workflow is running to edit due

dates, to add and remove stages, and to change assigned reviewers and producers, fur-

ther adding to the flexibility of the solution. Additionally, they are responsible for uploading

new versions of a file, and renaming and removing files.

The ability to manually intervene at any time, and to change the proofing workflow even

when it is running, allows for much flexibility. For example, when a particular reviewer or

group of reviewers become unavailable during the workflow, the manager can exchange

them for others, or remove their stage entirely. If an approval objective changes — e.g. the

approval for a specific file no longer depends on a customer’s approval but must be

proofed within the organisation — the manager can immediately have this change reflect inthe proofing stages without disturbing the workflow itself.

Proofer support

Approval Manager 2011 has extensive proofer support. Its default proofing environment is

Spark! Which by itself supports a large number of common file types out of the box, in-

cluding PNG, PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIF, etc. By adjusting a number of options, Spark! will also

support the innovative Balsamiq Mockups, making Approval Manager suitable not only for

marketing content but also for software design, prototyping, and other types of projects.

Spark! has a user-friendly interface with a toolbar that much resembles the annotation

toolbar of Adobe Acrobat. Spark! supports zooming up to 6000%, measurements in pix-

els, inches, or centimetres, and PDF comments export. It also allows assets to be rotated,

drawn on, etc.

Except for Spark!, Approval Manager 2011 offers support for Adobe Acrobat and Reader,

the Foxit Reader, and Dalim DiALOGUE. Furthermore, Approval Manager allows editors to



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review InDesign digital proofs and apply copy corrections directly in InCopy, in real time.

Balsamiq Mockup, Dalim DiALOGUE, and InDesign/InCopy support are all unique features

of Approval Manager 2011, which set this solution apart from the competition.

While Balsamiq support extends the usability of Approval Manager 2011 beyond tradi-

tional content publishing markets, Dalim support enables a far more powerful brand man-

agement than is possible with any other approval software. Dalim DiALOGUE proofer

support means Approval Manager users will have access to high resolution, colour accu-

rate proofing.

InDesign/InCopy support effectively turns Approval Manager into a publishing workflow

tool with which the solution becomes enticing to use for smaller businesses who want to

start small with an inexpensive review and approval system that also manages revisions,

and that offers scalability through an upgrade to MetaCommunications’ Workgroups 2011.

Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader support are integrated with Approval

Manager 2011. This means comments and annotations made in these applications are au-

tomatically synchronised with Approval Manager’s database, further streamlining the

proofing process.

Approval Manager also incorporates native proofer, which is a technology that allows

users to open almost any type of file in their native application, including video. However,

native proofer does not synchronise the proofing workflow automatically.



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Scheduling

When a proofing workflow is created in Approval Manager 2011, the manager of the work-

flow can also set deadlines. These deadlines are set to a date and a time. For each stage

in the workflow, a different deadline can be set.

Deadlines in Approval Manager are dynamic, i.e. they act as a re-

minder mechanism. Late proofing reviews are visually indicated

and users can be set to receive email alerts when the deadline has

passed. It would be even more efficient when alerts could go out

when the deadline approaches, e.g. within a pre-defined period

prior to the due date.

However, given the fact that most online proofing systems don’t even support scheduling,

the availability of a complete deadline system sets Approval Manager 2011 apart from itscompetition, as deadlines are essential to any efficient workflow.

Furthermore, Approval Manager 2011 does support automated reminders, although a little

different from the alerts we would like to see added to the system. Automated reminders

are scheduled email messages that contain current and past due To-Do lists.

Revision support and audit trail

In publishing systems revision support is extremely important as it enables a user to com-pare the original document with changes that have been made from one stage to the next.

In many industries, auditors must be able to reconstruct a document’s change history

through a so-called audit trail (the pharmaceutical industry is infamous for this require-

ment).

Approval Manager 2011 supports both. The revision capability in Approval manager allows

users to see the changes made to an asset or document simply by comparing previously

reviewed proofs visually. This is possible because proof revisions are automatically saved.

The saving mechanism also allows managers to step back through the workflow and see

where revisions have been made.

The audit trail in Approval Manager is called “History”. There are two types of history avail-

able in Approval Manager 2011:

Complete History#

Round History#

The first type lists all the activities for each round in the approval process, while the latter

presents the same type of information, but displays only the events

and activities that belong to a specific round.



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Conclusion

Approval Manager 2011 is more than just an online proofing tool. It is a workflow system

focussed on the review and approval process. Although competing products exist, they all

seem to consider the proofing process as a stand-alone activity that is disconnected fromother publishing tasks.

MetaCommunications’ Approval Manager 2011 views the proofing process as part of a

bigger whole, and this approach prevents information silos, streamlines the publishing or

prototyping process and makes for a more efficient system altogether.

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