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• • May 9, 2011 at 6:50 pm #59552
    Gobit

    Member

    G'day

    Does anyone here use the xPresso for Adobe Indesign plug-in from EMC?

    From what I can decipher from EMC's website (https://www.emc.com/products/de…..design.htm) it's some sort of variable data plug-in.

    How does it differ from Indesign's built-in data merge capability?

    Would I be correct in assuming that it's no use in managing the financial section of annual reports?

    Thanks n cheers, Gobit

  • May 13, 2011 at 10:26 am #59596
    lmalsby

    Member

    G'Day yourself, Gobit!

    Thought I might pass on some experience in response to your post. I've experience in using both InDesign's native XML import feature and xPresso. I work for a large mutual fund house. We initially built our own system for using InDesign's XML support, but gave up on it after several years of attempts at making it work for our needs. We now use the xPression system as a whole (of which, xPresso is, as you summize, a plug-in for InDesign, Dreamweaver or MS Word) in conjunction with our InDesign publishing workflows within several groups in our firm. xPression is a very large enterprise level system initially built for the Insurance industry. It is capable of batch processing large numbers of personalized documents. We use it primarily for marketing collateral, personalized mailings/reports and client presentation modules, and are working currently at coding our Annual Reports. We have several business teams using xPresso for InDesign. xPresso does not require the entire xPression server system to work, which is a plus. Much of our work is sent out to our printers as native INDD files. With xPresso, we can stay in the native environment. The business logic rules are powerful, and allow us to generate very complicated documents in a given reporting period.

    Financial Reports or Annuals are IDEAL candidates for xPresso. You will need to spend time generating a properly built schema/data set, and learning the tool and building your templates. But – at the end of the day, what you have are templates that are easily reusable, with the added bonus of dramatically eliminating errors. Your compliance people will be very happy with the tool.

    I was just at the xPression convention in Las Vegas this week (just got home last night). I saw your post while I was there, and asked our relationship contact with EMC if they sold xPresso as a stand-alone, without the entire xPression back end (which is a substantial sum, but worth every penny). Answer – yes.

    I'm a fan of xPresso, and given your question, would encourage you to find out more.

    Post back to this if you'd like to continue this discussion. If you'll give me your contact info, I'd be happy to discuss further.

    -Lynn

  • May 13, 2011 at 9:56 pm #59601
    Gobit

    Member

    And a very fine day to you Lynn

    You've given me a much clearer picture of what xPression does than I could glean from the website.

    Your comment about spending time “generating a properly built schema/data set, and learning the tool and building your templates. But – at the end of the day, what you have are templates that are easily reusable, with the added bonus of dramatically eliminating errors.” is the nub of the issue for me.

    I can see how xPression would work extremely well for a large in-house operation where you have some considerable input into the format in which you will consistently the receive the data.

    However, we're a small outfit which is fortunate enough to have the contracts to lay up the annual reports for a number of corporates and government departments. The blurb part of the reports comes to us in MS Word. (Have been trying to talk some of them at least into using InCopy for the front part for a number of years but for a varierty of reasons they each have a preference to continue using MS Word.)

    The financials from each come to us as sets of MS Excel spreadsheets generated from their respective accounting systems, the spreadsheets being constructed to tie in with their respective internal management reporting layouts. Each set is constructed in ways peculiar (and I mean peculiar in all its senses :-) ) to the respective company or department and they vary from year to year. Unfortunately, if we can't even talk them into using InCopy, I don't imagine we'll be able to convince them to spend the necessary time and money at their end to consistently produce the data in form which would allow us to build templates. On the flip-side, the contracts also aren't of sufficient term to warrant us spending the time and money constructing templates.

    Many thanks for making the time to give a comprehensive reply.

    Kind regards, Gobit

  • May 15, 2011 at 5:47 am #59606
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Thanks Gobit for the interesting question, and thank you Lynn (who I've actually known in real life since the good ol' days, when “xpresso” meant something from Denver!). Of course, there are many other data publishing solutions out there, too. We talked a bit about that topic in podcast 145: https://creativepro.com/ind…..st-145.php

  • May 20, 2011 at 8:25 am #59663
    lmalsby

    Member

    True fact that, David. That would have been back in the days when I was guaranteed a ski run (or two or three) just by going to a conference. Gotta admit, as frustrated as I got with the BUSINESS of those conferences, I was more than happy to make the trek up to Colorado. Do you remember the Star Trek themed conference? I'll bet I've still got my geeky lapel pin!

    @Gobit: Your challenges with your Annuals are almost identical to ours – right down to the applications in question. A conversion to a more automated workflow can be managed if you take your time, and step into it piece by piece. I think it can also be done for a fairly low cost, provided you plan carefully. And don't let those data providers tell you otherwise… it's just not that tough to wrap that data set up into a nice, neat XML file. It's in their best interests to do that for you, as it means you don't have to touch their data! That's your “sell point” right there. At any rate, David's correct – there's a number of solutions out there. Good luck!

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