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lmalsby
MemberTrue 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!
MemberG'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
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