Many customers using older versions of the K4 Publishing System are interested in the new features offered by the K4 Publishing System Version 6 and want to know the benefits of upgrading their system. Here’s a rundown of those new features:
Adobe CS5 Compatibility
If you are looking to upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite 5 or 5.5, you will need to upgrade to K4 Publishing System Version 6. Vjoon will not be releasing an updated set of K4 Version 5 plugins for Adobe InDesign and InCopy CS5.
Task-Driven Workflow
A workflow defined in K4 Version 5 consisted of a number of different article and layout statuses that were configured in a linear sequence. These statuses served as milestones that ushered documents from a starting point to the final stage.
K4 Publishing System Version 6 allows for greater flexibility in defining workflows with more control and granularity. In addition to defining milestone statuses, K4 Publishing System Version 6 allows for status-based tasks. A number of different tasks can be linked to a particular status, requiring that each task be completed or purposefully skipped before a layout or article advances to the next status.
Relational Database Support
One of the major drawbacks of K4 Publishing System Version 5 is the dependency on PrimeBase as the database backend. While PrimeBase is a fairly stable database platform, its scalability is limited, backups and troubleshooting is not standard and a specific scripting language is required for automation.
With K4 Publishing System Version 6 companies have the option of using MySQL Advanced, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle as the database backend. DPCI has performed K4 Version 6 implementations using all three database options at various client sites.
Support for Multiple Databases
K4 Publishing System Version 6.4 now supports multiple database configurations. Administrators can choose to distribute publications managed in K4 across multiple databases to silo an individual publication’s content and to streamline backups and restorations.
Sticky Notes
The introduction of K4 Sticky Notes makes communication between editors and designers a whole lot easier. K4 Sticky Notes are just like Sticky Notes placed by a user in Acrobat and can be used to communicate requests for layout adjustments such as textwrap and copyfitting.
Custom Terminology
For those publishers that felt confined and restricted by K4 Version 5’s Publication | Issue | Section structure, K4 Publishing System Version 6 allows system administrators to change the terminology within K4 to more accurately represent the structure relevant to your publications.
Active Directory / LDAP Integration
K4 Publishing System Version 6 includes support for LDAP and Active Directory for user authentication. User access and account management can be achieved through Active Directory, while K4-specific permissions are defined within the K4 Admin. Users can also be imported into the K4 system from a directory server.
Distributed Enterprise System/Local Data Storage (K4DES/K4LDS)
The new K4 Publishing System Digital Enterprise Server (DES) and Local Data Storage (LDS) gives publishers that work with remote offices additional options for optimizing their workflows. By adding in a LDS server to a remote office, K4 users can check-out files at local network speeds while all content and metadata is synced to a master K4 server. Each LDS has its own database that synchronizes with the main K4 Server supplying and updating the required data on a real-time basis. LDS eliminates the issue of long check-out times for large documents across the network to remote offices.
Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
The Adobe Digital Publishing Suite tools are automatically built into the K4 Publishing System, allowing publishers to automate the production and upload of content for tablet devices. Using the K4 publication structure, K4 metadata, and layout variants for iPad horizontal and vertical views, publishers can produce iPad content simultaneously while layouts are created for Print.
The RFP process that DPCI managed for our client was an extremely well-managed process from our point of view. The DPCI team's thoroughness gave us a great opportunity to show off the full range of what we can do.
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