Based on feedback from newspaper clients using NewsSpeed in production the latest version of DTI’s editorial publishing solution has several new features. These new features improve page and story tracking, advance internal communication, hone operations, and simplify user setups.
Page and story tracking is more advanced in the new version. A user can update tracking on demand. Specific pages or stories can be selected and updated at any time. Users can also track pages in a high-resolution mode. A new tracking window called “deadline tracking” has also been added. The new window displays a graph of page progress based on the individual status of every element on the page. Deadlines and statuses are all site defined. The user can track the progress of whole pages or by selecting a more detailed view, can look at the progress of all the ads, graphics or stories on a specific page. A dialog box is used to enter the edition and run–date to be tracked and see the time when the page or any individual page element such as ads, ad media, news media and stories reached a certain status.
The Message Center, which is standard to all DTI applications including NewsSpeed, has also undergone some changes to improve internal communications. Users can now specify that a message be sent at a later time, or on a repeating basis. Also several new messages that inform users of things that are happening behind the scenes have been created. One such message automatically notifies a user when a page has printed successfully. This doesn’t tie up the user’s workstation and frees him to work on other things without having to monitor a print queue.
Numerous enhancements have been made in NewsSpeed to streamline newspaper production. Parallel workflow allows designers and editors to make changes to the same story simultaneously. This even applies to stories that begin on one page and end on another. In this situation, PageSpeed will “freeze” the text on one page so changes won‘t flow across the jump to the other page where the story continues. Thus, one designer can be working on the geometry of the story on the first page while another is designing the other part of the story on the jump page. When a change is saved, others working on the same story or page are notified and can see the change by refreshing their views.
Another timesaver is parallel page design. Parallel page design allows multiple stories on the same page to be opened at the same time in the same edition window. Thus, it is no longer necessary for a user to open a new editing window for each story being designed on the same page.
With InDesign, a media item can be opened in its creator application such as PhotoShop or Illustrator directly from the PageSpeed page. Enhancements have been made so that now when the photo or graphic is saved, it is saved to the database and automatically updated on the layout as well. It is no longer necessary to have a designer wait around to make simple changes to a graphic at the last minute because a paginator can open the graphic, make the change and see it updated on the page instantly. This is another improvement made in the latest version of NewsSpeed to streamline the workflow.
New functionality has been added to the Data Center to further customize and simplify user setups. The Data Center provides access to all content in the database and is standard to all DTI applications. Users already had the ability to set up preferences linked to their user profile and login that customize which fields and the order of the fields displayed in the rows and columns of the Data Center providing access to the information most often needed. Now further customization is possible through queries. Each user can now have more than one set of preferences for how they preview information in the Data Center through different types of queries.
