Newsletter

September 2006 Issue 4

Welcome Welcome to the fourth edition of our Mapsoft Newsletter. As the year starts to draw to a close, now is the perfect time to evaluate existing IT solutions and seek better ones to improve your workflow. Businesses can always benefit from more robust software tools to help improve productivity and streamline processes. Our products and services can help you in your quest to maximise your investment in PDF and streamline your workflow. This month we turn the spotlight on one of our most popular products - Mapsoft MaskIt; a great plug-in to Adobe Acrobat, which could help you improve your business processes. Unleash the power of PDF with Mapsoft. Please contact us if you have any comments on any of the articles in this Newsletter, or ideas for topics you'd like us to cover in future issues. Have your say. We'd love to hear from you! Prize Draw Results ... We are pleased to announce that the winner of "Impress Pro feedback contest" is: Michael M. Wilson from Washington, DC. Congratulations! We would also like to thank everyone who took part in the contest for their feedback. Remember ... ...that all our products and services come with one year’s free technical support as standard so you buy from Mapsoft secure in the knowledge that help is always available should you need it.

Spotlight on .... Mapsoft MaskIt Mapsoft MaskIt is the perfect tool for hiding secure content in automated workflows. A plug-in for use with Adobe Acrobat, MaskIt allows you to mask areas of pages of PDF documents so that anything that would normally display or print in that area will no longer appear. Information can either be removed from inside a defined area, or from outside that area. All other information is left intact.         MaskIt is particularly useful for removing items such as logos, confidential information, or headers and footers. MaskIt can also remove dirty areas that might appear in a PDF file after scanning. Additional items can be added in these masked areas later, such as annotations or text output from either Mapsoft Impress or Mapsoft Impress Pro. Masks are easily defined using the Mask tool available from Acrobat's main toolbar. Once defined masks can be applied to the current document and/or saved for future use. See our movie demo about using MaskIt in your office. Click here for more information about Mapsoft MaskIt. Download a free try-out today!

Case study: Mapsoft MaskIt working for SONY The perfect tool for hiding secure content in automated workflows   The business world is becoming paperless. Many leading companies have incorporated Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) as their standard for processing all types of information electronically. Sony Pictures Entertainment is no exception. As major players in the airline motion picture business, Sony has to process many orders that are received initially in paper format, typically via fax. Once the orders have been received, Sony evaluates, annotates and then sends them to the fulfilment vendors (print labs) for processing. As part of this process, Sony has to add various annotations to the orders; these contain private data  which must be kept confidential and so must be removed before the annotated order can be sent to the lab. Removing the annotations manually was a time-consuming process. So, Sony designed a more stream-lined process, using scanning techniques to capture and store order images, which eliminated much of the paper processing. A repository of digital orders was created and was used to automate much of the work flow. But, a missing link remained in the automated process; a software tool  was needed to annotate the digital images in the repository prior to transmission to the fulfilment vendors. Mapsoft MaskIt was the link Sony needed to truly automate their workflow. It proved the perfect solution to Sony's requirements. Sony integrated the MaskIt plug-in with their application distribution process and have seen an increase in productivity as a result. "We are very satisfied with MaskIt. The tool has never failed to operate as designed and implementation was literally painless." Noreen Warren, Executive Director, Domestic Motion Picture Distribution Systems, Sony (Click here to read fuller details on this project...)   Our Approach to Customised Development If you have a problem that needs a software solution, you can rely on Mapsoft to deliver the solution you need, when you need it, to a very high quality. We adopt the following approach to all our customised projects to ensure you get the best possible results:   Assess Requirements We start by assessing your requirements. We do this by asking you questions about the specific problem you’d like us to solve and by finding out about your business in general. Only when we really understand your business can we help you achieve your goals. Define Project Once we have gathered your requirements, we put together a detailed Proposal outlining the solution we will provide. This will include a fixed price and a schedule for the project. Depending on the complexity of the project we may need to work with you to produce a detailed functional specification as part of this stage. We need you to agree our Proposal before we start the development of your solution. Design & Develop Solution We will develop your solution using industry-standard stages of development, namely, Design, Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate and Gold Master. We will keep you up to date with progress at regular stages throughout the development, and will incorporate your feedback into the solution. Test & Deliver Solution We always perform extensive technical testing to ensure that your solution conforms to the agreed specification but of course you will perform the final acceptance tests to ensure that the solution conforms to your expectations. Support All our solutions come with one year’s free support. This covers fixes for any software failures or any instances where it can be demonstrated that the solution does not perform as was originally agreed. Maintenance can be purchased for an additional sum if this is required. Hints & Tips These top tips should help you when using Mapsoft plug-ins: If using MaskIt under Adobe Acrobat 7 you must ensure you are running Version Acrobat 7.0.5, or later to ensure you obtain the best results from MaskIt.  You can download the latest update to Adobe Acrobat from  http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ After removing headers and footers using MaskIt, you can apply new headers and footers using Mapsoft Impress. For example, you might want to use MaskIt to remove existing page numbers from a document that consists of sections from a variety of different sources, and then add a sequential page-numbering sequence across the entire document using Impress. A common problem in scanning office documents are the dark spots that appear in the scanned image where holes have been punched in the original page to allow that document to be stored in a ring-binder. If you then have to send that scanned document onto customers, those dark spots can look highly unprofessional. The solution? Just use MaskIt to mask out those annoying spots! See our MaskIt movie demo to see how easy this is to do. Have you ever wondered what to do with third-party logos or contact information that might be contained in a document that you want to send onto your own customers? For example, many dealers want to mask manufacturer contact information from their own customers. Now it's simple. Just use MaskIt for removing manufacturers' logos or contact information. All you need to do is draw a mask around the relevant information and click "Mask". Then forward the modified document onto your customers secure in the knowledge that the manufacturers' information is hidden.

Did you know ... ...that Mapsoft licenses Adobe's own core technology to make sure you get the best PDF output possible when using Mapsoft software? By doing this, Mapsoft helps to ensure the reliability and glitch-free use of all its plug-in products and customised software solutions.

Mapsoft Customer Success Stories Wanted! The perfect way to promote your company's story   Are you one of Mapsoft's many satisfied customers, of either our customised development services or our "off-the-shelf" products? If so, we'd love to hear from you so that we can champion your company's story! Just email us to let us know you have a story to tell, and we will then contact you to arrange a phone or e-mail conversation.  Alternatively, why not post a message on our Mapsoft forum to let us know what you think about our products and services.

Address: Mapsoft Computer Services Ltd, 5 Victoria Place, The Promenade, Kingsbridge, Devon TQ7 1JG United Kingdom Copyright © Mapsoft Computer Services Limited 2006 . All Rights Reserved. All trademarks are acknowledged.