Fortunately for us, communications from our crack sales team means that What Happens in Vegas does NOT necessarily Stay in Vegas!...

The following report was filed today by Riley O'Brien Wolff - the Microsoft Engagement Manager for Adlib. She is reporting directly from the famed Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas - home to the SharePointPro 2010 Summit & Expo.

Adlib is exhibiting at Booth #415 - and getting lots of attention with their demo of the Adlib Express solution. In this photo, Enterprise Account Manager, Grant Jurgeneit, chats it up with a show attendee.

Show organizers report some 1,000 registered attendees (excluding exhibitors) so it's a good crowd.

Observations from the Show Floor...

• There are a lot of universities at the show who are interested (to support their research initiatives) in using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality for documents within SharePoint 
  
• A lot of show attendees - across several industries, including energy, insurance and government sectors - are implementing SharePoint in conjunction with the 2010 launch

Stay tuned for more SharePointPro Summit highlights this week!

Last week, Microsoft got a lot more specific about the dates for the SharePoint 2010 release. According to the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 will be launched on May 12, 2010. The intent to RTM (a slightly softer date), is announced for April 2010.

Adlib Software has been preparing for the 2010 launch since last summer and will be ready to support this release soon after it becomes available. I can tell you that the PDF for SharePoint workflows run on 2010 as well as SharePoint 2007. Now we are working on how we can leverage new capabilities in SharePoint 2010 in ways that will be valuable to our customers.

Since we use SharePoint workflows to enable document conversion within SharePoint, we are pleased to see all of the workflow-related enhancements in this release. These include:

• The ability to run workflows on the new Document Set content type and folders as well as documents. Several of our customers have expressed the need to efficiently work with multiple documents at once
• Big improvements to the interface for SharePoint Designer, It is also much easier to create workflows that can be reused within your SharePoint deployment with SPD 2010
• The ability to create workflows using Visio 2010 will enable business analysts to design workflows

Come back next Tuesday for Part II of my 4-party series on SharePoint 2010. (Subscribe to our RSS feed and you won't have to try and remember when our next blog post goes up!)

Paul Dyck
Product Manager
Adlib Software  

Although I work for a technology company, my background is in Environmental Sciences. Even in university, I tried to balance the need for sustainable environmental practices with the reality of a market(ing)-driven, consumer-based economy. My thesis looked at the performance and potential for environmental/ethical mutual funds – combining finance and the environment.

To be honest, I got into technology because that is where the opportunities were. A really nice side benefit is seeing that our technology is actually supporting the environmental cause. Software can help companies strike a win-win balance by:

• Saving money
• Accelerating business processes
• Reducing environmentally-unfriendly practices

Take, for example, the elimination of paper from your monthly bill review at home. Not only is it convenient for you, but it significantly reduces costs for your creditors.

Replace Printing, Mailing with PDF Rendering of Client Correspondence

Customers use our software to automatically render client correspondence to PDF instead of printing and mailing paper. It reduces costs and accelerates the flow of information to the client. Win-win.

Imagine you’re a manufacturing company with dozens of suppliers sending thousands of electronic documents in multiple formats. Create a web-based portal that allows them all to upload content in whatever format they choose, and use technology to render it all to accessible PDF before routing it to the next workflow step. This eliminates the need to go back to the suppliers and ask for a different file type which adds cycles, delays productivity and increases costs. The examples are endless.

My point is that technology and profitability are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, if sustainable or environmentally-friendly practices are to be anything more than a passing trend, they MUST provide tangible benefits to the organization. There’s even a new term that has been coined for it “Triple Bottom Line” which measures success in terms of: People, Planet and Profit.

One final comment: I’m a nut for sports cars, which is a challenge when trying to be environmentally aware. Even so, we’re seeing how a love of driving can co-exist with the green movement – hello Tesla!

Scott Mackey
Director - Product Management
Adlib Software

I was contacted by a customer recently who wanted to be able to link several different locations to a main server; he was a little shocked to learn that he had Web services.  With a simple adjustment to his current settings, his idea became reality and the issue was solved  - making him looking like a genius to his boss!

It happens all the time...

Staying current and keeping your software maintenance up-to-date is great; but the question you really should be asking yourself with an upgrade is: What exactly am I getting? 

Understanding what the new functionalities are and what they can do for you and your company is critical. The new functionality may lead you to quicker and more efficient ways to convert your documents.  Understanding the new capabilities can also lead to a different way at looking at your current problem and may lead to a new solution.

For example with the most recent release of Express 4.7 some of the added functionality includes:

• Web Services and Job Management (formerly Exponent) – provides intelligent job management and cross-platform integration options as part of a Services Oriented Architecture.
• Output to PDF/A (archival standard) and PDF/X (print standard) – generates these industry standard outputs from any of the hundreds of formats Adlib supports.
• PDF to PDF/A support - includes the new PDF/A conversion and validation functionality and is ideal for automated high-volume workflows which converts existing PDF documents directly into the PDF/A format.
• Added Support for InfoPath documents – added support for rendering Microsoft’s InfoPath forms to PDF, an increasingly popular form design tool. 
• Enhance image processing capabilities – expands the list of supported image formats and accelerates processing for rendering documents to image output.
• Automated Incident Information Collection – improves system administration by automatically retrying jobs and capturing detailed information for review without restarting the Server.
• nUp PDF Rendering - allows you to render 2 or more pages of the input document to each output PDF page. Now you can create “storyboards”.

Sure, upgrading allows you access to the latest and greatest... but know what you are getting when you upgrade. Youu might be surprised at the value it can bring to your workplace.

Peter Jonak
Customer Loyalty Representative
Adlib Software

Nuance is excellent at recognizing and exposing text hidden in images; however, processing some PDFs, documents with oversized pages, and certain types of bitmaps can be a challenge. Adlib Software is able to pre-process these types of documents, and manage the success of the Nuance engine, to ensure the best output for a number of conditions.

Adlib provides a simple, flexible interface for performing all different types of document transformation. OCR - for recognizing text on image documents - is one type. The Adlib OCR solution uses the Nuance SDK for the recognition of text due to its superior accuracy and throughput capabilities.

Benefits of Adlib OCR working with Nuance SDK:

• A much simpler interface for integration (.NET Web Service & XML Job Ticket)

• Practically limitless scalability with automatic load balancing and intelligent job management

• Support for processing 300+ file types to PDF or other formats. You can even process images within MS Word files etc. via OCR to make all content searchable.

• Metadata-based rules processing capabilities via our forthcoming Director Web Service

• Pre-Processing capability to enhance OCR accuracy and throughput Enhanced / Extended PDF support (Bookmark retention, PDF annotation retention [image only]. These 4 important elements are lost when processing strictly through Nuance

• Document failure prevention. Our server based tools provide enterprise ready job management and fault tolerance to ensure maximum availability and throughput

• Enhanced automated error handling (based on document recognition quality) so that system output can be tailored to meet requirements

•  Extremely large document support (in terms of # of pages. In house testing of 15,000+ pages, limited by HD space only)

•  Automated OCR zoning to draw content from specific page locations

•  Seamless workarounds to a number of known issues/limitations in the Nuance engine

• Only versions of Nuance which meet our high quality standards for accuracy and stability are included saving our customers and partners valuable testing time

• Access to a rich set of functionality available in our Conversion, Publishing & Recognition products modules through an integrated interface

• Training, Support and Software for ISV Partners

Jeff Brand
Senior Technical Account Manager
Adlib Software

In this post, I’ll discuss how Nintex Workflow can be used with PDF for SharePoint to create workflows that include converting documents to PDF. This is what the finished workflow looks like with Nintex (see right). 

Workflows are used implement these types of business processes within SharePoint. SharePoint comes with a few workflows out of the box, but usually companies need to make their own to suit their particular business requirements. 

There are several products that can be used to create workflows in SharePoint. Some of the most popular workflow building products are:

• K2 blackpoint
• Microsoft SharePoint Designer (SPD)
• Nintex Workflow 2007

I am a fan of Nintex because it is easy to use, it provides an intuitive, graphical web browser interface that allows you to build complex workflows quickly and easily. Within minutes of installing it I was able to create a simple approve and publish workflow that included these steps:

• Request approval of the selected document
• If approved, set Document Status metadata column to TRUE and convert the document using PDF for SharePoint
• If declined, send a notification to the author

How it was done

The integration between Adlib and Nintex makes it very easy to add document rendering to your workflows. You simply insert a “Start Workflow” Action into the workflow you are building in Nintex, and then configure it to invoke any of the Adlib workflows for SharePoint that are deployed on your system. A list will automatically appear within the Configure Action window in the Nintex interface. It is easier and more interesting to show how this was done, watch this 30 second video to see how PDF conversion can be added to an approval workflow using Nintex and Adlib PDF for SharePoint.

See this short YouTube video for a visual demonstration of how this is done.

Converting documents to PDF is often part of a larger business process. Two examples of where this is used are:

• Converting documents, such as SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) manuals, to PDF after being approved so they can be published for internal use
• Applying electronic signatures to approved documents

Paul Dyck
Product Manager
Adlib Software 

If you will be in Las Vegas for the SharePoint Pro Summit, March 16-19, please drop by to chat with us. Adlib Software is Booth # 415.

We will be there to talk about implementing document conversion to PDF using PDF for SharePoint.

Hope to see you in Las Vegas!

In PDF conversion solutions, the user experience is directly related to the total cost of ownership. If the conversion process is too complicated or offers too many options at the user level, the users may neglect important formatting steps. Or worse, they may fail to use the system at all, sabotaging larger objectives of converting documents to universally accessible and portable PDF format. Likewise, desktop-based PDF conversion solutions create work for IT staff in installing, training and maintaining the individual systems. For large multi-user environments, the costs of desktop solutions may also become prohibitive.

Server-based conversion solutions offer benefits to users, IT and cost considerations. Because they can be set up, wholly or in part, as background services that automatically convert documents according to pre-set business rules, they free users from concerns about standard conversions, and enable exceptional jobs to be routed to staff with more extensive formatting skills. The IT staff is relieved of desktop-related work, and the overall licensing costs may be significantly reduced.

Adlib is the leader in server-based solutions for document transformation, OCR and publishing. Its solutions integrate seamlessly into the user interfaces, such as Office applications or SharePoint, that are already familiar to the users.

The corporate requirements for PDF conversion is bound to grow as the benefits of portability and accessibility become more visible in the organization. The ease of scalability is a major factor in system selection.

Server-based conversion systems should offer a simple means to add processors to support growing volume and addition of more processing-intensive file types, such as complex or graphical files. Resource management, such as load balancing, should be a part of the underlying features of the system.

Adlib Express simplifies the addition of another server under the centralized system management to a matter of minutes. Advanced resource management options are built into the software architecture.

Scott Mackey
Director - Product Management
Adlib Software

The quality of rendering output is judged on clarity and fine detail, as well as fidelity to the original. A simple comparative test of the PDF rendering among competing solutions will usually show significant difference in the visual refinement of the pages.

True fidelity to the original is the mark of an advanced solution. Any conversion software will render a word-processed document into PDF, as long as you expect it to reformat it in terms of layout and pagination. But for a “light table match” of a highly formatted document with graphical elements, there are very few contenders in the market. Conversion of complex or graphically dense files requires multi-layered management of page design, graphics and fonts, and navigation elements.

The benefit of this level of quality production extends beyond the dependable reproduction of formatted or graphical pages needed for regulatory submissions or similarly mission-critical uses. It also opens up a world of new opportunities for use of the rendering solution, such as incorporation of digital signatures, conversion of schematics for easy portability for field crews, automated generation of picture-perfect marketing materials and signed correspondence, and flawless digital publishing.

Adlib has been recognized for both the exceptional refinement of its renderings and the “light table match” of its fidelity to the original by corporations that routinely generate complex documents and publish to exacting standards.

Scott Mackey
Director - Product Management
Adlib Software