The annual AIIM info@360 2011 and conference, happening right now in Washington DC, has been a fabulous event so far, with excellent attendance. My presentation,“Optimizing Document-Based Processes to Drive Operational Efficiency within SharePoint” met with great success yesterday, with more than 40 attendees at the breakout session, and the same again at the Microsoft Experience Center. In fact, several people tracked me down after the session with questions about content transformation opportunities for SharePoint.
We also did a product demo in the Microsoft Solution Theatre today. Compound document assembly which leverages the new SharePoint 2010 Document Sets functionality, combined with Adlib, was a real eye opener for some people in the audience. For example, there was excitement that the task of assembling material safety data sheets (MSDS) could be automated, thus freeing up time for knowledge workers and accelerating processes at the same time!
The ability to combine documents, and then enhance the result with new page numbers, a linked TOC, a comprehensive bookmark structure (with the headings from Word and Tabs from Excel as individual PDF Bookmarks) and the application of headers and footers across the entire PDF mean that organizations can create professional, easily navigated output personalized for their needs.
Examples include SOPs, client proposals, project reports, executive briefing books and more – all generated automatically and with consistent quality. This makes the creator happy because it is no longer a manual process. It also makes IT happy because they can deliver the functionality to their users while establishing a controlled, centralized solution to reduce their costs and to ensure compliance.
PDF/A is also getting more attention this year at AIIM. My conversations at this show are revealing more awareness of, and planning for, the use of the ISO archiving standard. There is an event being put on by the PDF/A Competency Center tonight; as a member of the center, Adlib will be participating. We hope to see lots of people there.
One more day to go!