Style (it’s like a second cousin to class)

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Fashion fades, only style remains the same. - Coco Chanel

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. - Jean Cocteau

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness. - Gustave Flaubert

And finally, my usual musical reference, containing the title for this blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWCq9PaJPQI -  (The artist formerly known as) Prince

Either you’ve got it, or you haven’t. Ask any of my colleagues who saw me dressed up for our end of year party, and they will shake their heads and tell you that I don’t. I think I have a few redeeming qualities, but style isn’t one of them. And even if you have innate style, as Flaubert says, it takes a lot of effort.

But I do recognize style (and the absence of style) when I see it. And I do like to be able to lean on those who do have a sense of style in order to make me look good. (In most cases, this is my wife – if I ever look good, you pretty much know she dressed me. And increasingly my daughter.)

But what has all this got to do with my usual topic of electronic forms?

Well, in the software world, we usually try hard to separate out the style from the content, and have different people, with different skills, focus on each. In the authoring world, this is usually implemented as a “Style Sheet” – in the HTML world this is a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). In the electronic-form world, we have used the concept of Style Sheets extensively in the design of SmartForm Composer.

Let me backtrack a little. This all started with a discussion on Linked-In about the role of Templates when creating forms – full discussion here.

Some excepts are  below. The bolding is mine.

“Usually I make (my forms) from scratch … and at times it feels as though I am inventing the universe.”

“..what can be useful and reusable, are functional blocks, such as personal identification blocks, signature blocks, etc.  Functional considerations aside, there is the visual effect…. The consequence for this is to have styles which can be applied to the functional description of the block, in order to create the final product.’

“…most forms will be custom-built; have to be custom built. Therefore, the tools to build the forms should best provide suitable building blocks.”

“99% of all businesses in the EU have fewer than 250 employees. http://bit.ly/7aIt3C For a significant number of those, the “form designer” = IT manager = marketing executive = plumber = day care provider = cook. Figuring out the optimal ways to collect information to run their business may not be something they have time or budget for (especially these days). It’s never perfect, but a simple template relevant to their field or what they want to accomplish can help an individual get up-to-speed and get the job done quickly.”

 We hear these types of comments from our customers, and our internal form developers, over and over. The summary of requirements is:

  • I need someone else (a graphic designer perhaps) to come up with a Style Sheet (or template) for my organization’s forms.
  • I need to be able to apply that style seamlessly to any form that I build, and have it just turn out right.
  • If the organizational style changes, I need to be able to change the Style Sheet, and regenerate the forms. Simple. No fuss.
  • In order to be productive, I also need to easily be able to create a re-usable building block that I can drop into any form.
  • But… When I drop a block into a form, it needs to adopt the style of that form, rather than imposing its own style.
  • The whole thing must be easy to use.
This is EXACTLY what we’ve built into SmartForm Composer.
Here’s a re-usable address block, containing the usual couple of address lines, City, State and Zipcode. (This is for USA style addresses, but the same applies to any other style of address, or any other type of re-usable block.)

An address block placed into a form

Exactly the same address block, placed into a form with a different style, will adopt the style of the form it’s dropped into, as shown below.

The same block in a form with a different style

Note that not only has the background colour of the block changed to match the form, but also the Address fields in the form have been resized automatically to fit a form with section headings presented in a side bar, leaving less space for the Address lines.

Even if the device that you are using is not your usual desktop, such as (surprise!!) a tablet, you want your custom block to match the styling of the particular device. The screenshot below shows the exact same address block rendered in the same form, but this time styled for an iPad.

The same address block rendered on an iPad

It’s also important to have features that accommodate the needs of developers who have a large portfolio of forms they need to manage and maintain. For example, if I do have a nicely re-usable Address block, how many forms will be affected if I decide to make a change to that block. Composer has a very useful feature known as “Impact Analysis” that allows you to answer exactly this question.

Impact Analysis

The important part of all of this is:

The form designer should be completely isolated from and independent of the style of the form. The form designer should be able to concentrate purely on the “data collection” experience and business rules. The styling of the form should just “happen”, based on the template and style sheets that they choose.

 Note: The depiction of a cigarette in Coco’s photo does not in any way endorse smoking. In fact, it’s not a cigarette, it’s a pencil. Really!

Learn more about using Avoka SmartForm Factory to create and publish your own online forms.

Time Running Out – JetForms Free Upgrade Expires Soon

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If you’re a Jetforms/Central Output user with current maintenance & support for these products, then you can take advantage of a special offer from Avoka and Adobe. If you sign a migration agreement before 30 November 2011 you can access a free upgrade to Adobe LiveCycle Output.

It’s that simple.

If you don’t sign up this week, you lose the free upgrade. There is no downside to signing up, and no obligation.

To find out more about the benefits of migrating to LiveCycle Output, click through to the finer details here. And from there you can quickly pass us your information to start the process. Hurry! Only a short time before the offer ends… and we’ll take care of the paperwork for you.

Contact us now!

You can also read on to learn more about how an Australian Healthcare Insurer found multiple benefits in their upgrade to LiveCycle Output…

The requirement put upon organisations dealing with mass communications on a daily basis – 100s of documents personalized to different customers’ needs – is pretty tremendous. And the expectation of the customer is not getting any simpler. With customer needs being answered by on-demand, personalized, interactive services through multiple channels (from self-service when they’re buying their groceries, online self-service – personal banking, shopping etc, to interactive online help tools, social media, and mobile apps) it is no wonder there is more pressure than ever to understand what the customer wants and get it to them in the most efficient way possible.

And, talking in terms of document generation this kind of requirement is just as relevant. A prospect will not take a second look at a generic mail piece that doesn’t tailor to their needs or interests. Nor will a customer be too pleased with a document covering their new car insurance that specs the previous car they owned.

So, we’re talking about two imperatives for excellent customer service:

  1. Understand what the customer wants and needs
  2. Give it to them without any impediments

Both of these imperatives seem pretty straightforward but the second part can seem daunting and you may see dollar signs flashing before your eyes. For example, you have to facilitate production of detailed or complex information to your customers in a timely fashion, but you have to do the same for hundreds of your customers in the same timeframe and each customer’s needs and specs differ in sometimes the minutest of details. And how often do you need to do this? How can you service each of those customers and grow their business with you whilst using an efficient process that doesn’t require time and precious budget.

This was the case for the fifth largest private healthcare insurer, nib. They have over 800,000 customers and are known for their innovative and progressive business practices which anticipate the evolving needs of their customers and adapt quickly to legislative changes affecting their business. Embracing the multi-channel experience the company offers mobile claiming services and serves their customers in retail centres and online. Yet, for every interaction, whether an information request, policy purchase or claim, the healthcare insurer must follow up with documented correspondence. This kind of service is not only necessary as a reputable provider of health insurance, but also completely compliant with legal requirements.

Aligning correspondence capabilities with customers’ requirements was essential for nib and as such their previous solution using Jetforms/Central Output allowed them to produce a streamlined, standardized document generation process. However, not only is this product due to be retired, but nib were looking to move forward and find a product that would integrate smoothly with existing back-end systems and allow them to maintain smooth-running document generation whilst also offering the prospect for a more dynamic, flexible solution to suit the evolvement of their customers’ needs.

“We’ve always had a pretty efficient system for generating standard documents to send to customers,” says Brendan Mills, group IT manager at nib. “We really wanted to take those communications to the next level and incorporate more dynamic, engaging, and richer elements to our correspondence without sacrificing quality or efficiency. With Adobe LiveCycle Output ES2, we have the option of leveraging Adobe Postscript 3 in-office printing or PDF files to deliver batch printing jobs to our printing partners for fulfillment. We can process around 3,000 letters per day in just a few files, which accelerates print production and helps get important documents and letters to customers faster.”

And of course, migration from Jetforms to LiveCycle Output had to be with minimal disruption to the scheduled document generation for nib – but this was not a concern – within 12 weeks newly trained nib staff were able to convert more than 90% of nib’s 540 existing forms. The rest were migrated by Avoka specialists shortly afterwards.

With the new platform on LiveCycle, nib can send out automated, detailed, statements to each of their hundreds of thousands of policyholders – letters can be printed where required, plus they can enhance direct interactions with customers by customizing communications ad hoc with ease. All in all, they can deliver an engaging customer experience even through mass document generation, enabling their valued customers to receive interactive content how and when they want it.

Interested in achieving similar benefits for your business? A Jetforms user already? Then hurry and take advantage of the special offer upgrade by 30 November 2011 – all we need is your details, under no obligation, and we can start the ball rolling for you. Click through to the offer page here or get in touch with us directly.

Your iPad as a business productivity tool

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So, you’ve bought an iPad and you’re wondering how you can use it for business. I’ve had mine for about 12 months – it started off as a toy, but now it has now become an indispensable tool. Let me tell you how I’m using it. With the exception of Notes Plus for handwritten notes and iThoughts HD for mind maps, I don’t use the iPad as a tool for content creation (documents, spreadsheets, presentations), I use it for content consumption.

Email and Calendar
Chances are you’ve already got a SmartPhone. If not, then the iPad is a lighter and faster way to access emails and calendar than your laptop. But if you do have an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. you probably won’t get too much extra value from the iPad here.

However, it is easier to type a lengthy email on an iPad (especially with a wireless keyboard) and it’s definitely easier to view attachments like documents and spreadsheets. But this isn’t the killer app for iPad.

NotesPlus for Handwritten Notes 

For me, the killer app on my iPad is Notes Plus (http://notesplusapp.com/ costs $5.49). Combined with a good quality stylus, it has allowed me to dispense with a paper note pad. There are lots of note taking apps for the iPad like Evernote. But they are based on typing. I personally find typing in a meeting to be a barrier to communication. I find myself thinking about spelling rather than listening. I’ve  been writing for over 30 years, I know how to do it, I don’t have to think about it – I can focus on the conversation that’s happening whilst taking notes. N+ allows me to write in an electronic format, draw, scribble, email my notes, organise my notes in folders and workbooks, sync with Dropbox (see Dropbox note later).

N+ doesn’t try to recognize my handwriting…I don’t want it to. If it did I’d turn that feature off or uninstall the app. I’d be back to watching my spelling. N+ allows me to write in my handwriting with all my glorious spelling mistakes. You need to read the instructions to use the software effectively. But it’s the best $5 I’ve spent on technology…ever.
The iPad is a great way to read documents, but getting files onto it through iTunes is very cumbersome. I have an iPad 1 and the advice is not to upgrade to iOS5 so no iCloud for now. Dropbox is my iCloud. Dropbox is cloud file storage, free for 2GB, 50GB = $10/mth.

I’ve installed Dropbox on my laptop (it shows up as a standard folder called My Dropbox, under My Documents), on my iPad and on my Android phone (rarely used). you can create folders and sub folders as normal. I just copy files from my Laptop to the Dropbox folder and then I can view them on my iPad when I’m connected.

Great  for reading those white papers, reports, etc that you never get around to. I also copy a select set of presentations to Dropbox. Very handy if you’re having a coffee meeting with someone and know that a picture will help articulate a point…instead of getting the laptop out with it’s bulk and delays, grab your iPad and show that slide (see Keynote for presentations below)

Power Tip: I spend a lot of time on planes with no connectivity. If you plan ahead, you can open Dropbox on your iPad and ‘favorite’ a bunch of files by opening the file and clicking the Star button. This copies the file from the Dropbox server to your iPads local storage so it’s accessible online or offline. 

Keynote for Presentations 
Th iPhone and iPad have changed how we think about buying software. We think it should cost nothing…or maybe $1.99. It’s funny, I’ve seen people reject a purchase of a $3.99 productivity app over a conversation whilst they consumed a $3.50 cup of coffee. But Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint…they’d love me for saying that) is worth the $10.49.

I don’t ever anticipate creating a slide show in keynote on the iPad. Bit it’s great for walking through a presentation I’ve created in PowerPoint on my PC (or Keynote on the Mac I expect). Combine it with a VGA output connector and you can present on the device without a Windows machine or MS PowerPoint in sight.

Power Tip: If, like me, you create a lot of PowerPoint presentations, you probably use SmartArt. Keynote doesn’t deal with SmartArt well. So my approach is:

  1. Create your presentation for PC complete with SmartArt
  2. Save a version of the PPT file specifically for use on an iPad
  3. In the iPad version select each SmartArt, Cut, Paste Special as an image such as PNG. Obviously you will loose any ‘builds’ on the SmartArt, but I personally don’t use builds that much these days. So no big loss.

 

iThoughts HD for Mind Mapping (get your ideas down digitally) 
The iPad can be a great tool for getting ideas out of your head and down somewhere more permanent. If you’re like me and love a good mind map, then iThoughts HD is gold. Not only is it a rich and easily usable mind mapping product ($10.49), it allows you to export through email to your favorite PC mind mapping product link Mind Manager or the simply brilliant FREE Xmind for PC. IThoughts will also export your mind map out as a PDF, spreadsheet or Word Document

 

iAnnotate to mark up your PDF Documents 
If you need a tool to highlight, markup, annotate PDF documents, then iAnnotate is well worth the $10.49 (remember, that’s about 4 cups of coffee). I hurt my back last year and had 200 pages of PDF contracts to review. Sitting at a desk wasn’t an option. I lay on my back with PDF contracts courtesy of Dropbox and used iAnnotate PDF to review the documents, marking-up questions and concerns.

Wunderlist as a simple Task List that works on iPad, SmartPhone and PC  

After playing with a stack of To Do, Task Lit type apps I’ve finally settled on Wunderlist for 4 reasons

  1. It’s easy to use
  2. It’s available for iPad, Android and PC and all lists are synch’d to a central server. So no matter which device I’m using I can create a task and it will show up on all the devices.
  3. The user interface is clean and simple
  4. It’s FREE (so I can still afford that cup of coffee)

 

Kindle for reading books on the iPad 
Have you downloaded and read a book on the iPad yet? If not, what are you waiting for. Not only is it convenient and comfortable, but the ability to markup your book (not so useful for a novel, but great for business books) is hugely beneficial. I’m currently reading Bank 2.0 by Brett King – lots of great material for future presentations and I can easily highlight passages and ideas. Whenever I find myself with some spare time like on a plane, I can grab the iPad and keep reading.

 

Non business…

Buzz Player for video watching 

If you have kids Ths is essential…Buzz Player allows you to play virtually any video file format on the iPd. So rip your DVDs to your PC or Mac and then upload them to the Buzz Player app through iTunes (this is done through the App tab in iTunes when your iPad is connected). Useful if you want to watch a movie yourself when traveling ($5.49 – interestingly its $2.99 for iPhone…bigger screen bigger price)

 

Epicurious for recipe inspiration 
I like cooking. It’s one way that I unwind. But I’m best working from a recipe. Epicurious is great – you can look for inspiration, or enter specific ingredients you have and see what matches. Te user reviews are very helpfu in deciding if something is worth cooking or if it needs longer in the oven than stated etc. Makes me wonder if I’ll ever buy another cook book. FREE

 

 

Imdb
What’s the actor been in? What’s that actresses name? If your like me you often have the iPad close at hand whilst chilling on the lounge watching tv. IMDB can make your brain very lazy. Why remember stuff…it knows everything about movies and tv you could want to know. It’s gotten to the point where my wife and I try to NOT use it to remember information about movies and actors as a challenge.

FriendCaster/myPad
Haven’t decided which one of these is the best for Facebook. But both quite good. I think the native Facebook app leave s lot to be desired. Maybe it’ll improve.

The Future is Digital

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Last week at a financial analyst briefing in New York Adobe announced that they are “doubling down” their focus on the Digital Marketing sector. With the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite – powered by Omniture and Web Experience Management solution – powered by Day CQ, Adobe have established market leadership in this sector and it makes a huge amount of sense to leverage this strategic advantage and capitalize on their leadership in this fast growing sector.

At Avoka we focus on helping organisations transact online with their customers, partners or employees – we refer to these types of system as Digital Self-Service. Typically these solutions sit behind and support the online marketing initiatives – so we see a bright future with Adobe “doubling down” on Digital Marketing that will inevitably lead to a substantial increase in online self-service.

Most of our customers sell products or services that don’t easily fit in a “shopping cart” ecommerce model. These customers require a medium to complex data capture form/app (or package of forms) for their customers to apply for the particular product/service. In addition they require a full range of application management services to enable business/operational staff to deploy and manage these solutions – as often they may have hundreds or in some cases thousands of these small apps that need to be deployed. They also require agile business processes behind the scenes to streamline their workflow and integrate with their backend systems.  Examples of these more complex business transactions include:

  • Life insurance applications
  • Home loan applications
  • Hospital admissions forms
  • Government grant submissions
  • Tax and other regulatory forms
  • Insurance claims
  • University enrolments
  • Selling complex Telecommunications products
  • And many others

In the past few years – mainly influenced by Apples introduction of the iPad & iPhone – we’ve experienced dramatic changes to the computing landscape.  Today customers demand that we implement solutions that can run across mobile devices as well as conventional desktop devices. This year at Avoka we invested heavily in our SmartForm Factory solution to support HTML & HTML5 based e-forms in addition to the Adobe PDF Forms that we have worked with for several years.

During this time we’ve also invested to integrate SmartForm Factory with Adobe’s Digital Marketing solutions. SmartForm Factory still continues to leverage modules of Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Platform (LiveCycle ES) such as Digital Signatures, Forms and Output – as required.

This allows us to offer a sophisticated Digital Self-Service enablement solution that can bring complex paper transactions into the digital age. SmartForm Factory uniquely meets today’s challenges of constrained IT resources, the move to mobile devices, and the need to deliver engaging user experiences that drive business results.

At Avoka we think that Doubling down on Digital Marketing leads to a bright future for all things Digital!

Phil Copeland

CEO – Avoka

 

PS – There was some wildly inaccurate reporting last week about the demise of Flash on mobile devices.

What Adobe announced was

  1. We are focusing work around the Flash Platform on:
    • Mobile Applications created with Adobe AIR.
    • Expressive content (particularly games and video) in the browser on the desktop via the Flash Player.
  2. We are no longer going to be actively developing the Flash Player for Mobile Browsers.
  3. We are further increasing the amount of resources (both money and engineer) toward HTML5 tools, solutions and browsers.

Point #1 is important. If you need to build a sophisticated cross-device app – Adobe AIR will continue to be enhanced to support that capability.

Mike Chambers has put together a very good blog post that’s worth a read. Clarifications on Flash Player for Mobile Browsers, the Flash Platform, and the Future of Flash

A tribute to Steve Jobs, a dash of my favourite Steve video clip, and a twist of e-Forms

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Steve Jobs really was an exceptional individual. I think most people would agree that he has had more influence over the software industry than any other single person. And it is very difficult to imagine how anyone else will be able to pull off anything like what he has achieved ever again.

I think one of the great things about Steve (and I think in a strange way we all feel like we knew him personally enough to call him by his first name) is that he really cared about user experience. UX is something very close to my heart. I took my earliest education about user experience from developing for the Mac. The very first  book in the set of technical reference material for the Mac was about the Machintosh user experience. What a concept: user experience comes first; all those technical details are secondary. Wow! The user-interface principles I learned from that book are timeless, and as relevant today as they were then. Steve loved beautiful things, he had a brilliant sense of design, and ultimately he had tremendous style! And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way.

That last line was shameless plagiarism, taken from my favourite clip of Steve’s – Steve Jobs on good taste! I’m pointing you to this clip not because it shows Steve  dissing one of his competitors, but because it shows how passionate he really was about user experience. And because I find it hilarious.

The reality is that Steve has turned the world of user interaction on its head not just once (which would be an achievement for any one person) but at least four times. I’m not going to ramble on about the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and the copy-cats that his innovation has inspired – but the bottom line is that the world became a different place once Steve was finished with it.

So what’s the twist?

Well, the twist is that for the area of the IT industry I work in (and it’s very likely you do too, if you’re reading this blog) is that the world of electronic forms is a different place now to what it was a few short years ago.

Your customers want to – actually, they insist on – interacting with electronic forms on their smart phones and tablets just like they are able to on their desktop computers. And they want those forms to behave using a touch-oriented user experience, and be stylistically consistent with the device that they are using.

Users demand a better user experience

Users demand a better user experience

And this is a huge problem for you. Because you have to learn a whole lot of new technologies and paradigms, and start building your electronic forms in several different ways, to suit the varying devices out there. Which is a massive investment in learning, form development, and testing. It’s not as if form development was so easy in the first place, now you’re going to have to learn how to do it in multiple ways for different devices.

Or do you?

Avoka has been hard at work on the new version of SmartForm Factory, which we announced at  Adobe MAX in October 2011. The major new feature of SmartForm Factory V3 is the ability to design a form once, and then automatically “render” it appropriately for whatever device the customer is using – whether that be a desktop computer (with or without Adobe Reader installed), a iPad or Android tablet, or an iPhone or other smart phone.

We’ve done all the hard work,  so that you don’t have to. SmartForm Factory allows you to design your forms once, and have them run perfectly on all these types of devices.

Same form design, different styles for different devices

Same form design, different styles for different devices

 

We’re very excited about electronic forms becoming first class citizens in this new world that Steve has created for us. Please visit the SmartForm Factory page on our web site for more details, and check out the data sheet or the white paper on “Enabling Digital Self-Service”. Alternately, please contact us for more information.

Thank you Steve – you will always be an inspiration.