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Top companies depend on Workgroups 2010 to manage their project workflows and to keep them ahead of the competition.
Project & Workflow Management
Automate your schedules, processes, and paperwork to get more done with less overhead and waste. The Virtual Ticket module for Workgroups 2010 R2 centralizes and manages projects and workflows for you and your staff. Gain an edge by tailoring your system with your own unique forms (including project briefs, job tickets, and change orders) and workflows with easy-to-use form design and business rule configuration tools. While the rest of the competition continues to use Excel to track their jobs, tickets, schedules, and work, you and your team will be up and running with real workflow automation that helps everyone get more done with less overhead and waste. View more benefits...
Document Review & Approval
Bring your clients and staff together on the same page and same schedule. Whether your review process is simple or complex, the Approval Manager module for Workgroups 2010 R2 can keep your document reviews organized, centralized, and on schedule. Clients can use simple proofing tools to review documents and your staff can use the built-in workflow engine to track proofs and alert both reviews and staff of deadlines. View More Benefits...
Document Storage Management
Automatically organize and find your files, emails, and scanned documents. Rely on the automated tools in the Digital Storage Manager module of Workgroups 2010 R2 to seamlessly organize all your team's documents as they work. Powerful search capabilities mean that staff can easily find prior artwork, customer job file attachments, or even scanned paperwork. Even provide clients and customers with secure and restricted access to their job files over the internet. Finally put an end to recreating artwork, wasting time hunting for files across your team's desktops and network, and losing documents. View More Benefits...
Financial Productivity Management
Introduce sound financial management to your business. The Job Manager module of Workgroups 2010 R2 provides easy-to-use financial tools for your staff. Simplify and improve the quality of estimating, costing, and billing or charge-back of jobs. Users have convenient timesheets or use automatic time tracking to record their work and capture customer alterations. Managers can track the productivity of individuals or entire workgroups and tune their operations. Built-in integration with back-office accounting solutions provides a seamless experience and stops customer alteration charges, cost overruns, and lost billing. View More Benefits...
Core Benefits of the Workgroups 2010 R2 Product Suite
Included With All Modules
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Leverage a Vibrant User, Developer, and Administrator Community
Jump-start your implementation by installing tickets, reports, sample code snippets, and complete solutions directly from the Resource Exchange at the new MetaCommunications Developer Center. Participate in the forums to learn about and discuss Workgroups. A searchable knowledge base and an active blog maintained by MetaCommunications add to the growing collection of resources for Workgroups 2010 R2 developers, customers, and users.
Rich Desktop Integration
Workgroups 2010 R2 includes desktop plug-ins for several prominent desktop software packages, enabling users to automate tasks and access information directly from the native applications they work in throughout the day. The new AutoCAD Plug-in is the latest addition to a collection that includes plug-ins for Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and the Mac OS X Finder.
Install Locally, or Subscribe to Hosted Services in Our Cloud
The new Workgroups 2010 R2 suite is now available for installation on-site or hosted over the internet. Our new hosted services are quick to implement: no server software, setup or hardware is required to get up and running. Hosted services are offered on a subscription basis with affordable payment options for those interested in working from the cloud and reducing their IT overhead.
Publishing Workflow Solution
The new Workgroups 2010 R2 suite provides built-in publishing workflow support for InCopy and InDesign CS4, allowing content creators and stakeholders to work in the tools they already know while leveraging the renowned workflow management and project management capabilities of Workgroups 2010 R2 to improve team efficiency and collaboration. A solid fit for many publishing workflows, find out more about how you can benefit with the Workgroups 2010 R2 Publishing Workflow Solution.
Project and Workflow Management
Virtual Ticket Module for Workgroups 2010 R2
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Connect People, Projects, and Workflow
Virtual Ticket for Workgroups 2010 R2 is the only solution available today that combines powerful project and workflow tools into one simple to use solution. With this module you'll bring together all the components of your work in a centralized location. Centralize project briefs, job tickets, customer info, all the associated document files, and more at one location and use advanced workflow tools to help you manage and automate your processes.
Automate Your Scheduling
Schedule and traffic your jobs in real-time using the new Advanced Workflow & Scheduling (AWS) Solution Library. This is the industry's most powerful, yet simple to use scheduling system. AWS includes tools for trafficking or scheduling staff to manage jobs interactively. Built-in To-Do Lists, Gantt Charts, Production Schedule and Resource Allocation Reports make managing jobs or projects clear and efficient.
Speed Your Workflow
Agility is the name of the game in any industry. The ability to quickly adapt to changes in projects, jobs, technologies, and new products and services is critical to a successful organization. Workgroups 2010 R2 provides the tools your organization needs to create an electronic workflow that is instantly updated and accessible by all users on demand. With Workgroups, creative and production information can change on a dime, and workflows can deviate without interrupting your schedule or resulting in chaos. That saves time, eliminates bottlenecks, and keeps your teams on track.
Get Everyone on the Same Page
Paper job tickets and other paper-based materials are obstacles to delivering high-quality products and services under tight deadlines. Worse still is the fact that paper documents can only be in one place at a time. With Workgroups 2010 R2 you can convert your paper-based system into custom electronic forms that facilitate an organized and efficient workflow within your team, workgroup, and organization. With customizable electronic forms, information is always available and up-to-date for all members of your team.
Keep All Your Documents Organized in One Place
Bring document files into your workflow processes. It's only natural in today's digital workgroups that files are every bit as important as the project information surrounding them. Now you can track all your files, emails, and even scanned documents with drag-and-drop simplicity. Workgroups 2010 R2 will even move your files into the correct file server and directory – all without navigating the file system. Now you have one place to find everything!
Your Workflow, Your Way
Since there isn’t just one way to do something, we made Workgroups 2010 R2 an adaptable, dynamic solution that can be tailored to your unique environment. With simple-to-use tools, Workgroups 2010 R2 can be configured to include your own custom forms, workflows, and functionality. Administrators can meet their specific needs by designing their own solutions or by using and modifying pre-built Solution Libraries to get up and running quickly.
Unlike a database development program, you won't have to start from scratch to get powerful functionality. Workgroups 2010 R2 works out of the box and has built-in tools for managing projects and workflows. No other solution integrates into your environment more completely than Workgroups 2010 R2.
Leverage Pre-Built Forms & Workflow Solutions
Workgroups 2010 R2 now includes built-in access to a Solution Exchange that allows you to browse, download, and share pre-built solutions designed to enhance and extend the core functionality of the Workgroups 2010 R2 suite without imposing unneeded features on your team or organization. The addition of Solution Library technology to Workgroups provides organizations with the unique ability to leverage core application features and enhance and extend them without custom programming. No other solution offers this ability.
Speed Creative & Production Tasks
Get more done in less time by automating repetitive creative and production tasks. One of Workgroups 2010 R2’s greatest strengths is its ability to help creative and production users do their jobs better and faster with less effort. Automation plug-ins for popular desktop applications like AutoCAD, InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and more allow your users to drive processes in the third party applications they work with throughout the day.
Powerful Custom Reporting
Workgroups 2010 R2 provides access to predefined reports through an ever-growing collection at the MetaCommunications Developer Center Resource Exchange. Predefined and custom reports can include graphs, charts and virtually any level of detail. Reports may be generated as PDF or Excel documents. Custom reports give you the flexibility to tailor your information to your requirements.
Document Review and Approval
Approval Manager Module for Workgroups 2010 R2
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Speed, Organize, and Automate Proof Approvals
It's all about workflow. Master the inherent difficulty of managing, tracking, and scheduling any approval process within and across creative, production, legal, executive, and other environments.
Whether you work with multiple approval processes with simple workflows or vastly more complex approval processes consisting of numerous reviewers, stages, and rounds, the Approval Manager module for Workgroups 2010 R2 is designed to apply powerful automation and organizational tools to the problems associated with managing and facilitating the completion of approval processes. With simplified management and reviewer tools, integrated support for industry standard proofing technologies, and automated email notifications, you never have to miss another deadline again.
Meet Deadlines & Forecast Workloads
One of the biggest challenges facing teams and workgroups is the reliable scheduling of document review and approval workflows. Since missed approval deadlines often have a trickle-down effect and can impact entire projects, Workgroups 2010 R2 is designed to give control back to you. With easy to use scheduling tools, you can reliably schedule your document review and approval processes within your larger workflows, ensuring that you are always running at maximum efficiency and you aren't paying for idle time while processes and people wait for approval.
Organize Your Workflow
Stagnant reviews and document approvals lead to real problems in any business. From idle staff to stalled creative processes or worse, haphazardly implemented approval and review processes can be a significant source of lost revenue due to missed deadlines, constantly slipping schedules, and rework. With Workgroups 2010 R2, you can take control of your approval and review processes, schedule with confidence, and retain more revenue for your bottom line.
Use Multiple Proofing Technologies Simultaneously
With Workgroups 2010 R2 you aren't locked into a single proofing technology. You decide based upon present or future needs whether to use Spark!™, the all new optional plug-in proofer for PDF* and image files, or work with other supported applications such as Acrobat, Word, Dalim Dialogue, or native viewers for CAD, video, text documents, and other file types. Workgroups supports these technologies simultaneously, so you can choose the appropriate proofer for a particular workflow or customer.
*PDFs rendered using technology licensed from Foxit.Tighten Your Relationship with Your Customers and Colleagues by Integrating Them Into Your Workflow
Including your customers and colleagues into an approval process goes beyond overnighting a hard-copy proof or emailing a file for them to review. With Workgroups 2010 R2, you can provide your customers with their own unique dashboard they use to see at a glance all their outstanding proofs and complete their reviews, all within a branded portal.
Speed Your Document Proofing and Concepting Approval Cycles
Automate creative and document proof reviews with Workgroups 2010 R2. This ensures that active approval cycles proceed with a minimum of managerial intervention, and that the system proactively solicits the participation of reviewers at the appropriate time. The result is that approval cycles are faster, more predictable, and proceed with a minimal amount of managerial overhead, unless necessary. With automated approval cycles, you turn your work around faster, with higher quality, and with a dramatically improved ability to capture more revenue from efficient workflows.
Reduce Mistakes and Improve Quality & Process Control
Introduce traceable accountability to any approval process with Workgroups 2010 R2. With a robust quality assurance and billing audit trail built right in, you'll be able to see at a glance the entire story of any given approval process. When the question arises asking why something has changed, you'll have the resources at hand to explain. When preparing an invoice, you can rely on an up-to-date archive of the proof's evolution instead of trying to remember what was done on the project weeks after the fact.
Capture More Billing
Documenting the changes and iterations that a project goes through, as well as the persons responsible for those changes, is an essential part of accurate billing. All too often nobody remembers why a project was changed, for what reason, or who requested it. This frequently results in lost revenue. With Workgroups 2010 R2, an accurate and permanent record is automatically kept of every version of a proof, allowing you to step back through all the iterations of a file and see what was changed, when, and why.
Document Storage Management
Digital Storage Manager Module for Workgroups 2010 R2
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Find, Share, and Store Files, Anywhere
Digital Storage Manager for Workgroups 2010 R2 is a powerful storage management solution specially designed for creative, publishing and prepress workgroups.
Workgroups generate thousands of digital document files during the creative and production process. As the number of files grows, so too do the challenges faced by the professionals who need them. With Workgroups 2010 R2 you have the tools and capabilities to overcome these challenges. Take control of your digital workflows so that you can work more efficiently and effectively.
Visually Accessible Without Native Applications
Now users outside of the creative or production workflow can have access to file previews without the native applications, even if the file is offline or unavailable to them through the file system. This powerful part of Workgroups 2010 R2 puts an end to waiting and miscommunication: customer service personnel at the home office and salespeople on the road can instantly find and see documents and document details without waiting for someone in production to find the right file and confirm that it is the latest version.
Speed Creative and Production Tasks
One of the greatest strengths of Workgroups 2010 R2 is its ability to help creative and production users do their jobs better and faster – and without getting in the way of people. With Plug-in integration with popular desktop applications, like the Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD, users can automate tasks and access information directly from their native application.
Automatically Searchable
Automate the entire process of capturing and applying metadata with the powerful InterSync™ indexing technology. Much like Google indexes web servers to provide useful search results, InterSync performs a similar function for your file server. The process is effortless to users and is performed in real time, ensuring that the search engine is always up to date with the latest work of your users. Once InterSync begins to watch over your file server, users can search for files based on file metadata, text content, or even by the information for the jobs the files are associated with.
Stop Recreating Your Work
Reuse, don't redo your work. Powerful search tools enable users to find files across all the workgroup's storage resources - including multiple file servers, near-line storage, and offline media. Users can quickly find and retrieve files based on any file and custom or associated metadata.
Leverage Your Creative Repository
Imagine having instant access to visual previews of files related to a customer, a brand, or a library. With such access at hand, coming up with new concepts and ideas is much easier. As Workgroups 2010 R2 tracks your files, it automatically builds a searchable repository of information that you can rely on to create and innovate for your company.
Manage by Project or Job
Workgroups 2010 R2 keeps track of which files belong to which job or project. Because of this, you perform archive, copy, move, and retrieve operations at the job level with the confidence that all related files and folders are automatically included. Stop wasting time figuring out which files belong to which job, and instead focus on performing your work.
Share Files Outside Your Workgroup
Open a window to your production files for external freelancers, marketing departments, customers, or vendors. Access is secure from any location with an internet connection. At last you can provide a simple way for stakeholders outside your workgroups to access the files they need
Simple Archive & Retrieval Workflow
Powerful archiving capabilities promote efficient use of available storage resources and provide for the automatic creation of disaster recovery (backup) media. Easy-to-use helper applications and workflows for centralized and distributed archiving make archiving files incredibly easy, thereby promoting best practices and efficient use of storage space amongst your users. Retrieving files from offline media is fully supported as well. Use comprehensive workflows and helper applications to make retrieving files, even from offline media, simple and efficient.
Financial Productivity Management
Job Manager Module for Workgroups 2010 R2
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Improve Efficiency, Capture Revenue, and Put More on the Bottom Line
Build your business or workgroup with solid financial management. The Workgroups 2010 R2 Job Manager module’s powerful financial management tools enable creative and production workgroups to accurately create estimates and quotes, monitor job costs, quickly generate on-demand reporting and invoices, and share information with industry-leading accounting systems.
Quickly Create Estimates & Proposals
A simple interface for quickly creating cost estimates, billing quotes or proposals. Estimates and proposals are based upon predefined cost and price lists, making the process easy and repeatable. Estimate templates may be duplicated to speed creation of standard job types.
Spend Less Time Processing Orders
Job management should not be a job in itself, but staying on top of a fast-paced workgroup is no trivial task. Use the power and flexibility of Workgroups to take the effort out of job management and spend less time processing orders.
Collect Time, Materials and Expenses
Track all your costs and expenses using built-in data collection windows. Users can use start and stop timers or simply add their time to a job via an easy-to-learn and non-intrusive interface.
Capture More Billing
Are you losing revenue because you don't have a record of customer alterations or the ability to capture and understand all of the costs associated with each project? With Workgroups 2010 R2, you can capture the details about actual work performed, expenses incurred, and costs associated with every step of the production process. Stop leaving money on the table and let Workgroups 2010 R2 help you accurately bill for all work performed.
Automate Invoicing
Save time and capture revenue by creating accurate and detailed partial or complete invoices and optional automatic time and materials billing for all your projects.
Track, Measure, and Tune
Integrated data collection tools allow workgroups to unobtrusively record their daily activities and expenses. Easy-to-understand, common-sense reporting lets managers quickly measure productivity and barriers to efficiency, allowing them to make informed decisions on how to improve business processes and reduce expenses.
Powerful, Yet Easy to Use
Capability does not have to equal complexity. With a user interface that's both intuitive and elegant, Workgroups 2010 R2 is able to provide powerful functionality in an interface designed to support task-oriented user interaction. Users find working with the Job Manager module simple and efficient: a design quality that is the hallmark of the MetaCommunications Workgroups 2010 R2 suite.
Fits Your Environment and Workflow
It's all about supporting the way you work best and adapting to your environment. Administrative users have access to a special setup and configuration area for defining tasks, costs, prices, users, permissions, and more. The goal is to support the way you and your team works, and not to impose a rigid and alien workflow on your group.
Integrate with Industry Standard Back Office Accounting Solutions
Whether you already have an accounting system in place or plan to use one of the dozens of industry standard back office accounting packages available on the market, the Job Manager module for Workgroups 2010 R2 is engineered to provide a seamless interface to the accounting software of your choice. Let Job Manager handle the demanding responsibility of your production accounting while you leverage the functionality of the accounting software that best meets your needs.
Understand Your Expenses with Powerful Reporting & Analysis
Use your choice of many predefined reports, an ad hoc query tool, and the ability to import reports to help you understand your expenses. Predefined and custom reports can include comprehensive productivity analysis, workflow analysis, profitability, comparative reports, and more. Custom reports give you the flexibility to tailor your information to your requirements.