New document/tab building software needed

[ReproElectroProspero]

We recently switched away from being a Xerox shop with FreeFlow RIP towards being a Ricoh shop with Fiery RIP, and as such need to migrate away from using Freeflow MakeReady as our document building software.
We had thousands of books built and saved as RDO files, though the vast majority were just books with multiple paper stocks and programmed exception pages.

We tried using RSA ReadyPrint but their promise of RDO conversion leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't convert tabs correctly, so any document with tabs needs to be rebuilt manually, negating any benefit of the conversion software for us.

We then looked into Fiery JobMaster, which worked okay during the demo, but they want $2,000 a year minimum. And the biggest annoyance to me is that it seems tied to each computer, and not the RIP. So my operators have to go stand at the rip to use it, unless I buy additional licenses so they can use it at their desks with their remote CommandWorkstation instance.

I'm curious what other options exist that I should be looking into. The vast majority of our books can just be simple PDFs, all we're really doing is adding tabs and colored exception pages. I just want to make it easier on my operators so they don't have to manually program exception pages every time they send a job to the rip. We're currently using MakeReady to build our books/tabs...then exporting to a PDF and programming each 9x11 exception page manually. It's a real pain in the butt. It was a lot nicer when we built them in MakeReady and used ProductionPrint to send the job to our Xerox machines with all ticketing information. Manually programming the ticketing when you have 50+ exception pages is a nightmare.

Thanks for any insight! I'm thinking I should just buy JobMaster and get them used to a new process...but before I do I want to ensure I check all my options.

 

[bcr]

Total flow prep is an option for tabs seeing as you are with Ricoh but I am deeply dissatisfied with their ongoing product support and development. I've been using it since the beginning of 2021 and I don't think they've introduced a single new feature nor solved any of the frustrating shortcomings in that time.

Probably you should talk to EFI and ask them what they can offer in terms of automating the conversion of those books. They might be able to do something with Fiery Job Flow and Job master to make it more of a hands off / server side conversion process.

In general terms I would advocate using bookmarks in pdfs to then automate conversion of bookmarks into tabs.

If you know what you are doing with PDFs and various other tools you can also do a lot to speed up the creation of and editing of bookmarks in pdfs to contain the correct text etc before sending it to any print relafed software

 

[jwheeler]

Following for the same request. We are considering switching from KM to Ricoh. We have KM controllers on all of our devices and we print probably 40-50 different titles with anywhere from 5 to 25 divider tabs per binder. Making tabs in the Konica controller is so easy. Plus, we regularly get replacement artwork for sections of the training manuals or even the entire manual updated. You can easily save and apply the tab settings to the new PDF. This doesn't seem possible in Fiery.

To @bcr 's point, Fiery's compose/job master does offer the option to automatically recognize chapters in a PDF and can automatically make tabs. However, the majority of the books we receive from customers.

 

[bcr]

Following for the same request. We are considering switching from KM to Ricoh. We have KM controllers on all of our devices and we print probably 40-50 different titles with anywhere from 5 to 25 divider tabs per binder. Making tabs in the Konica controller is so easy. Plus, we regularly get replacement artwork for sections of the training manuals or even the entire manual updated. You can easily save and apply the tab settings to the new PDF. This doesn't seem possible in Fiery.

To @bcr 's point, Fiery's compose/job master does offer the option to automatically recognize chapters in a PDF and can automatically make tabs. However, the majority of the books we receive from customers.

So I think in tf prep you can save the tab settings and carry across to an updated or different document, it's just not something I've ever done as it's not my workflow.

It's actually a major source of frustration with it for me as tf prep has presets and hot folder functionality plus v good tab automation features. But you can't combine the use of the tab automation features with a preset or a hot folder as it just saves the exact same tabs and text rather than applying the automation process.

E.g. you can build a new job from a pdf and have it convert the bookmarks into tabs. Or you can create a new job from a series of different documents and create the tabs from the document filenames... But you can't then use any presets fffff

 

[bcr]

Following for the same request. We are considering switching from KM to Ricoh. We have KM controllers on all of our devices and we print probably 40-50 different titles with anywhere from 5 to 25 divider tabs per binder. Making tabs in the Konica controller is so easy. Plus, we regularly get replacement artwork for sections of the training manuals or even the entire manual updated. You can easily save and apply the tab settings to the new PDF. This doesn't seem possible in Fiery.

To @bcr 's point, Fiery's compose/job master does offer the option to automatically recognize chapters in a PDF and can automatically make tabs. However, the majority of the books we receive from customers.

What I was getting at with contacting efi was whether they can create a workflow to convert the docs from the Xerox format and add the tabs..

I sometimes use jobmaster myself and someone from efi did once say if I had job flow it would be possible to have a complete hot folder automation based around job master converting tabs. I would then review the file in job master before printing.