Poll: Project Management for Prepress and/or Design

[chevalier]

I'm curious what people are doing in regard to project management for prepress. I've been looking at a lot of ERP, MIS, pick-an-acronym solutions and "pre-production" seems to be a very weak area for nearly all of the industry specific solutions that I've seen.

What are you utilizing for prepress, design and/or preproduction job/task management?

 

[chevalier]

I forgot to mention that I also reached out to a some of my friends who work for design firms. Given that now a days most of their work is web focused and have developers on staff almost all seem have an internally developed noSQL solution. A few mentioned using basecamp.

 

[roopsahu]

I recommend Slack for project management. It can be customized

 

[chevalier]

I recommend Slack for project management. It can be customized

What are you doing about asset UUID and asset relationships?

 

[jupiter5]

Check out File Maker Pro for project management. It is fully customizable.

 

[chevalier]

Check out File Maker Pro for project management. It is fully customizable.

Filemaker remains a serious consideration but the costs of hiring a developer are quite high and licensing and supporting more desktop applications isn't exactly a thrilling idea. Talk to any Filemaker developer and they'll tell you upfront that the Webdirect portion of Filemaker is less than half baked.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

What features are you looking for? Most print MIS address the entire print business. Artroom/graphics/prepress is going to be more specialised.

Stephen Marsh

 

[chevalier]

I'm looking for a Job Manager (job tickets and approval status tracking), paired with an Digital Asset Manger (product and it's subparts (inks, linked images, etc.). I've reached out to Filemaker developers and spent a serious number of hours learning Filemaker. I'm just queasy about anything that's not using a browser based client. I just see huge amounts of time and money being dumped into development of a program that will almost certainly have to completely rebuilt on the UX / UI side in a very short amount of time. Perhaps Filemaker will introduce some kind of browser plugin...

I PM'd you a basic ERD.

 

[jupiter5]

I would still go with Filemaker, even if the Web direct isn't up to par. It will catch up. That con for me doesn't out way the PROS. For me anyway. I am a Filemaker storm trooper.

 

[dundi]

we use a business management system called TQT. Its very robust and customizable and also not industry specific. You tailor it to your specific workflow. It's success is very dependent on proper input and tracking from estimating to pre-press to press to finishing to shipping to billing. For reliability all employees need to be diligent in tracking they're respective duties which may require some training. With that being said, once in place and part of your businesses culture it can be a great tool.

 

[jcage]

For my business, I prefer Comindware Team Network software. This company provides different process optimising software solutions for any businesses. I personally used their tracker software, and I have to say that it worked completely great for me! I am really satisfied with it

 

[slush11]

Check out File Maker Pro for project management. It is fully customizable.

Filemaker Onsite is complete garbage. It was designed for the apparel business. So if that's what your focus is, then great. But don't try to customize it to another industry. It lacks serious thought for the print/sign business, especially when it comes to prepress. There are two or three different spots that you can write notes to your production staff, but they are not guaranteed to get it unless they are trained to look there, and even then its iffy. Proofstuff needs major work - especially when it comes to mobile viewing. Its an all around garbage program.
There was a really good software company at SGIA 2014 in Vegas called Caldera who build an exceptional RIP software, but have also developed an amazing front line product for what you're talking about as well as a web based storefront. They actually took a picture of the shirt I was wearing and imposed an image onto it from their ipad (the same could be done with a wall or window in an office or a vehicle surface, etc... which is a phenomenal tool for sales people since clients like to see what it will look like. -Sorry, got off on a tangeant there.
Anyways. Check them out. Totally top of the line stuff. Caldera.com - RIP software for large and grand-format peripherals Although it is mainly for the wide format industry....it wouldn't surprise me if they had something for small as well.

 

[chevalier]

Filemaker Onsite is complete garbage

Filemaker is the platform and Onsite is a solution built upon the Filemaker platform. If your statement is intended to blanket all solutions built on the Filemaker platform it is uninformed and incorrect. That would be akin to saying the iPhone and iOS are crap because of one bad app. That said I did look at Onsite and it looks like a very antiquated filemaker solution.

On a completely different note... I was informed about Creative Project Management Solutions | MetaCommunications which is supposed to be highly customizable and built on a SQL + Browser (html5) foundation. It sounds like the web based filemaker alternative that I was looking for in the beginning.

 

[slush11]

Filemaker is the platform and Onsite is a solution built upon the Filemaker platform. If your statement is intended to blanket all solutions built on the Filemaker platform it is uninformed and incorrect. That would be akin to saying the iPhone and iOS are crap because of one bad app. That said I did look at Onsite and it looks like a very antiquated filemaker solution.

On a completely different note... I was informed about Creative Project Management Solutions | MetaCommunications which is supposed to be highly customizable and built on a SQL + Browser (html5) foundation. It sounds like the web based filemaker alternative that I was looking for in the beginning.

No I was not blanketing all of Filemaker at all. That's why I said Filemaker Onsite.

 

[chevalier]

I did end up buying MetaCommunications DaVinci product and I am in the process of implementation. It's been pretty stellar so far.