Spotlight session, faster approvals, fewer bottlenecks

We're very excited to be presenting our first Australian based page Proof Spotlight session and our first one, faster approvals and fewer bottlenecks. Before we really get into it, I would love to introduce the team which are all based in Australia here. Myself, I'm Mike McHugh, the country manager for Pageproof and with us online we have Brad Fairhurst who's our enterprise account executive. So I can answer all of those questions around that. And then Carl Jones, who is our principal solution consultant who's going to be doing a demo portion of today's presentation as well. So welcome guys and thanks for helping out with this. Our agenda today, we're going to do a brief overview of pageproof, what it's all about, the different file types and systems integrations that's available and and then the fun bit. Carl's going to do a live demonstration for us and then we can have Q and A as we go along. So Brad's going to look in the Q and A in the chat pod for questions that you might have. If we're going to answer them as we go along, we'll certainly let you know. Otherwise we can hold them over till the end. And we'd be more than happy to answer questions there as well if there's something specific that you'd like to to know about. But what we're really all about is trying to prevent mistakes from happening. And we always find a little bit funny of some of the mistakes that do get out into the wild that haven't been proofed or reviewed properly, such as Tina's booty Q. I'm not sure that's exactly the spelling. She was hoping for a signage. But a little bit of fun there. The certified car sales as well doesn't exactly inspire confidence, so I don't know if I'd be buying a car from there, that's for sure. I spotted this one in Southern California myself. The very specific 24 minute parking sign. I'm not quite sure what happens when you park there for 25 minutes, but 24 minutes is what they were hoping for when you park there. I suspect it was meant to be hours, but you know, who knows what goes on. And of course there's no accounting for taste, is there? So perhaps someone could have provided a little bit more feedback about the London Olympic Games logo. Perhaps something a little more tasteful. I don't know. You might like it. I don't. But it's always good to get a second pair of eyes on things, I think that is for sure. What page Proof is all about is removing the chaos around the review and approval process and as the, as the topic of today says, removing those bottlenecks. So if you're emailing content or sending Slack messages or teams messages or even phone calls to provide, you know, review and approval on, on creative content, then you're probably doing it the hard way. We're all about putting that all in one spot and, and making it easy for people to collate and remove all of that chaos. On our, on our proofing, we have a number of integrations to remove those bottlenecks between systems. So we're able to create proofs and work on changes and revisions using our content creation tools that we all know and love, like Creative Cloud or Canva or Adobe Express, Final Cut, Figma. We have integrations with all of them. We're able to integrate and create proofs from digital asset management systems that you might be using. We also have integration with project management tools such as Asana, Monday.com, trello, ClickUp, Airtable, et cetera. So we're able to do that. Carl, did you have something you needed to add there or no? No, no.

Okay, all good.

Being able to remove all of those bottlenecks, having our systems all update each other, being able to work in the tools that we know and love, and not having to go to other places is what that's all about. Now we have a little poll here for you and Brad might pop that up about the types of content that, that we need to be able to review and approve. So if it's something as simple as photography or print packaging, please click on the ones there. If you're participating along, click on those ones and see. It'd be great to get your feedback on the types of things that, that you're working on. We often find that customers use different systems for different media types here actually, we can do it all in the one place. So it's. If it's photography, print packaging, video, simple documents, or even live email marketing, websites, social media content, we can do it all. We can keep it all in one place to make it simple and easy to use and then to be able to find that content later on. So that's, that's pretty cool. Thanks for, for filling that one out as well. Simplicity equals speed. And so what we can see here is it is so simple for our creative users to be able to upload their content into page proof. So we can do it from some of our creative tools, but we can also do it right here in the page proof Dashboard by simply dragging and dropping onto the web interface. And I'll just click along there. It makes it super, super fast. And Carl's gonna show us a little bit about how quickly that really is. And then we're, we're creating proofs. There is a number of tools in here that we can use to start. And I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna end that poll out the way. Cause it's kind of, kind of in my way a little bit. We'll do that. So we were able to start creating a workflow to manage all of our review and approval processes. We can integrate directly with all our workflow management tools, asana, Monday, Trello, etc. And to build out what those workflows are to go along with them, including a design team or a marketing team, project managers, legal, with all the different roles that go along with it. We can even build in redundancy into the workflow. So on the left there we're seeing the marketing team. We have two mandatory reviewers, but we can select that only one of them needs to approve to go onto the next step to legal. So if we're choosing one, say Shayna or Olivia might be on holidays or out of the office, it doesn't stop the flow of the approval going through our system. And then we can even templatize checklists as part of the workflow so that we can draw our reviewers attention to certain parts of a proof that they need to be looking at, whether it be imagery, copy messaging, even legalese or pricing, whatever it is that they need to be checking as they go along. Once we filled out all of this content, we can then save it as a template and have it all populate when it's a repeatable workflow process that we need to need to use, and we can simply send those proofs out so it becomes very, very powerful and very, very simple and quick and easy to use. At the other end, when our reviewers are notified that there's something that they need to action, we can send them an email. On the left here, you'll see a proof invitation, which is the standard proof invitation that comes from page proof. But on the right, we can see that we're able to customize that with our own branding. We can put our own logo at the top, we can put a email footer at the bottom, and even choose our own custom colors for the buttons and text within that email so that it becomes a trusted source for your customers. They know that the emails are coming from you, they know that that's your artwork or that's your content that they need to be approving as and going along with that. We have some of the best security credentials there are. When your customers then or when your reviewers see the content, it really couldn't be easier. And a simple interface with commenting tools on the left, checkboxes on the right, navigation tools all around. So very, very easy to do. A simple red pen can be used for drawing boxes. We can highlight text, we can have a general comment for the whole thing, and we can even draw over the top of the proofs to draw attention to certain areas within it. When we draw a box over the top of some content here, we'll automatically pop up a comment and area at the top, right, that we can then fill out and even add attachments to it if we need to. So it's, it's pretty cool when, when we can do that, it's very, very easy and we find our reviewers pick it up very quickly. Okay. Once we have multiple versions, we can even compare though, we can even compare those versions side by side. You can see this is version three compared to version one, and we can even overlap those two versions to make it easy to spot where changes have been made within it. So very simple for doing it. Well, that's enough for me for now. I'm going to come back and just wrap things up after Carl's demonstration, but I think it's time that we actually see this product in action. Carl, are you ready to show us a little bit about page proof there?

I am indeed.

I shall hand over to you then.

Thank you, mate. You now should be able to see my desktop.

Very good.

Thank you very much. So, as Mike said, and thank you for having me during this webinar. Again, this is a demonstration of page proof. And you're probably thinking, that's not page proof, that's InDesign. Yeah, you're absolutely right. As Mike talked about earlier on, we try and keep things fast and straightforward and easy. So actually, when I'm a designer and I want to be able to get some feedback about the creative that I've created, in this case, an advertisement for South Australian yellowtail fish. That advert I've created, I want to get feedback on that, I can do it directly from the tools that I'm using, in this case, InDesign. So there is an. A plugin to Pageproof. And this is the InDesign plugin that allows me to create a proof to get feedback directly from within InDesign. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to just create that proof using the plugin and upload this creative that I've created directly into pageproof from InDesign. And what that's going to do is it's now going to open the pageproof window and it's just processing that creative that we created there. And again, we want to keep things fast, we want to keep things easy. So what we can do within pageproof is we have a concept called proof templates. This allows us to pre populate all of these areas of the proof, the proof screen here with lots of different details. So in this particular case we've put the message to the reviewers, we've added some extra tags, some other and most importantly we've pre populated the actual workflow and what we call a checklist, which I'll come on to momentarily. What I am going to do is I'm going to pop this into a collection. Now a collection is a way of organizing your proofs into for instance, a project or something I'm working on, or a product or a client or whatever those things are you need to be able to do. I've dropped that into essentially this, what we call a collection, which is a kind of folder hierarchy. Now I've inherited lots of things. There's this important. From the, from the template here is the due date. So this is the, the date that we want this proof to be completely finished by. This is the important time where it must be approved by. So I'm going set that to really unfriendly time of the day, 12:45am on Sunday morning. A really unpleasant time to do things for. And also we can have people reminded. We can say that a day before we want people reminded to complete this process and also two days before and in fact one hour before as well. So they'll get automated reminders by their various notification channels. So here, most importantly, we actually have the workflow process. So we've inherited the workflow process which is already templatized. This one was called Magazine Advertising Workflow and it's got a couple of steps to it. There's a whole bunch of business reviewers who have that role of reviewer. So they can give us some feedback, some comments and leave a decision. This guy here called Mike. Interesting. Will Mike be able to review during this process, do you think? I think he might be. There's also Brad in there if he chooses to. And the final step is a kind of an executive sign off by this guy here called George who looks an awful lot like George. From Seinfeld, which is probably not the person you want to be doing your executive sign offs, actually. And then there's this other concept of what we call checklists. Now, checklists are a structured way of being able to enforce that certain aspects, that certain things must be checked off before this proof can be moved into an approved state. So it's a good reminder and again making it easy for the reviewers to check that these things have all been covered off before things are actually moved forward within the workflow process. And that's really just been a couple of clicks. It's really that easy. So I can now add this and this proof is uploading, it's underway. It's been encrypted, it's all safe. And if I hit okay, it's gone away from me now. It's no longer in my inbox, it's no longer with me. You'll remember that the next one of the next people in the workflow was a lady called Diane. And we're going to switch to Diane now. And Diane's role is that she is now a reviewer. So she's taken that kind of reviewer role. She's going to give a lot of feedback. About this proof. So here are the tools that she can use for actual proofing and you'll see that this in real time. We don't have to wait for other reviewers. They're actually reviewing in real time at the same time. So Mike's here and he's actually ticking off some of these items on the checklist and momentarily prompt Mike. He'll be giving us some feedback as well. He'll be giving us some comments. The users have all these sorts of fun tools. So for instance, Diane can zoom in, she can zoom in on the content and zoom out.

She can.

That's a little bit far, Diane zooming out that far. We don't need to zoom out quite that far. What she can also do is use a number of different markup tools like a pen, a boxing area or an overall comment. Now, she quite likes it. She thinks this is great. She's actually going to provide a bit of feedback that said, this is great, I love it. And she's right, it is great. But also then she's going through the, she's going through the checklist. Is the content correct? Is the content correct? And she's noticed something down here. I don't know if anyone noticed it earlier on, but it says South Austrian, not South Australian. That common, that common issue that we sometimes see. Bear with me one second again, Sorry. Well, just. What we might just do is zoom in a little bit so that we can highlight that particular text. Highlight that. That's actually the issue. There we go. Austrian. What that's done is it's copied it into my comment and I can change that to Australian, which is what it should be. Happy day. So now she can't really click on content correct. Maybe the spelling's all right, maybe the grammar's all right. You'll notice that when actually she's clicking on these checklist items, it's registering that she's done. So later on, Mike will actually show us a complete audit trail of all of these events that have occurred so that you can know that the content can be trusted because it's gone through this process and it's completely auditable. What she's actually going to do now is she's going to say, well, can't actually finally approve this, because there really is something that really needs fixing. This Australian versus Austrian thing, I'm going to approve it, but with changes. So I'm going to say it's okay, but there's one change that needs to occur. And so what she's done, she's now sent that on in the workflow. And our final executive, as you recall, was George. I'm going to now play the role of George. And George is an approver. So George is told that he's an approver. He's told there's been a bit of feedback and that there's stuff waiting to occur. Now, George has got a number of different options. He can also give some feedback. He can look at these comments and comment. Oh, Mike has also said, is this a lime? And you can see that Mike has actually marked up within context of this particular piece of creative. He's marked up and said, is this a lime or a lemon? And you know what? George knows it's a lime. It's okay. So it's not an issue. It's definitely a lime. It's the correct. It's the correct. The correct visual. So looking down at these particular issues or looking at these comments and feedback, he can actually see. George can see that this. This Australian one's actually pretty serious because that really is a very serious typo. If he highlights that, he can see Austrian there versus Australian, and if he arrows over it, he can see the comment within context. So this one needs work, it needs a new version. It needs the creative to go and be changed again by the designer. So what we're going to do is send that back as what we call a to do list. So not everything is on the to do list. All these things are just comments. They're great comments, they're positive comments. We're going to send this back as an error that's. And he's going to leave a comment to say, please update this based on the feedback attached. He's going to send it back as a to do list. He sends it back as a to do list. And now it's gone back to the originator that created which was me or the designer, I should say, which was me. And the designer now has a to do list within pageproof with all the right feedback saying, this is what you need to fix up. But most importantly, it's also within InDesign so that feedback is available within the tools that we use to actually create this creative. So I can highlight this and you'll notice that the only feedback that's occurred. Just bear with me one second. The only feedback that's occurred is that the only feedback is in the to do list. We haven't seen all the positive comments. We don't need to see that. As the creative or as the designer, I need to understand how there is an issue here. And what we can actually do is highlight what pageproof provides is the context. And so there is the context of that comment. It's Austrian rather than Australian. No problem. So now we need to fix this issue up. So what we can do is actually highlight Austrian here and hit this option to replace the text. And now we've replaced the text of Austrian with Australian. We, as the designer can now give feedback. We've created. We've. Sorry, we've addressed this particular issue. I've hit. Done. And now that provides feedback directly into pageproof to say that this has actually been resolved. I am in fact now prompted to upload a new version. So I'm going to do exactly that with it directly from within InDesign. I'm going to upload the new version and it's just uploading. There we go. What that's going to do is upload this latest version of the creative on top of the previous version and it's going to inherit all of these things that we set up earlier on, including the due date. Remember it was 12:45am Date and time and all the notifications and all those kinds of things, as well as the workflow. Now I'm actually going to change the workflow a little bit. I'm going to say skip reviewers who previously approved. Sorry, skip reviews are previously approved. And so now it doesn't have to go to Diane, it doesn't have to go to Mike, because actually they approved it. Although they did give some negative feedback.

They did.

And things got sent to the to do list they did approve. So now it really only just goes off mandatory wise to George. So we're going to upload that new version and then we're going to log in as George and see what George sees. Now George going to switch my account over to George Costanza again. And here he is. He's now got this new version. Notice there's no comments on this new version. If he looks at the previous version, which was version number one, there are all the comments in context. He can see what had to be fixed up and actually that this issue has actually been done. That particular issue that was sent back in the to do list has been completed. So now he can have a look at it in context. Oh yeah, Austrian. Has that been fixed in version 2.

Now?

Indeed it has, but he really wants to be able to look at in great detail. So what he's going to do is going to use this smart comparison tool we call Smart Compare to look at the two items side by side. That's version one on the left, version two on the right and use Smart Compare to overlay them on top of each other. As you can see, this is jiggling just a little bit. I can strobe it, I like to see it jiggling just a little bit. We also have this tool which allows us to be able to look a sliding tool, to be able to look at the two bits of content or the two, the two proofs versions, to be able to overlay them like that, to be able to see exactly what has changed between the two. Now George is happy, he's deliriously happy that the issue has been fixed. He can now go back to the checklist. Now he does have to check off the checklist again because who knows what's changed? It's really best practice to make sure that things are really accurate. Still to go through and check off this checklist, you'll notice that when he does that, this approval button becomes available to him. So he's done everything he needs to do. He's clicked off the checklist. He said there's a new version, he's going to approve that new version and he's going to give it a little bit of feedback to say, this is great, I love it. Hit approve. And so that now has gone into an approved state and people will be getting all sorts of Notifications. By the way, this is what a kind of a notification looks like in email. You can get it in Slack, you could get it in teams, any of those kinds of things. Notification tools. That's what it actually would look like for George in his email. But now this has actually changed to a, a state where this is actually approved. And Mike, we've seen the complete life cycle. We've seen how fast, powerful, trusted and easy the process actually is. Mike, back, back over to you. You're on, you're on mute, Mike. $5. Thank you.

Very good. Well, thanks Carl. That was a great little demo as you can see on my screen. I also got, being part of that approval process, got the great. This, this, this proof has been approved in very short amount of time. So I think Carl did a full review and approval cycle there with comments with changes and a new version and fully approved with inside of 15 minutes. So we're talking about being able to use the system to speed things along and to make sure that things are accurate and approved in a, in a timely fashion. Well, that certainly did it. So thanks Carl for that. In the future, should we need to figure out what happened with some of our review and approval stuff in the past, we can go back and have a look at the audit trail. So on the left here we have a summary view of what happened to that proof on its journey through its approval cycle. And then we even have a full audit, full audit view on the right and we can see this for every version of the proof that gets uploaded and we will keep that for you for as long as you want to keep it. So that will always be there for you to go back and, and refer to. So thank you for attending our very first spotlight session today. It's been a pleasure having you, having you along with us. I hope you found it a valuable session. We have got a number of these sessions coming up in the future. We, we're going to be doing one a month up until the next of the, up until the end of the year and we'll be looking for new topics to cover in the new year as well. So if you'd like to reach out to any of us, our details are here. So please feel free to shoot us an email if you have questions or if you'd like to book a meeting with us. We have Brad online. So this will, this QR code here will give you direct access to be able to book a meeting time with us and we'll be more than happy to chat with you about your proofing requirements that you might have in your businesses. So be really happy to do that. Really good timing. We finished right on. On the dot there. Well done, Carl. Not bad for a first go either. Brad, was there any questions there or should we wrap things up?

No questions in the chat?

No. Okay, great. Well, we'll wrap it up there for now, but please feel free to reach out to us at any stage and book some time with us. We'd love to chat with you. Thanks again for attending.