Print Solutions from Atac

Newsletter for Asia-Pacific Region

Second Quarter, 2009

Atac Pty Ltd

Australasian Distributor for Barr & Emtex

In this issue -

How can we help you?

  • Is Your Office Printing Under Control?

  • Emtex Auto-Reprint Capabilities

  • BEPS Instructional Videos

  • Q & A 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call  +61 3 9521-8070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information at ...

http://www.atac.com.au/barr.htm

http://www.atac.com.au/emtex.htm

Email David Kirk
or call +61 3 9521-8070

Is Your Office Printing Under Control?

As you no doubt know, Atac helps many businesses do their large print runs better/cheaper/faster.  Over the past few months we've had a hard look at a number of products and services that aim to do the same for general office printing.  Nobody will be surprised to learn that most organizations are unaware of the costs associated with their general office printing.  Questions such as "what's being printed?", "who's printing it?" and "how much is it all costing?" need answers.  Plus there's the growing awareness of our need to be friendlier to the environment.

We don't have all the answers, but we do have some.

If you feel you need a better handle on your general office printing, please drop an email to David Pattison at david.pattison@atac.com.au.

Emtex Auto-Reprint Capabilities

Emtex VIP is used by many print bureaux to import documents into their standard operating environment (SOE).  This may be as a precursor to additional processing performed by the bureaux themselves, or merely to transform print jobs to suit the output devices in use.

VIP has enabled many bureaux to bid for work not normally handled by their output devices, widening the spread of potential customers and market share.

Emtex VDE provides the ability to manipulate the document content, to further enhance functionality and cost-savings.  DPID addition is one such enhancement; address cleansing, sorting and repositioning is also possible; barcoding for mail insertion equipment integrity is another.

Barcoding a document provides a method of proving that all pages of a mailpiece were inserted into an envelope.  A normal print file is enhanced by Emtex VDE by the addition of barcodes on every page.  Barcodes can signify the JOB, MAILPIECE, DOCUMENT PAGE, JOB PAGE and can also contain insertion commands to add specific (glossy) inserts during the mailing process.  A separate reconciliation file is provided as an output from the VDE process.  This reconciliation (MRDF) file is used by the mailing equipment to ensure it receives and prints all pages of all documents.

If a page is missing or destroyed during processing, the mailing equipment creates a list of missing documents using the barcode and MRDF info.  This list of missing documents can be fed back into Emtex to AUTOMATICALLY generate the spoils required to complete the run.  Emtex can be set up to watch a specific folder for reprint files and process them against the original jobs, preparing a run of spoils for reprinting.  This process may iterate if required, and completely eliminates any manual spoils processing, a timely and costly process.

EDS NZ has the above functionality in place and now enjoys full integrity for all jobs run through Emtex, with the Auto-Reprint generation saving on turnaround time and manual labour-intensive spoils generation processes.  As a (welcome) side effect of Emtex implementation, the number of outsorts has been reduced by nearly 50%.

Contact Atac today to discuss how Emtex can expand your market, increase document integrity and reduce turnaround time.

BEPS Instructional Videos

Did you know that your Barr Enterprise Print Server (BEPS) CD includes several short instructional videos?  Since BEPS 4.1.50, the CD has included videos briefly demonstrating the following topics:

  • Learning about the Spool Window

  • Changing states of Printers and Jobs

  • How Routing Criteria works

  • Changing Routing Criteria and Job Attributes

  • The Retain Window

  • Viewing Jobs

  • Adding a new Printer

  • Getting Started Help

All are essential topics for novice BEPS users, so the CD is a great place for them to start.

If BEPS is installed on a PC without any Barr hardware, the software reverts to Demonstration mode.  In Demo mode the software can be operated with full functionality, but is limited to handling files less than 100Kb in size.  This allows you to practise using the software in a non-production environment.

A copy of the Barr manual is also included on the CD.  The Barr manual is useful when initially installing the product, as well as when configuring each module.  Online HELP from with BEPS itself gives the highest level of product detail.

So dig out your BEPS CD and take a look.

Alternatively, you can always download the latest software for your Barr system from www.barrcentral.com.  If you prefer, contact Atac and we'll send you a BEPS CD.

Q & A

Q.  When I restart the PC or Barr SpoolCore, Print Utility Service goes into PAUSED state, and I have to manually START the Service.  Why is this?

A.  You have the default state on Print Utility's AUTOMATIC tab set to DISABLED.  Change this to ENABLED and click OK to save the settings.  The Barr Print Utility Service should now START correctly.

Q.  What settings do I need to make when installing BEPS onto a Windows 2003 Server?

A.  There are some Group Policy settings which must be made to allow kernel-mode printer drivers to operate under Windows Server 2003.  These are documented in the BEPS README file.

Q.  With Emtex VDE, I programmed my document boundary object to detect Page 1 based on the text "Page 1", but it is finding "Page 10", "Page 11" etc. too.  How do I overcome this?

A.  Use the VDE TEST command MATCHES instead of CONTAINS.  MATCHES is a VDE Regular Expression function which requires the PARENT VDEOPTIONS REGULAREXPRESSIONS operator.  Ensure your search window encompasses the entire Page number, and remember all spaces are removed from the search and comparison strings before testing.  This is because text placed on a print page may be placed as a single string with spaces between words, or may be placed on the page as individually positioned words.

Q.  Who is/are Atac?

A.  Atac is the Barr and Emtex Distributor for Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia.  With over fifteen years experience in the market, we support systems running 24x7x365 from Christchurch to Tokyo and Perth to Mumbai, in most of the largest print shops in the region.

Our customers include banks, print bureaux, financial institutions and petro-chemical companies as well as printer and mainframe vendors.  Outsourcing organisations and facilities management companies make extensive use of Atac's expertise.

Atac is privately owned, with an extensive technical background stretching back over forty one years of continuously profitable operation.

Feedback

Your feedback is valuable to Atac and helps us provide the high standard of service which you have come to expect from us, and which we are proud to deliver.  Whether you have questions about our product range, a story to share regarding your experiences, or you would like to comment on our newsletter, just send us an email.

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