Thomson XPF Case Study
Educational Services
Thomson XPF (XML properties form)
The Client
Thomson Learning Inc, subsidiary
of The Thomson Corporation
The Business Challenge
Thomson Learning’s publication project documentation process was lengthy and
manual which involved lot of communication between their editorial staff, technical
resources, and offshore vendors. This caused lot of wasted time and effort.
The Solution
GGK built a solution which is used for entering book production specifications for
the TL (Thomson Learning) Compass publishing system.
The InfoPath-based form provided an electronic solution to help editorial staff complete required project documentation more efficiently and to capture important XML markup and composition specifications in a data file to be used in down stream processes. The output of the solution was an xml data file.
The InfoPath-based form provided an electronic solution to help editorial staff complete required project documentation more efficiently and to capture important XML markup and composition specifications in a data file to be used in down stream processes. The output of the solution was an xml data file.
The Goals of the Thomson XPF project were
- Ease of Use: There is a large amount of data to be entered and the solution must present the options in a user-friendly format
- Flexibility/Updatability: The solution should allow for changing the options and values in the XML Properties Form after completion of the project as publishing requirements evolve
- Performance: The solution should open, save and operate smoothly and with minimal delays
Two InfoPath forms were built as part of this solution. The first form, the Hierarchy
Definition form is used for defining the hierarchy definition that will be used
in the Design Survey Task Pane in XML Properties Form. This form is primarily used
by a technical person who has administrative responsibility over the XPF tool. The
second InfoPath form is the XML Properties Form. This is the data entry form for
users to fill out project information including detailed typographic specifications
for print composition. The kind of data entered into this form is based on the settings
entered into the Hierarchy Definition Form.
The Results
- Reduced the amount of time spent by the editorial staff in entering the book production specifications.
- Robust solution which did not require development changes when users wanted to update publishing options as their requirements evolve.
GGK worked along with partner Qdabra Software on this project
Technologies Involved
Microsoft Office InfoPath, .NET Framework, C#, XML