AutoPrice™ Sales FAQs
GENERAL WORKFLOW ISSUES
Q. How can data be extracted or exported from existing QuarkXPress documents?
A. This is perhaps the single most challenging question asked in any database publishing scenario involving QuarkXPress, and likely involves the most initial effort. The good news - this is generally a one-time process.
Using the AutoPrice Exporter Pro module (available for the Macintosh QuarkXPress version), the document text is tagged to identify the type of information, and also the SKU(s) associated with the information. Although the process of tagging is a manual one, there are a number of shortcuts and features that can help streamline the process.
Once the document has been tagged, the user runs an export process to create a text file that contains the extracted document content in row/column order. This table can then be used to populate a web or content management database.
One of the benefits of this approach is that once the document has been tagged, it is ready for processing with AutoPrice, and the document information can be kept up to date from then on by simply initiating an update.
There are other products available for extracting content for Quark documents, but these products typically have one or more of the following limitations:
A) The QuarkXPress document must adhere to the strict use of style sheets. This is required because the software relies upon the style sheet being used to identify the type of information associated with it.
B) Product SKU information and associations are not exported. In the style-sheet approach, although you may know what type of information is being exported, you have no easy way of identifying which specific SKU is associated with that information. And, complicated associations (such as multiple SKU’s which share the same piece of information) cannot be addressed at all.
C) The export is in XML format rather than flat-file. Although a custom system can certainly be programmed to parse and import the XML data, it is not as generic and universal as the flat-file exports produced by Exporter Pro.
The Exporter Pro module has none of the limitations described above.
Q. Can page tagging be outsourced?
A. Yes. Because the tagging process is labor intensive and somewhat complicated to use for those unfamiliar with database concepts, it is often more cost effective to outsource the initial tagging to freelance artists already experienced with AutoPrice and Exporter Pro. The price range for this service is typically between $10 to $30 per page, depending upon the complexity of the pages and the database layout.
Q. Is there anyway to automate the page-building process?
A. Yes. We have just completed a project that involved the development of an automatic page building system. The basic concept is similar to the “Templated Document Creation” method described earlier. The client has developed a suite of GroupPicture templates that they use as building blocks to construct their catalog pages. The entire process is database driven, and controlled by the use of AppleScript and an enhanced Apple Events module that we developed for AutoPrice. This project has been completed and is currently being placed into production at a large cataloger in New York.