Manage with K4
Keep full control
A professional publishing system must be easy to manage and configure. And that’s exactly what vjoon K4 offers. It provides IT managers and managing editors with capabilities for efficient production monitoring, detailed configuration, and specialized system management. In short, with K4 you can:
- Monitor your production
- Configure smart workflows
- Manage with ease
Easy system and workflow management
With vjoon K4, you can mirror your editorial workflows from the physical world to a virtual one, making K4 the “digital twin” of your content supply chain. This includes all users, groups, brands, publications, issues, any content, rights, licenses, connected systems, and databases, right up to your editorial workflows. That way, IT and project managers can keep an eye on all processes in real time and jump in right away if something needs attention.
Monitor your production
Monitor the workflow status for each layout to see if progress is stalling or if everything is still on track.
- Use a password-protected web interface to view all layouts with their respective workflow status in real time.
- What is finished, what content is currently being edited and where could there be problems with the deadline? No problem in K4, color codes defined according to your needs immediately show you the production progress of each layout and article.
- Open layouts and articles directly from the overview to complete related tasks, or to intervene when necessary.
- Share ideas and annotations with your team using sticky notes on the layout.
- Take advantage of cost tags and calculate the price of articles and images for each layout page.
- Search the entire production database using configurable queries to find issues, layouts, articles and many more.
- Choose between different views and flip through the pages of your layouts.
Configure smart workflows
Accelerate content creation around the world with predefined workflows that lead your team safely through the content supply chain.
- Effortlessly define workflows for your multi-channel teams. With the intuitive user interface, you can set up and graphically visualize processes for print and digital media.
- You can set up workflows for any type of content and output channel and combine them into a set. This gives you maximum freedom to configure additional workflow sets for testing or alternative scenarios alongside the active production set. And the best part is that you can choose which set is active at any time.
- In K4, you can choose between two workflow models. With the classic status workflow, you can map simple linear processes, such as those familiar from Web CMS. With the task workflow, you can also set up parallel tasks, dependencies, rewinds, and emergency notifications. It is more suitable for complex processes and projects.
Manage with ease
With web-based administration, authorized users maintain all publication settings as well as the associated servers.
- Maintain your publications and set up issues, projects, departments or divisions. Decide how many language variants you want to produce and which metadata you need for your publications.
- Create users, assign passwords, group and category memberships and optionally define settings for directory services.
- Define detailed settings for your servers, sub-systems and agile data management. For example, database schemas and licenses (K4 Server), DAM and InDesign Server connections (sub-systems), or the settings for data migration for backup and recovery as well as settings for the use of Amazon S3 with vjoon Storage Engine.
- Configure the integration to third-party systems and benefit from maintained modules, such as WordPress, professional PDF output and page planning to name just a few.
Precise overview of production status
Thanks to worldwide availability via secure browser access, the publication overview is the ideal tool for supervisors, project managers and production managers. And, of course, your entire team can also keep an eye on the production progress of all layouts and stories. K4 provides transparent information in real time and, thanks to color codes defined according to your needs, managers can immediately see where bottlenecks might occur, where something is behind schedule, where deadlines are at risk – and can therefore quickly intervene.
Using configurable queries, they can easily search for any issues, layouts or stories. Thanks to the high resolution, the various view modes can take a close look at even the smallest detail if required, while the page flip mode creates a brilliant visual impression of your entire publication.
And if you need to comment, sticky notes provide clear information on the layouts – although content can also be opened for editing directly from the overview, simply by double-clicking. And speaking of the entire publication – here, of course, the publication overview also offers a PDF for quick printouts.
Powerful graphical workflow editor
K4 optimally maps editorial workflows while offering maximum flexibility in daily use. Administrators and project managers love the graphical workflow editor, as it impresses with its intuitive handling and technical finesse. Here they can easily design customized workflows for any object type – such as layouts, articles and stories, images, spreadsheets, documents, video, audio and others.
With the classic status-based model and the innovative task-based model, two powerful workflow types are available that meet almost every requirement. Simple, lean workflows or sophisticated, complex processes with dependencies, rewinds and emergency assignments, everything is possible – and always remains transparent and manageable. Define independent tasks to give your team more flexibility, or automate routine tasks to relieve the team. K4 ensures that the right task is always fulfilled at the right time.
Optimize your workflow set during operation or plan alternative workflow scenarios – design as many workflow types as you like, you decide at the touch of a button when which set is active. And again it is K4 that takes care of a smooth execution.
Sophisticated administration
For IT managers and administrators, the management of a publishing system needs to be straightforward and efficient. And that’s exactly what they find with K4. Two powerful levels, publication administration and server administration, enable comprehensive control.
Publication administration is where you manage all your publications, issues, sections, language variants, metadata, terminology, as well as directory services and DAM objects. You also manage all your user data here, such as existing users, categories, groups and change rights, to name a few. In addition, you can define workflows for different media types and channels, monitor licenses and logged-in users. In addition, K4 can manage multiple publications in parallel, which means that different publications can also be configured completely differently.
The server administration is extending your administration capabilities. This central entity manages all assigned publications, connections to sub-systems like Adobe InDesign Server and seven DAM, databases like Oracle, MS SQL or MySQL, as well as vjoon Storage Engine.
Fast backup and restore
vjoon Storage Engine brings the “agile” to agile data management. It helps IT teams by storing layouts, videos, images, text and tables in a highly efficient way. All this happens in the background, at the push of a button or triggered by a scheduled automated routine, while users continue their work.
This way, the entire publication can be restored very quickly in the event of a crash. vjoon Storage Engine does the work in a fraction of the usual time. Fast recovery ultimately means less downtime and lower costs.
Companies that opt for vjoon K4 and vjoon Storage Engine are free to run their publishing workflows and maintain all data on their in-house IT infrastructure. They may also use Amazon’s highly scalable, cloud-based object storage S3 for vjoon Storage Engine. Or they can port the whole package, vjoon K4 and vjoon Storage Engine, to the cloud. This freedom of choice puts media companies, agencies and marketers back in the driver’s seat when it comes to their IT strategies.
Automated plug-in updates
Software updates are a challenge arising with regionally and globally distributed teams. Because of constantly exploited security vulnerabilities, corporate IT counters these risks primarily through fast and targeted software updates. For freelancers whose equipment is less frequently connected or seldom seen in person by corporate IT, it is generally a time-consuming and labor-intensive proposition keeping the installed software up-to-date. With K4 Updater and automatic updates of the K4 plug-ins, this problem has now been solved.
And if your team works for different publications or brands, a similar problem occurs. Large media houses often have several K4 servers, but this also applies to creative agencies working on their clients’ systems. Imagine the systems have different versions, and the team works on project A in the morning, B in the afternoon, and C the next day. How can you ensure that your creatives can connect to their projects correctly at any time?
And this is where the K4 Updater also enters the scene. It ensures that everyone in the team always has the appropriate versions of the K4 clients for InDesign and InCopy available for each customer. Fully automated and in a matter of seconds.
Professional Identity & Access Management
Enterprises face the challenge of providing access to technology and application resources in the cloud, on-premise, and in hybrid environments for large numbers of users, including those working remotely, as well as partners and vendors from across the globe. In modern IT infrastructures, information about users and authorizations is often managed centrally via Identity & Access Management (IAM), such as Amazon Cognito, Okta, Microsoft Azure AD. Among others, IAM solutions can be used to streamline single sign-on requirements (SSO) in a K4 environment.
In addition, these services enable users’ access to be changed at short notice when required, for example during on- and off-boarding, and security policies, such as multi-factor authentication, to be enforced. When it comes to authentication methods, you can use authentication apps, SMS, email authentication, or FIDO, for example.
By integrating K4 with OpenID Connect (OIDC), organizations can deploy their custom IAM solution and meet internal and external compliance policies.
Take advantage of Directory Servcies
vjoon K4 supports the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for implementing access to information administered by Directory Services. This information is used for managing user accounts in vjoon K4, and can optionally be used for user authentication.
You can manage settings centrally in your K4 Server Admin and assign them to the publications you want as a preset – or, you can configure the settings you want to use for each publication individually.
Learn more about our solutions
K4 integrated with seven
The integration of vjoon K4 and vjoon seven is probably the most intelligent connection between a next-Gen DAM and a leading workflow system.
vjoon seven DAM
seven is your central content hub and single source of truth. Its intelligent use of metadata lets your assets become valuable parts of your brand.
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