The graphical interface lets users re-render data into different formats and create reusable stylesheets using a drag-and-drop interface.At the AIIM ON DEMAND conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Whitehill Technologies announced the release of its new Layout Designer.
The graphical interface enables a user to create templates that take collected and aggregated data and then re-render the data into the appropriate format for the user, said Jim Laffoley, vice president of marketing and business development at Whitehill.
According to Laffoley, Layout Designer already has been available in the marketplace for about four months.
New Brunswick, Canada-based Whitehill waited until AIIM for the official product launch because the company surmised that the product would garner more visibility during an industry trade show.
"We are now complementing our XML-based conversion capabilities with a design tool that allows our customers to quickly and easily customize the output style of their converted documents," Whitehill CEO Paul McSpurren said of Layout Designer.
As a standalone product, Layout Designer costs $2,000 per seat license, although Layout Designer typically is sold in conjunction with Whitehill's <xml>Transport technology.
That software provides users with the client/server-based architecture needed to automate the transformation and subsequent distribution of data, speeding up business processes within an organization.
Users of Layout Designer can create reusable stylesheets using a drag-and-drop interface.
After defining the layout of XML data, the stylesheets then generate documents by setting up placeholders to position the contents of the original file and then supplying different formats to create a professional document.
Laffoley said that the company uses XML as its means to convert disparate types of data because XML is the most flexible data format.
"It allows you to do what you like with your data, [and] allows the end-user to compile and aggregate it into the right format—and process it in a batch-oriented way, helping companies integrate and make better use of the data they already have," he said.
While Layout Designer and <xml>Transport can be used in a wide range of vertical markets, Laffoley said that insurance, legal and financial companies are among its biggest customers.
For example, Layout Designer helps insurance companies with policy creation and distribution by implementing Whitehill's "Document Composition Technology," which takes disparate systems and applications, turns the data into XML and puts together the policy document that can be updated dynamically as needed.
The insurance company can then dynamically manage the policy's distribution by re-rendering the document as a postscript file for printing and simultaneously as an HTML Web page that allows insurance brokers to check out the changes in the policy as the same policies are being sent to customers.
Laffoley did concede, however, that Whitehall has not of yet provided users with the technology to enable them to read and comprehend what he referred to as "the fine print" in such documents.
"It's in R&D right now, but unfortunately, it will be some time before [this technology] becomes available to market," Laffoley said.
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