Extended Data Management provides the facility to store, maintain and use additional information within the IP1 system by creating “soft” or user defined fields and screens within the IP1 database.
Users can therefore add their own screens, and within those screens their own fields. Areas in which additional information could be useful include titles, customers, projects and creditors.
User definable fields can be used in catalogues and links to various network resources (such as pictures or title pages, sound files, PDF synopsis, etc).
These user defined fields can be used to store virtually any information about a book, customer, author, project, etc. For example additional information for a title to be stored on the Title Masterfile can include things such as:
- Cover pictures
- Blurbs
- Sales pointers
- Related product information
- Special promotions
- Competitive information
- Markets
- Reviews
- References
- Author interviews (in text video or audio)
This additional information can also be passed on to the Business Intelligence module, providing additional levels of analysis on fields that do not currently exist within the standard system.
The screens that contain these new fields are easy to define, as are the fields themselves. The additional fields can be grouped together in functional groups and held within tabs on a form.
Additional fields can be held in a number of pre-defined formats; free-format text fields of various user definable length, numeric values, dates and fields that contain links to external objects such as html, pictures, videos, etc. These soft fields have been used extensively in the Editorial and Book Production module. Publishers can use this facility to define additional specifications for titles or for other products such as CDs, DVDs, videos and websites.
| Process flow |
|
| Setup | Basic control file setup |
| Entity | UDF property maintenance |
| Interface | Work with form |
| Export | Onix data extraction |
