AZ Local Media Admin workflow system allows the sales person to enter the job to be tracked all the way through production to billing. Each job entered into the workflow can have various stages in the production flow, allowing for the billing department to prepare the invoice and allowing the production staff to work on the product and send back to sales for updates and corrections. Trackable history is attached to each action performed on the job which allows quick history lookup in the event questions arise. Full reporting tools were created to track the flow, revenue generated, products sold, and many other metrics through its process.

Some jobs in this workflow can then be utilized for other applications (such as online coupon display), or some jobs are used for pagination into their printed product (the Clipper coupon book). For this, I created a tool to allow the production staff to see visual placement of the ads in the book. This tool sorts the ads based on restrictions and requirements put in place such as competing companies, category restrictions, coupon placement, size and revenue of the ads. It allows the staff to manually place ads through a drag-and-drop feature using jQuery and JavaScript. The pagination tool will then generate an XML file for production that is imported into a pre-built InDesign template that automatically imports the files from the local server.

Additional features of the workflow admin include a tier based user permission system that allows users to have various levels of access to manage staff and jobs in the system. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool I recently built was put in place allowing for sales persons to manage their clients and track them over time. A reminder and notification system was put in place
that will email sales persons or staff on selected dates. Billing staff has the ability to process credit cards through the company’s merchant account using a custom built processing tool and storing of clients encrypted information for later use.

• Hierarchy user management system with customizable permissions
• Secure credit card billing system and future payment requests
• Production workflow with status levels
• Email and user notification system
• Extensive, live and up to date reporting which allows management and staff to know the status of any job in the system
• Job pagination tool that creates XML import files for InDesign and links to native files
• Existing client and prospect management tools
• Cross application use of data
• Client Retention Management (CRM)
• Allows multiple sales areas in the company and independent companies to use the same admin