Many companies use ZENON technology to manage the user interface, HMI (Human Machine Interaction), with the aim of designing the interfaces of their machines. 

EKR has developed an engine to access ZENON source files, from these to extract the information components necessary to develop the display, manage the subsequent translation path (but also the aggregation path) in the simulation of the interfaces to be included in the technical documentation . Then the developer works in ZENON, defines the structure of his interactive page, the EKR module interprets and inserts the interface within technical documents, ensuring the synchronization between the ZENON source and the technical document page and the perfect integration between the strings inserted in the ZENON files and their translation, in the pages represented in the technical documents. 

EKR has developed a powerful integration with the IBM WebSphere platform.

The extremely articulated information of the product managed with EKR Orchestra is sent dynamically within the WebSphere repository, allowing to obtain very articulated and complex pages but always guaranteeing the perfect synchronization of the information.

It is a platform designed for translation management specialists. It is an autonomous application, designed to allow its use even by those who do not take direct part in the creation and assembly of content. 

In EKR Translator, translation requests are received from those responsible for publishing the data, they are sent to the translators, a possible verification of consistency with phrases previously entered in the system is carried out, management is carried out with integrated contexts to allow various areas companies, to partially access the same translation assets and carry out the typical maintenance activities, massive export and import and realignment of systems.

Terminology management in EKR starts from a strong involvement of the authors in the semantic enrichment of terms even before their own translation. 

At EKR, the author is considered within the translation management process, aware of the fact that, if the author works correctly, the translations will be easier, of higher quality and the level of potential ambiguity reduced. 

In terminology management, in authoring environments, the author has the possibility to define for each word, which falls within the glossary and database structure of the specific components, what is the real meaning of each single segment of sentence that can be interested in a terminology check. This means that there is a guarantee, on the author’s side, of the quality of the information but, above all, that the translator finds himself in a situation in which any element of ambiguity is resolved, proposing to the translator himself the precise indication of the meaning in the language. source of the object to translate. 

Let’s take an example.

Within the step: “Check that the oil tank is full” we consider the object “oil”. What oil are we talking about? By cutting, lubricating or pneumatic? First of all, the term must have been created and baptized in the terminological definition activity by the author himself, in order to be able to specify what oil it is. If the author sends the translator a sentence without this information, for some languages, the translator would have to decide independently which oil it is, thus making a baseless choice, with a high risk of error and ambiguity, having no relative knowledge to the machine in question. With EKR Orchestra it is possible to insert the specification of the gloss, information that will then be sent to the translator, who will be able to connect his own terminology manager and choose the correct meaning based on the information defined in the authorial phase.

In the EKR platform it is possible to schedule automatic processes and complete workflow management structures.

This is made possible through the integrated configuration of three levels of Jobs: at the level of Information Warehouse, of tools for the aggregation of contents and of static publication in PDF format.

Server Jobs allows you to carry out a wide range of operations, based on the change in status of any of the objects in the Knowledge Base. 

If a datum is modified or integrated, if a set of information is loaded whose presence can give rise to a workflow path, Server Jobs begins its work here. In fact, it will synchronize the functionalities of the downstream tools, producing a report on its work and, possibly, sending reminder, workflow progress or final reporting emails to the people included in the progress stages of the Server Job itself. 

Selector Jobs consists of automation features to be combined with Smart documents.

The Smart Document is an object of the EKR platform that allows the dynamic configuration of documents aimed at static or dynamic-static publication, even in articulated pages displayed within Web Portals.

This tool allows you to automatically perform all those somewhat repetitive operations.

Its range of implementation goes from the simplest cases of automatic pagination or updating of information to more complex ones. For example, it is useful in updating translations and realigning pagination up to integrated management of the presence of individual information elements in certain document configurations.

In summary, with Selector Jobs any activity, even minimally repetitive, in the information aggregation phase can be made automated.

Make Indesign work for us fully automatically.

Print Jobs use the power of the world’s best PDF creation platform, Adobe Indesign, to the fullest of its features, all fully automatically.

With the Print Jobs, it is possible to collect all the particularities of content and geometry defined in Smart Documents by Selector and generate PDF output – of reduced quality to meet the need for distribution on the Internet or high quality for high quality digital printing – with the consequent management of any exceptions due to process errors.

The process takes place in a perfectly integrated way in the Server Jobs environment.

The SAP Hybris platform includes a fairly limited product data management module, I’m talking about the ICM module. It is easy to see how the need to include extensive information, articulated within Hybris PCM often clashes with the rigidity of the platform, and requires to follow the path of compromise by greatly reducing the information to be entered, or the integration route, completing the SAP Hybris repository with a second environment, characterized by strong flexibility and expandability. 

This is the scenario in which EKR Orchestra SAP Hybris Connector fits. The combination of SAP Hybris and EKR Orchestra allows our customers to get the most out of the two platforms and therefore to be able to complete the descriptive part of each product in an extremely broad, extensive and detailed way. In doing so, Hybris communicates all that is necessary on the web channel, but at the same time allows you to integrate all the information necessary for offline communication, cataloging, brochures, but also for specialized newsletters, product launches and above all for documentation. technique. It is important that a technical data present in SAP Hybris PCM is exactly consistent with the paper brochure, with the catalog, with the price list, and even more so with the technical documentation, the technical sheets and the manuals.

This is now possible thanks to the strong integration developed in the EKR Orchestra SAP Hybris Connector module, which allows you to get the most out of the characteristics of each of the two platforms, in order to publish through Adobe InDesign and therefore obtain excellent pdfs . The EKR Selector tool, part of EKR Orchestra, gives the marketing department the opportunity to obtain high quality brochures and catalogs in perfect sync with the information on the web through the Hybris portal.

When a company enters SAP Hybris, it realizes very quickly that it is necessary to complete the application coverage given natively by SAP Hybris to allow marketing departments to obtain the set of static documents, essential for the dissemination and sale of the product. 

The limitation of SAP Hybris is not having a component for paper disclosure. In fact, its information structure is not suitable for collecting all that set of media dependent information, vital for the creation of brochures, catalogs and price lists.

EKR has developed an important integration with SAP Hybris to ensure that all SAP Hybris information is available within the EKR Knowledge Base and can, therefore, be integrated by all those media dependent logics essential to obtain catalogs, brochures, price lists and static documents in PDF.

The possibility of using SAP Hybris with EKR Selector allows a marketing office to maintain the perfect consistency of the SAP Hybris PCM information and integrate this information with what may be necessary for the completion of the paper information, maintaining perfect synchronism between SAP Hybris PCM and the information present in a document.

The typical use case sees the marketing department as protagonists, which collects data in SAP Hybris PCM for online dissemination, and the part of the marketing department that has to deal with the publication of catalogs: it is necessary that the two parties work talking the same language through the connection and integration module.

Another typical scenario is the integration, with the way EKR is used for technical documentation, manuals and data sheets. All the information present in SAP Hybris (typically procedural information, processes, troubleshooting, maintenance and regulatory logics) is integrated into EKR for the creation of manuals. The latter collects all the technical information and whatever is present in SAP Hybris, also in terms of structural organization and presence on the market for the production of manuals synchronized with SAP Hybris.

It is the latest born within the EKR Orchestra ecosystem. 

KIT, Knowledge Improvement Tool, aims to be a tool to collect and extend company knowledge over time.

Extremely configurable, it is based on a continuous verification of the quality and completeness of the information, carrying out a validation on an intermediate structure built in the project analysis phase and maintained by those who deal with the quality and completeness of the information. 

Through EKR Kit it is possible to manage both tabular and textual information, even very extensive, as well as being able to manage all the organizational trees (hierarchies) that give order to the information structure within the knowledge base.

Adobe Indesign is undoubtedly the best product for creating static pages on the world market.

However is a tool strongly oriented to manual creative activity and, although easily automatable for small tasks, is not suitable for efficiently managing large publications (for example catalogs of different hundreds of pages, in different configuration and language variants)

If, on the one hand, its extreme flexibility is a strong point for creating documents of relatively limited size, it is however a great weakness for large and complex publications that require continuous updates.

It is also extremely disadvantageous to use Indesign as an information repository; this is perhaps one of the greatest limitations that can be attributed to this tool, not for the tool itself, but for the use made of it by the majority of users.

Companies often write valuable information directly to Indesign that can then be used in various media, making it the de facto product information database.

From here they often proceed by copying and pasting the Indesign file to other documents or to other media such as CMS or Excel sheets for sending to other systems.

EKR orchestra allows you to use Indesign in its best aspect to transform information in graphic format for static documents.

Using Indesign within an EKR Orchestra scenario allows you to obtain 10 times its value from Indesign compared to manual use.

In EKR Orchestra, nothing is lost of Indesign’s flexibility, but enormous advantages are obtained in terms of document updating, language change, data updating and correctness and the correct segmentation of online publishing tools (e.g. catalogs for specific Industry or specific geographic areas). 

EKR has decades of experience in using Indesign (Editor’s note, Marco Galiazzo, founder of EKR is one of the very first Adobe Certified Expert in Italy) and has exploited the expertise of EKR in the Indesign world for to integrate Indesign itself with all those fundamental parts for offline publications at a large company level.

 

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One of the biggest shortcomings in most companies is the definition of a common glossary and an official registry of any object that is created and managed in the company itself.

When we start an EKR project we sit at the same table with different people (from the Technical Documentation Office, Marketing Office, After-sales Office, etc.) and we ask them to name and define the terms to be used to identify the product hierarchy (the division of products into lines, ranges, etc.), the very structure of the machines (the denomination of the various parts) or of the products: in almost all cases it turns out that different offices name the same things differently.

This problem brings enormous disadvantages to the company and considerable risks linked to the disclosure of inaccurate and / or ambiguous information in the data management chain itself.

Very often in the company the same terms pass from person to person and are gradually transformed: in some cases this involves even security risks.

A lot of important data often goes through the Excel files that are configured as well as the information repository and an error in copying the contents is sufficient with consequent damage, even of great entity.

An extremely recent example in this sense are the erroneous estimates on the impact of Covid in the UK.

Starting from an incorrect use of Excel and the management of the file formats created, the number of cases present was underestimated, underestimating the extent of the phenomenon and the need for timely intervention.

(https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988)

The presence of the Glossary and of the Masterdata allows instead to have the guarantee that the data are defined and baptized in a uniform way in a single point, without the risk that the passage from person to person can lead to deterioration of the accuracy of the information, as occurs in the wireless telephone.