K4 Publishing System gets updated to version 4.2

Managing Editor Inc., (MEI) has released version 4.2 of the K4 Publishing System.

The cross-platform product links Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy with a SQL database to provide a collaborative workflow system suitable for individual workgroups and publishing enterprises.

Version 4.2 allows article and layout templates to be stored and managed from within the database, so editors and designers can create new documents from specific pre-defined InCopy and InDesign templates directly from K4 without accessing external file servers. InCopy templates — with full layout geometry, one or several text elements, and all style sheet information — can be created from InDesign, and made available to writers and editors in-house or in remote locations. K4 Publishing System 4.2 offers special privilege-based access for check-in, checkout, and modification of templates, section-based organization of template files, and a facility to make templates available to system users.

It also offers active workflow routing of articles and layouts, so that files can be assigned to a specific user or user group. User groups are fully customizable, and all K4 settings — including user group configurations and routing assignment defaults per section and status — may be modified in K4 at any time, even while the system is up and running.

Users can now search K4 to list articles and layouts that correspond to a pre-defined or temporary query, and maintain a filtered view of their own assignments. Also in version 4.2, dynamic queries can be based not only on the “current” issue, but also the “previous” and “next” issues of a publication, so that the queries needed most often can be saved once and reused regularly without user maintenance. Status colors can be selected to highlight files at specific workflow stages.

Other new features of K4 Publishing System 4.2 include a master password for administrative access to any user’s login; automatic checkout of all articles by pressing the option key when checking out a layout; and tracking of checkout and check-in times for each article and layout version

K4 Publishing System 4.2 works on Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.2.x, as well as various flavors of Windows. The SQL database service runs on Mac OS X Server, Windows, Linux, and other platforms. Contact MEI for more details, including pricing structures.