Components

Targeted Interfaces based on User Roles and Responsibilities

Users gain access to information stored in the B.media data repository through a series of role based clients.

The B.media clients provide distinct entry points into the data repository for creative, business, and administrative groups. The B.media clients are detailed below.

Product Manager

B.media’s Product Manager provides tools that allow management and maintenance of products and their related vendors and brands.

Using a familiar hierarchical tree structure, complex product structures can be maintained that map to business requirements. Attributes of products are unlimited and may be linked to page layout applications and web pages. Products may be linked to the content that represents them using the B.media “Block” construct. Products and their attributes are published as components of document layouts or as data streams that are formatted for display on the web.

Content Manager

The Content Manager interface is used to organize, store and relate creative content that is used in a publication or a series of publications.

Content may be images, text, other rich media, products and their attributes, whiteboards, or documents. Groups of content assets and their related product information are collected into “blocks.” A block represents a singular offer for a product or group of products. The powerful digital asset management capabilities of the Content Manager optimize storage and network resources, and provide access control, automated image transformations, revision history, usage information, and other content data.

Layout Plugin

Creative users of B.media are provided an interface the to content repository within either Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.

Dragging and dropping content and product information from the B.media database to the page layout ensures that links will be maintained between the two. If information changes in the database (e.g., a business system updates a price for a product), the update is pushed to any pages that contain the changed item. Changes made within the page layout environment update the database as well. Other tools are provided that provide a complete database publishing environment within the page layout package.

Whiteboards

Whiteboards are specialized B.media communication tools that support planners and designers in the creation of documents.

Planners (merchandisers) can specify areas of a document page where they want to promote certain products, and add notes and other instructions to aid designers. Working with content stored within B.media, planners can communicate with designers much more efficiently and accurately than manual methods. When the whiteboard is complete, a designer can convert it to a QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign document, where it is fully editable and linked to the content within B.media.

Program Hierarchy

B.media has two user-defined hierarchies that are similar to file system folder structures. The Product Hierarchy allows the customer to create Product Categories and link Attribute definitions to them (“Chair” has Height, Seat Width, Construction Material, etc.) Linking a Product to a Category in effect defines the Product. The Content Hierarchy allows users to organize Assets and Blocks – which contain Products – into folder structures which can be used for organization and storage, or for mimicking a publication structure.