The Windows World Open was a national competition for custom applications, held annually for nine years. It was created by Microsoft to showcase the best custom development work being created using Microsoft Windows and Windows software. 1996 sponsors were Microsoft Corporation, Computerworld magazine, Softbank/COMDEX, Fortune Magazine, Wall Data, and WexTech Systems. It was part of the Windows World trade show, held in conjunction with Spring Comdex.
The Brochure Wizard, created by JRVsystems founder Jeff Vandervoort, was 1 of 3 finalists in the Work Flow and Document Processing category in 1996.
Though created by a development team of one, the Brochure Wizard took its place alongside applications created by Fortune 500 companies and government entities with legions of programmers and teams of consultants. Competitors included such organizations as Merrill Lynch, General Electric, US Postal Service, US Army Corps of Engineers and Los Angeles Police Department.
The large architecture firm for which JRVsystems founder Jeff Vandervoort served as Director of Information Systems was split into 13 teams. Each focused on a particular project type. They needed a flexible, efficient brochure system that could either narrowly target a specific client and project type, or include information from multiple teams to go after projects with a broader focus.
Their previous, word processor-based brochure system gave them some of the needed flexibility, but because it was almost completely manual, it was difficult to use. Version control and inheritance of errors were major problems. They needed faster turn-around and better management of brochure contents. And the people selecting brochure topics had only past brochures from which to choose, so they never really knew what was available to them or their options for arranging it. And there was never enough time to get everything done!
The Brochure Wizard is fast, easy-to-use, flexible, and brochure topics are fully and effectively managed.
By using Microsoft's standard Wizard interface, we leveraged a clear, simple interface that users already know. By using Microsoft Word, we tapped its formidable programming, formatting and text storage features. The overwhelming number of selections—at this writing, over 600 topics—is reduced to 14 clear, uncluttered panels. All information their marketing coordinator needs to assemble a brochure is collected in one place, at one time, enhancing her efficiency as well.
The first few panels of the Wizard deal with "overhead" information such as binding, delivery, number of copies, and so on. In this panel, project information is entered. The "Personal Project List" button tunnels to the user's Personal Project List, another custom application component shared by many of the company's custom development projects. The name of the project is used in the brochure, the project number allows them to later bill the brochure back to the client as marketing expenses. The controls on the right side let you associate a contact record in their ACT! contact database with the brochure. Later, when the brochure is printed, it will be recorded in the contact record that the user sent a brochure, and what the date, project and filename was.
The entire Brochure System (the Wizard and "back-end" administrative utilities) is supported by on-line, context-sensitive help, shown above in the background.
Most brochure content is selected in several dual-list panels like this one for photos. The left list shows available topics. The right list shows topics the user has selected. Every time the user selects a topic, a preview appears. Users can add, remove and rearrange topics at will. They can also save and insert sets of frequently-used selections.
Whenever a selection is added or removed, the cost of the brochure is recalculated and displayed in the "Estimated Cost" field at the lower left. This helps the user make appropriate choices to stay within marketing budgets, and avoids sending a $300 brochure to chase a $1,000 project, which was a common problem with the previous system.
As with Microsoft's wizards, the checkered flag graphic marks the end of the journey. The user can choose whether to build the brochure so they can edit or print it themselves, or to transmit to the marketing coordinator for assembly (the usual selection). They can also save the Brochure Definition and come back to it later. Current settings are also saved separately for each user when Finish is clicked and restored next time the Wizard is started.
If the Brochure Definition is transmitted to the Marketing Coordinator, she is notified immediately by email that there is a Brochure Order pending. The e-mail contains a brief summary so she can budget her time.
Brochure Builder lets the Marketing Coordinator manage the brochure queue. Pending Brochure and Photo orders are displayed in a list. When she clicks on an order, the Summary field displays critical information about the order.
She can either build the brochure directly from this dialog box, or open it in the Wizard for further modification.
The Brochure Administration Utility contains several specialized tools that assist the Marketing Coordinator in editing topics, applying certain types of formatting, entering unit costs used by the Wizard to estimate brochure cost, and more.
Topic Manager is the heart of the Administration Utility. All topics pass through Topic Manager on their way to the brochure database, and are validated and formatted by it. In this example, a text topic is being added. Topic Manager recognizes that it is text, and offers several formatting options that are common to many text topics but are awkward or tedious to apply in the editing window. This helps ensure consistent formatting of topics throughout the assembled brochure.
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