Everyone is passionate about something–it’s human nature–and we will relentlessly choose to learn more and more about our interests. I’ve recently developed an interest in history. It’s a topic I have not spent much time on since…I don’t know when, but lately I can’t get enough of it. I buy books, I download podcasts on iTunes, I read blogs…yada, yada, yada. In short, I’ve become passionate about it.

While we are free to pursue personal learning on our own time, self-directed learning in the workplace is often a struggle for employees. Most of us don’t get to pick what we learn about at work, and if we do, the time allowed for self-directed learning is often very limited.

An online training magazine I recently read cited a survey that showed that 80% of survey participants didn’t remember the last time they purchased any self-directed learning offerings. To add further evidence, I’ve observed that nearly 100% of Four51 customers that attend our training courses come because they were asked to by someone else at their company, typically their boss.

It makes sense, right? Companies make calculated investments in their employees and ought to get a return for their money.

Here’s an obvious but interesting fact: Most of us learn the bulk of our knowledge and skill on the job, through ad hoc interactions with our peers. We collaborate with each other on the fly, and learn a wealth of information while doing so. It’s a powerful dynamic, probably more powerful than any classroom or web-based instructor-led training!

That being said, my impetus for this post is a learning website called learnhub.com. It’s a new tool that allows educators and students to teach and learn in a collaborative online community. Basically, it’s Facebook meets eLearning.

But the coolest thing is that you don’t need to be a licensed, certified educator to teach courses. In their words, “Because LearnHub’s communities can be created by both teachers and learners, the system purposefully blurs the line between teacher and student to increase collaboration between learners and educators. By eliminating the divide between students and teachers and combining education with the benefit of social networking, LearnHub has created a niche in education that is unprecedented in the world of online education.”

Pretty cool stuff. These people truly understand how most of us learn: peer-to-peer, collaboratively, in social networks. And, as an added bonus, learnhub.com is a lot of fun. Learners and educators have the ability to create personal profiles, develop communities around any topic, get RSS updates about what other users are doing, and much more.

Why not make learning fun? Shouldn’t Four51 do this? I’m not making any announcements in this post, but I will say that Four51 is currently taking a hard look at ways to enhance our training offerings. In a few weeks, Four51 will be distributing a survey to all our customers asking for input about how we can enhance your Four51 learning. When you receive the survey, I ask you to take it seriously and really let us know what your training needs and wants are.

To me, learnhub.com is a clear indication that there is technology available to support a wide-variety of learning styles and needs. That’s what I want Four51 to do but the question remains, do you?

Owen

Popularity: 11%

Included in Four51′s Release 8 is functionality to support OCI integration with SAP Buyer Professional. Release 8 was implemented a couple of weeks ago and since then we have received four requests for OCI integration. This is exciting to me, as it shows there is some decent demand among SAP print buyers for integration with print sellers.

In this post, I’ll try to cover what OCI integration is, and what it provides both print buyers and print sellers.

OCI stands for Open Catalog Interface. It enables SAP users to integrate purchase order processing with a web-based supplier catalog (Four51). From a user’s perspective, the workflow looks like the following:

1. Users log onto their SAP system and open a new purchase order.

2. Users click a link to shop in a Four51 website which opens a web browser and logs them into your Four51 website automatically.

3. Users shop on Four51 and place items into their shopping cart.

4. When ready, they click “Submit” in the Four51 shopping cart check-out.

5. Four51 sends the order back to the SAP system in an electronic transimission. The user is simultaneously redirected back to their SAP system.

6. The order is routed through the SAP system’s established requisition and
approval process.

7. The SAP System confirms the order with Four51 via a electronic purchase order. The order then appears in a Four51 Administrative interface.

The benefits of OCI to an SAP print buyer are significant:

1) They can offload the management of product skus to the print seller rather than maintaining them in their SAP database.

2) OCI provides an enhanced, seamless user experience by tying SAP and Four51 together into one workflow.

3) OCI Integration reduces purchasing costs.

4) OCI prevents renegade spending, since purchase orders flow through the buyer’s established financial control and approval processes inside SAP.

The benefits of OCI to a print seller are also tremendous:

1) There aren’t many sellers that can support OCI, so being able to offer it to your buyers via Four51 is very unique.

2) OCI improves data sharing with your customer.

3) Variable documents aren’t a native capability of SAP, so you’re offering something they can only get through you.

4) Your cost to process purchase orders is also reduced.

All-in-all, OCI projects are fairly straightforward and easy to implement. Four51′s new OCI platform is very flexible and works easily with SAP. If you have a customer that uses SAP and you would like more information, contact your Four51 representative.

-Owen

Popularity: 12%

Copy fit rules are extremely powerful because they allow you to fit long strings of text inside a text container when the text is too long for the container or a paragraph line in the container. However, since copy fit rules can only be applied to a text container, a unique challenge exists when you need to copy fit only one paragraph within a text block. For example, you may have the following text block:

Name
Address Line One
Address Line Two
City, State Zip Code

If a user enters text that is too long for “Address Line One”, but does not enter text that is too long for the other variables, you likely don’t want to copy fit the other lines. Using Pageflex’s grouping, copy fit, and auto-hide features, you can allow for this very easily. In the following example, we discuss how to configure this for a block of text with four lines of text: Name, Address Line One, Address Line Two, City/State/Zip Code.

Here are the general steps we used to create the example:
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1. Draw four separate text boxes, one for each line of text: Name, Address Line One, Address Line Two, City/State/Zip Code.

2. Set the Flex Width property for each text box to “Minimize”.

3. Create a vertical group including all four text boxes, and set the group’s Vertical Alignment and Horizontal Alignment properties appropriately. This step is necessary to ensure desired collapsing.

4. Optionally, set the Bumper properties of each text box to accomodate for desired leading between text boxes.

5. Create an “Advanced” copy fit rule. You may create the rule to copy fit any of the following attributes: Font Size, Leading, Horizontal Scale, Space Before, Space After, Tracking. Be sure to check the option for “Fit paragraphs on single lines”. This will ensure that text does not wrap.

6. Apply your copy fit rule to all four text boxes.

7. Create four Plain Text/Constant variables named the following: Name, AddressLineOne, AddressLineTwo, CityStateZip. Apply these to the corresponding text on your template.

8. With your pointer tool, select the text box containing the Name variable. Go to the Flex tab of the Properties dialog box and look for “Auto-Hide Condition”. In the “For Element” box, enter “Name” (without quotes).

9. Repeat step #8 for AddressLineOne, AddressLineTwo and CityStateZip.
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To see a working example of this project and to download the project files, click here.

Popularity: 6%