Frequently Asked Questions

By Division:

PRO Products

1. Will additional work be required to convert fonts for different jobs?
2. Does PRO Meta to PDF have the capability to "watermark" or insert content into PDF files?
3. What platforms are supported?
4. Do PRO products have indexing capability?
5. Do PRO products have PDF bookmark capability?
6. Can PRO products produce search enabled PDFs?
7. Can you do batch conversion of metacode to PDF?
8. Can you automatically kick-off batch conversions?
9. Is there a way for the AFP transform to run as a started task and sit on the "back end" of a JES defined printer destination. Can data be seamlessly pulled out of JES to keep so that we don't have to apply maintenance to hundreds of applications?
10. Does PRO Meta to AFP only provide support for Letter, Legal, and A4 paper sizes?
11. Does PRO Meta to AFP handle Tumble Duplex?
12. Is it true that the biggest part of any conversion effort is obtaining all the printer resources required for the print job and putting them on the mainframe?
13. How does your licensing work?
14. How much JCL would need to be changed in each of the 500 jobs to do the transforms, and how long would those JCL changes take?
15. Can your transforms map paper trays?
16. Does your software handle full colour input and output?
17. Can your software accept a CASS/PAVE type file and update addresses?
18. Can your software move an address to accommodate a new envelope window?
19. What about adding slipsheets?
20. Can your software remove content from the page such as OMR marks, barcodes or even text?
21. Can your software replace existing elements such as changing an OMR to a barcode?
22. Can I send different subdocuments to different output files based on some business rules?
23. Can your software generate XML files?
24. Can your software concatenate small files into larger print runs?
25. What about duplicate resources when concatenating files?
26. Can your software create PDF/A documents?

Document Accessibility Services

1. What type of document print format does my document need to be in to submit it to Crawford that will allow you to convert them to the Alternate Formats?
2. How much of the content of a traditional printed document can be converted to a document in the Alternate Formats?
3. What Alternate Accessibility formats does Crawford reproduce traditional printed documents into?
4. Do you perform reproductions into Alternate Formats for both variable content (monthly billing or account statements, for example), that need to be produced on a regular (monthly, weekly, daily) basis or just static content documents where multiple copies of the same document are mass produced?
5. For regular monthly statement production do you mail directly to our clients, or do we need to arrange for such distribution ourselves?
6. Do you have production sites in both Canada and the United States? 
7. How is your pricing structured for one-time and ongoing production charges, and do you charge by the page or the document?
8. How similar are the service and quality levels that are used for CrawfordTech's Alternate Format production to what we require to be in place with the commercial print vendors, such as those we contract with for the production of our traditional printed billing statements and customer communication documents.
   
9. How many clients or customers of ours will require Alternate Format documents for our printed business communications?
10. Can you help us interpret the needs and requirements per the recent Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) legislation?
    

Archive Management Solutions

1. Can PRO Archiver run projects from EMC Documentum Archiver services for Reports (ASR)?
2. What platforms are supported by PRO Archiver?
3. Can PRO Archiver archive in PDF/A?
4. Is the PRO Archiver Processing Server multi-threaded?
5. What input formats are accepted by PRO Archiver?
   

Answers for PRO Products

1. Will additional work be required to convert fonts for different jobs?
   No additional work is required to convert fonts unless the fonts are encrypted or you will be applying font mapping. Optionally, font mapping allows you to reduce the resulting file size of a PDF file as well as improve the viewing performance and quality.
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2. Does PRO Meta to PDF have the capability to 'watermark' or insert content into PDF files?
   The ability to add a ‘watermark’ to a PDF file during conversion is handled by our unique PDF ‘Overlay Merging’ feature. This feature has the flexibility to add pages from PDF files during conversion. PDF files can include color logos, pre-printed forms, signatures, watermarks or any other content you want merged.
   
   You can also have different ‘watermarks’ on different pages of the converted PDF, offering great flexibility. In addition, we can dynamically select different Overlay files at conversion time, thus facilitating a wide variety of requirements, including one-to-one marketing applications, multi-language environments and multiple applications in a single system.
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3. What platforms are supported?
   Our products run on Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/ME/Vista, UNIX (AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux), z/OS and Linux for System z.
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4. Do PRO products have indexing capability?
   The PRO Indexer product creates index files with keys selected from the input print files. These index files can be used to populate a database, to create XML, or many other purposes. PRO Indexer in included in many of the products including PRO Transform Plus and Operations Express.
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5. Do PRO products have PDF bookmark capability?
   Our PDF output driver has an indexing capability that can be used to generate either hierarchical or flat bookmarks in PDF files.
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6. Can PRO products produce search enabled PDFs?
   Since PRO PDF products convert from object to object, text from the print stream can be used for searches in PDF files. When converting from EBCDIC print files, font mapping and code point mapping can provide search enabled PDF files.
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7. Can you do batch conversion of metacode to PDF?
   Our software can be used to convert files to PDF in batch mode and put them into an archive system or directly onto a web site. Many of our customers may find it more efficient to use our PRO Transform Plus products to split print files for storage in the native print format.
   
   A conversion can be invoked to convert the data to PDF on the fly when a user wants to look at the document.  Alternatively, we offer an API that users can incorporate in to their own C/C++, Java or dot NET applications.
   
   The methodology used depends on a number of factors including the size of documents, storage requirements, conversion times, hit rate and system loads. Contact us for assistance in determining the best solution for your documents.
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8. Can you automatically kick-off batch conversions?
   In the z/OS environment, we offer PRO Workflow JES which pulls jobs out of the MVS spooler for automatic transformation and returns the converted output file to the spooler for printing or transmits it to alternative locations via FTP or LPR/LPD. It can run in 3 modes, as a batch program, a started task or as functional subsystem.
   
   In UNIX and NT environments, the PRO WorkFlow Server will watch directories for print files, invoke PRO transforms and directly output files to printers or directories.
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9. Is there a way for the transform to run as a started task and sit on the ‘back end’ of a JES defined printer destination? Can data be seamlessly pulled out of JES to keep so that we don't have to apply JCL changes to hundreds of applications?
   Yes. PRO Workflow JES can run as a started task and pull output from the queue based on a number of criteria and then put the print output back on the JES queue for printing with PSF. This avoids the need to make JCL changes to effect mass process changes.
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10. Does the PRO suite only provide support for Letter, Legal, and A4 paper sizes?
    No, the PRO suite of products can also handle custom paper sizes, which can be any size up to and including 17 X 14 inch pages.
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11. Does PRO Transforms handle 'tumble duplex'?
    Yes, tumble duplex applications are supported.
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12. Is it true that the biggest part of any conversion effort is obtaining all the printer resources required for the print job and putting them on the mainframe?
    Normally this is a large task; however we have simplified it. If you are converting from AFP, you can reference your AFP resource libraries in place. If you are converting from Xerox LCDS/Metacode, the Xerox printers have the same resources on each one, then you will only need to load from one of them.
    
    If the printers each have different resources, then you may need to load each of them into different libraries. You would need to understand which library to use with which application. If you can load resources from your Xerox printer onto a magnetic tape (3420 or 3480/3490) that can be read on the mainframe, then you can use Teltape. We provide a 30-day trial for Teltape which can load all of the Xerox resources from a Xerox tape into a PDS, adding a 2 byte prefix to each resource name. (If the printers have only the QIC cartridges in them, we have the ability to copy these tapes onto 3490 cartridge for you).
    
    If your printers do not have a tape drive on them, then you may have a large task as you will have to use floppy disks to transfer the files to a PC and then upload them. Often, users have many or all of the Xerox resources on an Elixir workstation. If so, then they could be easily uploaded from there to the mainframe. For JSL source resources, there is an additional step once the resources are loaded.
    
    We include a utility, which converts the ASCII/binary format into standard EBCDIC text format so you can edit them on the mainframe.
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13. How does your licensing work?
    We use software licenses that are locked to specific computers.  In Windows and UNIX environments, we will lock to a physical server or instance of an operating system in the case of virtual machines.  On mainframes we lock to a specified LPAR.  We issue a single license to each customer, which contains information on all products and hosts that a customer has licensed.  The same license file can then be deployed to all licensed computers.
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14. Do you license by CPU or MIPS?
    No, we do not track how much processing power is made available to our software.  We do not place any processing limits on our software to control the speed of our output whether by the speed of the CPU or the number of CPU’s.
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15. Can your transforms map paper trays?
    Yes, we can map paper trays from any of our supported PDL’s to any of our supported output PDL’s.  In addition, we can add tray calls based on data triggers where none existed before.
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16. Does your software handle full colour input and output?
    Yes, all of our interpreters and drivers have full color support as well as highlight color and spot color.  We can also do grayscale and dithering when needed.
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17. Can your software accept a CASS/PAVE type file and update addresses?
    Yes, we can do this regardless of the input or output types with our Document Enhancer feature.  By defining a key field to allow us to match records in the external file with the subdocuments within a printfile, we can remove the current address and update the page with the new information.
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18. Can your software move an address to accommodate a new envelope window?
    Yes, the Document Enhancer products have the ability to extract the addresses and rewrite them to the pages in any location.
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19. What about adding slipsheets?
    Yes, we can add slipsheets and add indexed information from the current subdocument and add external static content.
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20. Can your software remove content from the page such as OMR marks, barcodes or even text?
    Yes, our PRO Document Enhancer products can suppress any element on the pages of the documents.
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21. Can your software replace existing elements such as changing an OMR to a barcode?
    Yes, our PRO Document Enhancer products can replace any OMR or barcode symbology with any other symbology the user chooses.
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22. Can I send different subdocuments to different output files based on some business rules?
    Yes, the splitting and streaming capabilities of our PRO Transform Plus products allow users to perform this type of operation.  Based on a weight table or data triggers, a given page or subdocument can be directed to a different file or even a different output driver.  For example, a user could direct subdocuments 10 pages and smaller to one file for printing on a cut-sheet printer and larger subdocuments to a different file to be printed on a continuous feed printer.
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23. Can your software generate XML files?
    Yes, our PRO Indexer capability is very flexible and allows the user to define any output format they choose, including complex XML formats.
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24. Can your software concatenate small files into larger print runs?
    Yes, our Pro Concatenator product can concatenate small files and even convert them to a different format in the same pass.
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25. What about duplicate resources when concatenating files?
    Our software automatically removes duplicate resources at runtime and provides a single set of resources for all of the concatenated input files.
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26. Can your software create PDF/A documents?
    Yes, our PDF/A output driver can create PDF/A-1B output files.
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