Issue #0631/2 - Making an MFP user display show exactly what you, the customer want it to show, is as easy as HTML.
Designed to bring greater levels of efficiency and productivity to such professions as the financial, legal and healthcare sectors, Xerox has announced the Extensible Interface Platform –a software system that sits on Xerox MFPs that allows both service providers and large organisations to customise the MFPs with software that will provide services and workflow options specific to the environment in which the MFPs sit.
Because MFPs have an operator display panel, often a large LCD touch-panel display, to program the display opens up a vast range of possibilities to the customer for tailoring the menu system to bring proprietary applications and tasks that are in frequent use to the most accessible locations on the display.
One of the major keys to workplace efficiency is that only the services used by an individual will be displayed on the device, thus removing time wastage while that individual navigates through an array or irrelevant options to find the one application task that is needed. It is likened to the ability of a PC user to place an icon on the PC desktop that will give direct and immediate access to a particular, frequently used, application, tool or document - no matter how obscure.
Xerox gives the example of MFPs sitting in a hospital where a healthcare worker is able to walk up to the device, enter a pin into the operator panel, and gain direct admission to the hospital’s document management system for quick and easy access to all the patient forms that may be required. Those forms can be browsed, previewed and printed on the spot.
Never again should the situation arise where the right form is not available at the right place at the right time. Any form can be acquired within a matter of moments from any location in the hospital that is serviced by an MFP. There is no need to keep a wide range of pre-printed forms all around the hospital or to send runners/messengers to a central location to pick up a rarely used-form.
In reverse, a further menu item could take the worker to a scan function that instantly submits the completed form to the correct locations in the document management system for action and archiving.
Using this system, wasted time for the workers can be avoided, patient records can be instantly routed to where they are needed when they are needed, thus cutting down on potentially dangerous time delays and potential for forms to be lost in transit. Furthermore, the organisation will have even less need to hold stocks of forms, with all the availability and distribution issues that go with centralised stocks.
Xerox is proud of the platform and excited about the decision to make the platform HTML-based. This ensures that the customisation is as easy to achieve as creating a web page and that there will be no requirement for customers to employ proprietary systems specialists to program the system. It even allows the display to include graphics and animations to aid navigation or URL links for content from the internet as well as from the organisation’s web-based repositories and intranet resources.
EIP puts the needs of the organisation firmly at the forefront instead of the limitations of the hardware device. But, more than that, it puts the changing needs of the organisation first. The panel can be modified at any time to take account of new business needs and processes.
Initially, the software development kit will be provided to ten chartered members of the Xerox Development Consortium and is applicable first to the new enhanced models of the WorkCentre 200/ Pro 200. Ultimately, customer organisations themselves will be able to develop their own custom applications.
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