Aproove's latest release includes significant features that greatly expand your collaboration and task management capabilities!

Release 2022/R3 is significant! This release elevates Aproove to another level by incorporating a comprehensive "instant messaging" feature that can be used at task and sub-task levels.

Previously in Aproove, a task got sent along with some desired instructions; however, if the task receiver had questions or the task sender wanted to add more context, that would typically get done outside of Aproove.

"Instant messaging" gives you the capability to invoke a discussion and collaborate at a project and task level directly inside Aproove. All your collaboration gets stored centrally inside the project and tasks. You can also use the instant message area as a file drop zone, which adds any uploaded files into the project container.

You can @mention anyone (even guests who are not Aproove users), and with instant in-app or email chat notifications, you will be continuously in the loop!

The new "Sub-Task Delegation" feature dramatically enhances your workflow and task capabilities within the Aproove platform. Aproove already caters to both clients at both ends of the workflow spectrum, including those who have complex workflows and those who prefer a more flexible workflow capability. Sub-Task Delegation adds a whole new dimension!

Having listened to our customers, it became clear that you may only have a single "point person in some scenarios." For example, you may be a brand, and you need to involve a 3rd party agency in your workflow, or you may be an agency, and you need to invoke the end client into your workflow. You know that your contact outside of your organization has to go through specific steps, people, and/or departments to complete the task you are giving them. However, you have limited knowledge of that information and rely on your contact to do whatever is necessary to complete the required task so your workflow can continue to flow.

Sub Task Delegation is perfect in this scenario! now, your contact can receive the task/s you have sent and sub-delegate parts or all of that task to the necessary stakeholders to get the job done!

One task can become multiple sub-tasks assigned to many people; however, all you care about is the completion of the task you assigned. What's more, you can use sub-task delegation inside a fixed or manual workflow; the choice is yours!

But that is not all. We have also added significant new functionality to our Adobe InDesign plugin. Now you can see and view your individual and team "To-Do" lists directly inside the application, apply timesheets, and much more. 

See below for more details on our exiting 2022/R3 release. Out Now! 

All businesses and organizations always deal with at least one workflow, and graphic design businesses are no exception. The more efficient a business can execute its workflow(s), the more effective and productive it will be as an organization. This is where workflow management comes in.

Workflow management is an effort to map, analyze, and optimize a workflow to be as efficient as possible. However, in graphic design businesses and creative businesses, a key challenge in implementing workflow management is finding the right balance between maintaining creativity and optimizing the workflow.

Workflow management, in essence, is about providing structure to a workflow to ensure efficiency. Still, it's also no secret that structure and rigidity may limit creativity, which is essential for a creative business like a graphic design agency.

In this guide, we will discuss how to effectively implement workflow management in graphic design, covering the following elements:

• What is workflow management?

• Unique challenges of workflow management implementation in graphic design

• Typical anatomy of a graphic design workflow

• Step-by-step guide on implementing workflow management in graphic design

Virtually all organizations involve at least one approval process in their day-to-day operations, from as 'simple' as submitting a daily report for review to presenting an annual strategy to be reviewed by the board of directors.

Yet, it's no secret that approval processes can be the bane of efficiency, full of delays, endless revision cycles, and even disputes.

Probably you've experienced the pain of submitting something for review, waiting for days until you've finally got feedback, only for the higher-ups or the clients to ask for another revision. Even worse, the inefficient time you've spent waiting for approval can often be as long or even longer than the time you've spent on the project.

The efficiency of the approval process will directly affect the organization's overall efficiency and productivity. Poor approval processes will damage the business's overall performance, so the organization will need more time and resources to achieve its objectives.

In this guide, we will learn all you need to know about creating an effective and efficient approval process, and by the end of this guide, you'd have learned about:

• What is a process? Process VS workflow

• What is an approval process?

• Key challenges to ensuring the efficiency of an approval process

• Best practices for approval process efficiency

• How you can streamline and optimize your approval workflows

In any organization with a marketing department, the marketing approval process is often one of the essential workflows and one of the most challenging to optimize.

The majority of marketers have admitted that approval delays are one of the top reasons they miss deadlines. So, whether an organization can streamline and optimize its marketing approval process will affect how efficiently the whole organization will perform.

On the other hand, many marketing leaders and marketing teams still rely on inefficient methods and techniques like emails, basic file-sharing systems (DropBox or Google Docs) that are not designed for approval workflows, and traditional project management systems, while in reality, today’s complex approval process demands more.

A centralized approach to managing marketing approval is crucial, and an organization will need the correct tools and strategies to streamline the whole approval process.

In this guide, we will show you the actionable steps for building and optimizing an efficient marketing approval workflow, and by the end of this guide, you’d have learned about:

• The concept of a marketing approval workflow

• Why it’s essential to have a streamlined and optimized workflow

• Common challenges in the marketing approval process and how to tackle them

• A step-by-step guide to building and optimizing an efficient marketing approval workflow

• Best practices to follow to ensure the efficiency of the approval workflow

Aproove has changed its development strategy, providing shorter development sprint cycles, thus providing more frequent releases.

Sometimes Aproove will have significant new feature release announcements. Sometimes, a sprint could be a "maintenance" release that improves the core technology or provides the backend functions required for new features in coming releases.

The 2022/R2 release falls into the maintenance release category, although it does contain some noteworthy new features.

As 2022/R2 is classed as a maintenance release, we will not host a webinar for this release and will incorporate the new 2022/R2 features into our R3 release webinar in March 2022.

Below is a summary of the new features in version 2022/R2

Enterprise Workflow Management, also called Enterprise Work Management (EWM) or Enterprise Process Management (EPM), is essentially the application of business process management, or BPM, in an individual enterprise.

However, “enterprise workflow management” is also often used to refer to the enterprise work management software that enables us to implement workflow management on an enterprise scale.

So, what is Business Process Management?

BPM often called workflow management, is a discipline focused on identifying, modeling/mapping, analyzing, measuring, and optimizing workflows and especially process workflows (note: we’ll learn about the differences between “workflow” and “process” later on in this article). 

A workflow can be defined as a set of tasks that get executed sequentially to achieve a specific objective. Thus, an enterprise workflow will help the company achieve its business objective (or objectives). 

All organizations and every professional working in an organization always involve at least one workflow. A hotel receptionist, for example, has a workflow for facilitating guest check-ins. 

Some organizations can involve only one pretty straightforward workflow. However, an enterprise typically involves multiple workflows that are all interconnected in a complex manner, which is why enterprise workflow management (EWM) would require a unique, more thorough approach while considering the enterprise’s overall strategy and available resources. 

Due to the typically complex bureaucracy of an enterprise, EWM will also need to provide a governance model for the management, implementation, and evaluation of the workflow management initiatives.

All businesses and organizations have workflows. Even individual workers always involve at least one workflow in their day-to-day operations.

When these workflows get executed efficiently, your business is also efficient, and vice versa: inefficient workflows will result in missed deadlines, lost opportunities, and losses in revenue, profits, and even reputation. 

But what are workflows, and why is it important to document your workflow? More importantly, how can we optimize these workflows to be as efficient as possible? 

In this guide, we will discuss:

• What is a workflow

• Different types of workflow

• Why you should document your workflow

• How to document your workflow reliably and accurately

• How to analyze the established workflow

• How to optimize the workflow to make sure it’s as efficient as possible

And more!

We can’t deny that in today’s business environment, marketing is growing more complex than ever: marketing teams are getting bigger and must handle even more activities from email, social media, public relations, advertising, and more.

Yet, we can only expect marketing to grow even more complex and challenging in 2022 and in the years to come.

Ensuring your marketing team stays productive, organized, and effective can be very challenging. The key to success is to create a marketing workflow capable of handling the details of every campaign and marketing project.

In this ultimate guide to creating a marketing workflow, we’ll discuss all you need to know about creating an effective marketing workflow for your marketing team.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have learned about:

• What is a workflow?

• What is a marketing workflow?

• The benefits of having a comprehensive marketing workflow

• A step-by-step guide on creating an effective marketing workflow

• How to analyze and optimize your marketing workflow to improve its efficiency

And more!

Creating a business process map (a process we know as Business Process Mapping) can be an effective way to improve your organization’s overall efficiency.

All businesses deal with at least one business process or sometimes (inaccurately) called workflow. The more efficient an organization executes its business process, the more efficient its overall performance.

In practice, however, most businesses deal with multiple business processes intricately linked with one another. Ensuring they get executed as efficiently as possible can be challenging.

Not to mention, most teams consist of multiple people with different personalities and thoughts. So, getting the whole team to execute a business process in a consistent, most efficient way can be tricky.

This is where a business process map can help ensure the efficiency and consistency of your business processes.

In this guide, we will discuss all you need to know about business process mapping, including but not limited to:

• What are business process maps and business process mapping?

• The scope of business process mapping

• Benefits of a business process map

• The principles and framework to map out a business process

And more!

We wanted to get 2022 off with a bang by announcing an exciting new Aproove Work Management release featuring the
Adobe InDesign Extension!

The first release of 2022 brings significant benefits to any business dealing with Adobe InDesign files either in-house or via a 3rd party supplier. The new Adobe InDesign plugin allows production users to interact with Aproove business workflows without leaving their native Adobe InDesign application!

The 2022/R1 release also brings many new features and enhancements, including a significant version 3 of the Aproove API containing over 50 new functions. But that's not all! We have also launched a fantastic new advanced search, additional review interface capabilities, form enhancements, and more! Please see below for more details.

Register below to join our Webinar on Wednesday 26th January 2022 to Learn More about the Adobe InDesign plugin and other release information!

Below is a summary of the new features in version 2022/R1