WordsFlow and DocsFlow make top ten Most Valuable Plugins
Issue 137 of InDesign Magazine published a rundown of the ten most valuable plugins for InDesign, compiled from a survey of their board of experts. WordsFlow is #4 and DocsFlow is #8.
On WordsFlow:
Em Software’s WordsFlow is a no-brainer; I use it and couldn’t live without it. I used to send a PDF to my client, have her mark it up with PDF commenting, then spend a couple of hours deciphering her notes, scratch outs, word changes, and other tiny issues. Now, I send my client the exported Word file, and she makes all the minor changes. When she sends it back to me, I relink it with WordsFlow. The two hours that I would have worked on the minor changes is done in about a minute. —Laurie Ruhlin
On DocsFlow:
I think DocsFlow is a miracle plug-in. I’ve used it for many client projects for years because it’s rock solid and it turns me into a rock star in my client’s eyes. “What? We can still have all our users editing all these Google Docs remotely and we’ll have no problems updating the publication with our changes? What a relief! Thank you!” —Anne-Marie Concepción
You can read the article online at InDesign MVPs: Most Valuable Plug-ins.
To help with reading the whole issue (and future issues), InDesign Secrets is also offering a $10 discount code for membership: MVP.
Release: DocsFlow 3.2.1 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This quick release addresses problems with placing, exporting, and updating.
A romp through WordsFlow and DocsFlow with Terry White on Adobe Live
Joe Mathia (with Chris Ryland kibitzing) had a great time showing our WordsFlow and DocsFlow products on Adobe Live yesterday, hosted by Terry White. Terry’s the best, and the audience was alive with excellent questions.
You can watch a replay here.
Release: DocsFlow 3.2 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This release adds Google Drive shortcuts, improves the Import Options dialog, and addresses product stability issues.
Release: DocsFlow 3.1.1 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This quick release mainly improves 3.1’s new Google Docs Import Options dialog.
Free webinar “Successful Remote Workflows for Publishing Teams”
One of our very favorite InDesign gurus, “Her Geekness” Anne-Marie Concepcion, will be presenting three very timely free webinars on remote workflows for publishing teams, May 12, 13, and 14th. The final presentation on the 14th will be covering our WordsFlow and DocsFlow products.
Release: DocsFlow 3.1 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This release introduces an enhanced Import Options dialog and improves product stability.
Release: DocsFlow 3.0.1 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This patch improves stability and addresses issues with importing and updating.
Release: DocsFlow 3.0 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
We are excited to announce the release of DocsFlow 3.0, which offers a totally new & improved Place from Google Docs… experience and an updated Export to Google Docs dialog. Sites who have been previewing this new version say they can’t drag it away from their users. We hope you love it too!
Release: DocsFlow 2.18 for InDesign CS6, CC2018-2020
This release adds support for InDesign 2020 and discontinues support for some older versions.
Release: DocsFlow 2.17.3 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This patch addresses issues with exporting and updating linked documents.
Release: DocsFlow 2.17.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This patch mainly fixes an issue with link status reporting.
DocsFlow at the Star News Group
Super-consultant Gil Poulsen has written a fantastic overview of how the New Jersey-based Star News Group has adopted DocsFlow for their editorial workflow.
Release: DocsFlow 2.17.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This patch release fixes compatibility with Google Drive Shared drives and improves stability when working with endnotes.
Release: DocsFlow 2.17 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This release centralizes import settings, improves support for hyperlinks and cross-references, and enhances product stability.
Release: DocsFlow 2.16.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This patch responds to an upcoming Google server change and fixes a problem with drag’n’drop from Google Drive FS.
Release: DocsFlow 2.16 for InDesign CS5–CC2019
This release adds support for just-released InDesign CC 2019 and fixes some minor issues.
Release: DocsFlow 2.15.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This patch release includes a fix for the Import Options dialog in InDesign CC 2018.
Release: DocsFlow 2.15 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release prevents unnecessary Missing Plug-ins messages, overhauls progress bars, reduces document load times, and improves stability when updating stories.
Release: DocsFlow 2.14.4 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release addresses issues with column breaks, Team Drives, exporting, and updating.
Release: DocsFlow 2.14.3 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release works much more efficiently with large tables and fixes a couple minor problems.
Release: DocsFlow 2.14.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release fixes a connection issue with Google Team Drive accounts.
Release: DocsFlow 2.14.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release fixes a problem with connections to some non-Team Drive accounts.
Release: DocsFlow 2.14 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release adds support for Google Team Drives and Google Drive File Stream.
Release: DocsFlow 2.13.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This patch addresses incompatibilities with CC 2018’s new endnotes feature.
Release: DocsFlow 2.13 for InDesign CS5–CC2018
This release adds support for just-released InDesign CC 2018.
DocsFlow at Agidea
Matt Dunton, digital UX (user experience) designer at Agidea, has written a very helpful overview of their use of DocsFlow and how it solves “the problem of inflexible workflow between copy and designers.”
Release: DocsFlow 2.12 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release improves browser-based drag and drop and fixes updates of spanned table cells.
Release: DocsFlow 2.11 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release adds support for Relink, enhances the Place dialog, and improves the Export dialog.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10.5 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release improves stability, enables InDesign’s Missing Plug-ins alert, and addresses connectivity issues.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10.4 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This quick release works around a crash bug in just-released InDesign CC 2017.1.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10.3 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release fixes style mapping, supports list continuations, and improves stability.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release improves stability and fixes issues with exporting images to Google.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This patch addresses minor issues with Unlink, bullet lists, and change tracking.
Release: DocsFlow 2.10 for InDesign CS5–CC2017
This release adds support for just-released InDesign CC 2017, improves drag’n’drop, and addresses a few issues with exporting.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.6 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release fixes Export and Unlink and includes a number of stability improvements.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.5 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release includes fixes that improve the quality and stability of updates.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.4 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release includes fixes for a few crash issues and addresses a problem with the Unlink menu.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.3 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This patch provides fixes for problems with placing and updating documents.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This quick release fixes an issue with DocsFlow’s Place dialog.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release fixes a PDF export conflict and includes a number of internal improvements to make DocsFlow link management more efficient and responsive.
Release: DocsFlow 2.9 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release improves support for embedded images, broadens our definition of “empty paragraph,” and addresses issues with updating and exporting stories.
Release: DocsFlow 2.8 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release adds an Update Linked Google Docs Document option to the main menu and fixes a few problems including an uncommon-but-obnoxious application freeze.
Release: DocsFlow 2.7 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release officially introduces our custom installers, adds import control for cell insets, and fixes minor issues with licensing and export.
Release: DocsFlow 2.6 for InDesign CS5–CC2015
This release adds support for just-released InDesign CC 2015 and abandons Extension Manager CC in favor of, for now, a manual installation procedure (see below).
Release: DocsFlow 2.5.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This patch release addresses a problem with yesterday’s 2.5 release that was causing successful sign-ins to be ignored.
Release: DocsFlow 2.5 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release adds picture export, updates the Sign In to Google Docs process, and includes a number of other improvements and fixes.
DocsFlow users: switch to browser login immediately
On April 20th, Google is going to shut down the old-style API (application programming interface) employed when you use a direct login in DocsFlow. (You may have gotten a scary-looking notice from Google that says “ACTION REQUIRED: Your Google Apps account is using the Documents List API, which will stop functioning on April 20th, 2015”.)
Release: DocsFlow 2.4.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release mainly addresses issues with anchored, linked items causing damage to the parent story’s DocsFlow connection.
Release: DocsFlow 2.4.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This quick release deals with a recent Google Drive change that was preventing drag’n’drop from working.
Release: DocsFlow 2.4 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
With this release we’re introducing a new, fully functional, Pro-product trial mode with a 15-day evaluation period (details below). This release also includes improvements for text updating and exporting.
Release: DocsFlow 2.3.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release improves compatibility with OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and fixes problems with the Place dialog and with table updating.
Release: DocsFlow 2.3 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release fixes an incompatibility with the just-released InDesign CC 2014.1 update, changes how documents are displayed in DocsFlow’s Place dialog, and includes minor fixes for document updating.
Release: DocsFlow 2.2.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This maintenance release adapts to recent Google service changes and addresses problems with drag’n’drop and sheets.
WordsFlow and DocsFlow user guides now printable/pdf-able
In this Age of the Web, hard copy (physical or virtual) doesn’t matter to most people, but it really matters to some. So we’ve just made important parts of our web site printable or pdf-able for when you want to take some part of it offline with you in paper or digital form, for study, reference or just light vacation reading.
Release: DocsFlow 2.2.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This patch release addresses an issue with the recently-introduced story status indicator on the DocsFlow link icon.
Release: DocsFlow 2.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release mainly adds support for back-saving to previous versions of InDesign, but also addresses a few minor issues.
Release: DocsFlow 2.1.2 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This quick release fixes a build problem with the CC 2014 Windows plug-in and improves update behavior in low memory conditions.
Release: DocsFlow 2.1.1 for InDesign CS5–CC2014
This release adds compatibility with InDesign CC 2014 along with a few fixes.
Release: DocsFlow 2.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This dot-release improves ODF support, adds support for exporting InDesign’s various story breaks, and improves overall stability.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.11 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This DocsFlow patch corrects a plug-in packaging problem.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.10 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This DocsFlow quick release fixes an issue with links to placed GDrive documents and also story export.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.9 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This DocsFlow quick release fixes minor issues with updating and exporting.
DocsFlow helps out at Syracuse University
Seth Gitner, Assistant Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University, writes:
In early 2012, a dozen students in the Multimedia Projects course at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University set out to create an interactive storytelling mobile tablet application on Central New York’s notorious winters.
Famous for frigid temperatures and record-crushing snowfalls, Central New York averages 116.9 inches of snow annually. During the previous winter, more than 179 inches of snow accumulated, making “winter” a natural choice for an interactive storytelling project.
The story ends with a call-out to DocsFlow:
The stories for this application were inserted using a content management system that combined Google Documents and InDesign using the InDesign plugin DocsFlow, from Em Software.
Go read the whole thing—it’s a great story.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.8 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This patch release resolves several problems with exporting stories and with updating a story’s associated Google Docs document.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.7 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This patch release addresses issues with updating Google Docs documents from Adobe InDesign (via Update Original) and improves the quality and general stability of updating.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0.6 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6/CC
This release adds support for InDesign CC and includes improvements to product stability and usability.
Release: DocsFlow 2.0 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
It’s with a great sigh of relief that, after nearly half a year of substantial internal re-engineering and intense development, we today release DocsFlow 2.0, the much anticipated follow-up to our acclaimed Google Docs connector plug-in. DocsFlow 2.0 offers many customer-driven improvements and new features. The new Pro level gives you full export to Google Docs, and full updating, where you can push-merge your changes from InDesign back into your linked Google Docs document, along with spreadsheet support.
New lynda.com course showing DocsFlow and WordsFlow
Anne-Marie Concepción has published a new online video course Using Word and InDesign Together on lynda.com that includes brief overviews of both WordsFlow and DocsFlow.
The course itself looks great, as you’d expect from Anne-Marie, and the two short overviews of our products are spot on. She mentions DocsFlow 2.0, which includes two-way linking to Google Docs, and which we’re just about to release in the next few days.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 4 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta adds support for OpenOffice (ODF) files, enables multi-document import, and addresses minor issues found during testing.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 3 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta introduces Pro and non-Pro-level licensing, adds visual indicators to DocsFlow-managed stories, increases import flexibility, and addresses issues found during testing.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 2 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta addresses some initial issues found during testing.
Release: DocsFlow 1.6.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release of DocsFlow resolves a conflict with our WordsFlow product and adds quality and stability improvements for InDesign story updating.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of DocsFlow 2.0 beta 1, which adds long-awaited support for exporting InDesign stories to Google Docs. In addition, Google Docs documents can now be updated from their linked InDesign stories. We’ve also made improvements to the Place from Google Docs dialog and redesigned DocsFlow’s internals to better support some planned features in upcoming releases.
Release: DocsFlow 1.6 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release of DocsFlow introduces major improvements to table handling and improves the overall quality of the merge process.
Release: DocsFlow 1.5 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’re happy to announce DocsFlow 1.5, which adds support for Google Drive files, improves the drag’n’drop workflow, converts page breaks to InDesign frame breaks, and enhances the quality of story updating.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.8 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release addresses a loss-of-connection issue and includes several improvements for updating from Google Docs.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.7 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release supports placing public documents even when not in the user’s account, and fixes a slew of minor bugs.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.6 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release addresses Mac OS X 10.7 & 10.8 installation issues and improves link handling.
DocsFlow accelerates annual report production at literacy project
In general, we’re happy to donate software to qualified educational institutions (for teaching applications) and to non-profit organizations, and we did so for Wisconsin Literacy a few months ago. Sheila McGrath kindly reports back with a very positive review of using DocsFlow with InDesign for their annual report production.
Thank you so much for giving us DocsFlow. Wisconsin Literacy produced their annual report using DocsFlow, with me as an off-site volunteer graphic designer.
(Click on the annual report cover for the full pdf version.)
DocsFlow for CS4 worked very well for flowing text into InDesign. I was not able to get custom style-mapping to work automatically (likely an older Mac Javascript version on my machine rather than a DocsFlow problem) but I had no problem importing text into InDesign smoothly. I just re-imported text after changes and my styles were retained, so all was well. The Links panel indications of file changes worked fine also.
Release: DocsFlow 7/8.1.4.5 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release fixes spreadsheet imports and addresses styling issues.
Release: DocsFlow 7/8.1.4.4 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release addresses a problem with loss of styling.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.3 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This patch release improves document updating.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.2 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This patch release fixes problems with style mapping and with deleted documents being displayed in the Place dialog.
DocsFlow gets “exceptionally good” rating in a full review from InDesign Magazine
David Blatner, one of the patriarchs of the InDesign ecosystem, in the June/July 2012 issue of InDesign Magazine, reviewed the latest version of DocsFlow and gave it 4 stars for “exceptionally good.”
David opens with a great story:
For me, one of the most memorable highlights at the PePcon conference this year was a simple conversation in the hallway with an attendee about the DocsFlow plug-in. Staring at me in near-disbelief, he stammered, “You mean I can have all my writers and editors working in Google Docs, and have their changes automatically update in InDesign? That’s awesome!” Yes, yes it is.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.1 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This release of DocsFlow adds support for Adobe InDesign CS6, adds links for images, and includes many improvements to importing and updating.
Beta release: DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 2 for InDesign CS6
This beta improves the quality and reliability of DocsFlow updates.
Beta release: DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 1 for InDesign CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 1 for Adobe InDesign CS6.
DocsFlow is a huge time saver at a non-profit
David Rager, a designer/art director in Paris who works with a non-profit organization called The Ecology Center in California, has been using DocsFlow recently and is quite enthusiastic about the product.
I’ve been plugging away with DocsFlow over the last few months and found it that it’s been a huge time saver. What I love most is that it takes away the trouble I often run into with the conventional edit, proofread, approval, repeat system. My clients are also very happy that they get to interact with a live document and see how their text edits change the way the design looks and feels.
Our first “DocsFlow project” came back from press recently, 5 contributors were involved, each updating their own docs and everyone is very pleased with the results.
(Click on the graphic to review the issue.)
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.4 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We just posted DocsFlow 1.4, in which we made further improvements to placing and managing large numbers of Google Docs documents, improved usability, added an option for secure, browser-based sign-ins, and fixed a few gremlins.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.3.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
This patch release makes staying signed in while working with documents containing many GDocs document links much more possible, and also addresses problems with mis-mapped styles, paragraph spacing and dates in spreadsheets.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.3 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We just released DocsFlow 1.3, which includes several new usability features, substantial performance improvements, and a handful of bug fixes.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.2.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
This patch release fixes crash issues with using Edit Original and displaying the Place Google Docs Documents dialog.
Update: DocsFlow 6.1.2 for InDesign CS4
This minor update addresses an incompatibility with DocsFlow 6.1.2 for InDesign CS4 and some Windows 7 installations. If you’ve experienced problems signing in to your Google Docs account with the initial DocsFlow 6.1.2 release, please remove DocsFlow from your Plug-Ins folder and then download and install this 6.1.2 re-release.
We apologize for the inconvenience of these extra steps and hope that you find DocsFlow to be a valuable addition to your Google Docs workflow.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.2 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We’re very pleased to announce DocsFlow 1.2, which adds support for spreadsheets, drag-and-drop and a host of other improvements resulting from many hours of production use by our expanding community of DocsFlow users.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We’re pleased to announce DocsFlow 7.1, which, along with general fixes and improvements, adds several new features including full tables support and footnote styling.
We’re also very pleased to announce DocsFlow 6.1 for Adobe InDesign CS4, available immediately (see DocsFlow for InDesign CS4 sidebar).
Early DocsFlow release reactions
It’s only been a couple of days, but we’ve seen a huge amount of interest in DocsFlow since its official release on Tuesday.
The Twittersphere has exploded with interest (keep scrolling down for dynamic refresh).
And The Unofficial Apple Weblog has an enthusiastic response.
We sponsored the InDesign Secrets podcast this week with Anne-Marie Concepcion and David Blatner, and they talked about DocsFlow in podcast 156 at some length (starting at 15:00). The whole podcast is great (as usual).
DocsFlow 7.0 for InDesign CS5/5.5 released
We’re thrilled to announce that, after almost exactly two years of development, and several months of intense beta testing, we’ve released the first version of DocsFlow (7.0) for InDesign CS5 and CS5.5. DocsFlow is a plugin that connects Google Docs to InDesign, for a breakthrough in affordable collaborative publishing.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 4 for InDesign CS5/5.5
DocsFlow 7.0 beta 4 (for InDesign CS5/5.5, Mac OS and Windows) is now available for download and testing. We think this version represents a huge step forward, as it fixes a few major updating and stability problems that were hampering usability. We’ve also made further improvements to the merge process and made various other fixes and improvements that are detailed below.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 3 for InDesign CS5/5.5
DocsFlow 7.0 beta 3 (for InDesign CS5/5.5, Mac OS and Windows) is now available for download and testing. This version adds style mapping, as well as many internal changes which improve the import and update experience.
