Inspire Software - Automation and Correspondence Services

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Hello and welcome to my Inspire software technology blog.

Inspire is a software suite created by GMC in Switzerland and covers a range of products, but in this blog I am going to be covering the key products I have used to date; Inspire Designer, Inspire Automation, Inspire Approval & MBLOX which have been used to create, manage and send letters, email and SMS. 

The aim of this blog is to provide a brief overview of these two products with additional resources to spread the word of how great these products are for knowledge purposes. 

Key Inspire Components:

1. Inspire Designer: an IDE used for configuring data to be used for Inspire data manipulation and represented in correspondence; IDesigner is where the document templates are designed and developed before being sent. For more information on the ICM and Inspire Designer, click here. 
2. Inspire Automation: IAutomation uses Queues, Processors, Schedulers and many other tools to automate the processes of the business, including callings to IDesigner, also creating necessary files and many other actions. To get more information and check out what Automation has to offer, click here. 
3. Inspire Email Gateway: Email Gateway is a server-side tool used for collecting files/data about an email to be sent, which is then formed and sent over HTTP with the help of template production from Inspire Designer and email elements collected using Inspire Automation. The alternative to Email Gateway is the Inspire Cloud that will manage the emails for you via the cloud. To get more information and check out what Email Gateway has to offer, click here. 
4. MBLOX: this is a service for managing and sending SMS'; an example of this can be with a REST API interface that is used to connect to an online MBLOX account with specified credentials and configurations that are set within Designer and called by Automation as an encapsulation. To get more information and check out what MBLOX has to offer, click here. 

Inspire Content Manager (ICM)

The ICM has many jobs and is an important part of the Inspire suite as a whole. The ICM can:

• Store WFD's, job files, graphics and many other resources
• Manage ICM users and their permissions
• Allow development of native files
• Be used to configure LDAP for structured user logons
• Automate backups for security / restore purposes and much more

For more information on the ICM and Inspire Designer, click here. 

Workflow Diagrams (WFD's)

Data manipulation and letter/email templates etc. are developed and maintained using Inspire Workflow Diagrams and have the extension '.wfd'. WFD definitions will need to be updated to reflect any required changes; this is done by checking out the version of the WFD to be changed and updated, then the WFD definition will need to be checked back in once changes are made. When being released, that version in the History Tree will need to be branched if versions are to be managed allowing governed source control, which especially helps if you have multiple environments such as a Development environment and a testing environment. 

Some examples of WFD workflow files are as follows:

• Data Workflows: a data workflow WFD can be created to configure and transform incoming data independently before any correspondence is created. The Data Workflow performs many different operations, such as inserting additional parameters, manipulating data e.g. converting data types and creating functions etc. using Transformer modules, combining multiple data items and outputting the end resulted data to the Correspondence workflow through a 'Workflow Gate'.
• Correspondence Workflows: here is where all the template development magic happens for the correspondence, first data is received from the Data Workflow using an External Data module, then the data travels through various modules including the Layout modules where the content is stored and eventually delivered to Inspire Automation through Output modules.
• Batching Workflows: when configuring a batching process for printing, it is common to have the batching process separate, not only because many correspondence WFD's would use the same batching process, but also because batching in itself is a complex setup e.g. sorting, grouping etc. the usual end point for these batches is at the Inspire Automation Print Console where batches are monitored / printed. 
• Resource & Content Library Workflows: these WFD's are for the sole purpose of storing universal elements that can be used by all correspondence WFD's; for example variable font-styles, signatures, etc.  

Another very useful Inspire native file type is a job file; job files are created by storing the configuration of the Designer workflow and using Automation to Automate it as a job; this is different to automating correspondence WFD's for example because job files are created for a given purposes, such as creating and archiving PDF files. 

For more information on the ICM and Inspire Designer, click here. 

The Automation Print Console

When it comes to Printing letters, the Print Console is very important as the console is used to manage all print batches in any given environment depending on the infrastructural setup of the solution. Admimistrators of the Print Console have a huge amount of configuration available, such as setting up users and permissions, creating workflows and sub-workflows to enable automatons, LDAP configuration for structured user logons and much more.

To get more information and check out what Automation has to offer, click here. 

Of course this is just a very brief taste of what GMC has to offer, there are many other products and services from the GMC suite, check out Interactive Plus and the Inspire Cloud etc.

There are many possibilities with GMC products if you are in a business or wanting to set one up.

I hope this has been helpful or at least a bit interesting for you, thanks for reading! 

Milton Alexander

E-mail: cmilton262@live.co.uk 

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