Among several new features and enhancements, uStore 7.0 has more pricing flexibility and the ability to help customers achieve lights-out, pre-press automation.

XMPie, A Xerox Company, the leading provider of software solutions for Individualized Communications Management (ICM), will introduce uStore 7.0 at GRAPH EXPO 2012. The newest features, including JDF compliance, a pricing plug-in for integrating custom pricing mechanisms, the ability to work with the Xerox FreeFlow Connect component, and more, help customers simplify maintenance and administration of stores and enrich the user experience.

"XMPie is committed to Web-to-print and is continuously striving to meet the needs of print providers today," said Jacob Aizikowitz, president of XMPie. "The latest from uStore 7.0, together with everything introduced in uStore version 6.0, such as the document submission feature, gives our customers the efficiencies needed to cost-effectively scale their business through Web-to-print."

Current customers of XMPie PersonalEffect configurations that include the uStore module will be able to upgrade to uStore 7.0 and optionally add the FreeFlow Connect component to their configuration. This will give them the ability to easily manage a touch-less, automatic, and efficient workflow in their shop throughout the entire order-to-fulfillment process.

At a more basic product level, uStore 7.0 is JDF compliant. Every print job created is now accompanied with an automatically-generated JDF job ticket, which makes processing the jobs through JDF-compliant devices a straightforward task. With the new JDF capabilities of uStore, customers can gain the benefits of greater automation, speed, cost efficiency and ease-of-use. XMPie uStore's JDF scheme has been validated with FreeFlow Process Manager. Therefore, customers who already work with FreeFlow Process Manager can now seamlessly integrate with uStore.

To simplify maintenance and administration of stores, uStore 7.0 introduces Product Profiles, where administrators can define global product properties, including pricing and production parameters that will apply to a group of products. Those properties will automatically cascade to products that were given the relevant Product Profile on a storefront-wide basis, saving time and avoiding errors. For example, a Product Profile created for business cards will ensure that all business card products that were assigned that specific Product Profile will inherent the same parameters, such as shipping options, stock type, order quantities, pricing, etc. To maintain flexibility, administrators can selectively decide what parameters are inherited, and which are overridden on a product-by-product basis.

Other new enhancements to uStore 7.0:

• Social sign-in allows for creating B2C portals where customers can register for a store with their Facebook account, rather than forcing the creation of a separate login.
• An external pricing-engine plug-in simplifies integration with MIS systems. Users can now use Excel as their pricing engine, for example.
• Enhanced reporting with Excel charts and pivot tables allows users to capture cost breakdown and better analyze profit margins.
• Enhanced automated document preflight warns shoppers about issues with files they have uploaded and gives them the opportunity to fix them before going to production.
• A Portuguese user interface was added to the impressive range of languages already supported by uStore.
• The new LivePerson integration allows store staff to proactively interact with store visitors while they browse the Web-to-print portal using Live Chat instant messaging or Click-to-Call, increasing visitor conversion and average order value.

"XMPie uStore continues to take giant leaps ahead, becoming one of the most intuitive, flexible, and extensible solutions out there for expanding a print business and improving operational efficiencies," said Will Furphy, marketing technology professional, XMPie Users Group Board Member and Managing Director at Technique, a provider of marketing and information solutions based in Melbourne, Australia. "Plus, the latest features, such as Facebook login integration, are making it much more useful for digital and B2C applications, and a few of my customers are definitely going to benefit from that."

XMPie uStore 7.0 will be on display in the XMPie area of Xerox booth 1200 at GRAPH EXPO 2012, and is scheduled for release in November 2012. To join the latest conversations happening around GRAPH EXPO across social networks, follow @XMPie on Twitter and use #graphexpo. The show takes place Oct. 7-10 in Chicago.