EFI’s Fiery digital front end (DFE) has been updated to introduce new Cloud capabilities and additional productivity enhancements for print businesses.

To achieve this, v6.8 of the EFI Fiery Command WorkStation job management system now includes EFI IQ Cloud integration. This gives Command WorkStation users the ability to back up and restore their customised user interface settings, local presets and imposition templates. Other Command WorkStation users in their print shop or at other company locations can then be invited to download and install common settings and resources. Further, print shops can optimise Command WorkStation for all users even in multiple locations for a claimed, ‘faster and more flexible way to consistently manage jobs with the confidence that their configurations are saved securely in their company’s EFI IQ Cloud account,’ the company noted.

With the same EFI IQ account, managers can use Cloud-based applications to extract value from print shop data in order to minimise bottlenecks, optimise equipment utilisation and track performance by shift. Features available at no charge for use with an unlimited number of cut-sheet digital printers include:

  • EFI IQ Dashboard, an application that provides a personalised view of printer status, consumables and job status right now;
  • EFI Insight, an application that helps managers transform print production trend data into actionable analytics that drive business improvement;
  • EFI Notify, an application that delivers alerts for production-blocking events and enables automatic production report distribution; and
  • EFI Go, a mobile app that delivers EFI IQ Dashboard metrics, notifications and more to allow remote monitoring of operations.

The latest version of EFI Fiery Command WorkStation is available now for download at no charge.

John Henze, vice president of sales and marketing at EFI Fiery, said, ‘This new version of Command WorkStation is a significant milestone in our strategy to improve Fiery capability with EFI IQ Cloud services.

‘Using the familiar Command WorkStation interface, users can now access cloud services to better manage both their print jobs and their business.’

Print businesses also benefit from flexibility and faster job set up by using the new selective preset capability in Command WorkStation v6.8. Users can now define settings that only apply to specific aspects of a job, leaving all other original settings untouched. Using server presets can reduce the time it takes to prepare incoming files and get jobs ready for production by 80%, according to EFI. Further additional features in EFI Fiery Command WorkStation v6.8 include the ability to rearrange Fiery servers in the server list and to see server IP addresses, and the ability to see how long it’s going to take for a job to complete printing.

Darin Lerbs, a production print solutions architect at EFI reseller Marco, commented, ‘For me, being able to rearrange Fiery servers in the server list and easily see server IP addresses helps a great deal. And my customers are going to love the ability to see how long it’s going to take for a job to complete printing. That’s really going to help them plan their workload.’