RedDot Solutions provides web-based
content management tools aimed at the
mid-market. Founded in
Germany in 1994 under the name
INFOTIP Informationssyteme GmbH & Co. KG, the company changed its name to
RedDot in 2001. The name "RedDot" comes from the fact that most of the functions available through their products’
web-based interfaces are labeled using red dots.
RedDot opened its first
foreign office in
New York, New York in 1999. It opened an office in
Toronto, Canada in 2001 and has since opened offices in
Australia, the
UK,
Poland,
Brazil and
Italy.
Products
The current suite of tools is called
RedDot’s XCMS (Extended Content Management System). This suite includes most of RedDot’s products that were sold individually in the past. It is not necessary to buy all the products when purchasing XCMS, only to license each. However, the XCMS versions of each of these applications are much more
integrated and work well together.
Included in XCMS are:
Web Content Manager
A content management system based in a staging environment where users can create
content and submit it to
workflow where it can be translated into other languages, transformed for use any number of devices, approved, rejected and finally published via
FTP or
SFTP to a public facing site.
Document Manager
An online document management system that provides the usual functions like check-in, check-out,
version control, etc.
Collaboration Manager
Collaboration manager is a tool that allows users to work together to complete tasks, provided each task has a workflow to tell it how to move through the system. Collaboration manager ties in with Business Process Manager (below) to manage
workflows.
Business Process Manager
This tool is used to manage workflows. It ties in with the other products in the suite and can be customized to present different options and
interfaces to different
groups of users. It allows companies to manage internal workflow, but still allow workflow to be initiated be external sources.
Other Product Features
Multilingual support. RedDot's products have been developed from the ground up to incorporate support for multiple languages. Projects created with their web content management product can publish "language variants", based on a single set of content. Content created in one language will be automatically submitted for
translation (using the build in workflow functionality) into any of the selected language variants. Once each a variant is translated, it can be published to a specific location, different for each variant.
Multi-client support. Much like the language variants, RedDot offers project variants, which allow a project to be designed for viewing on a variety of different client
devices or allow content to be published in
XML format to use with
third party applications. Content created in one project variant (HTML, be default) will be automatically copied to the other project variants and published according to the templates of those variants.
Easy to Use. RedDot believes that their content management system is so easy for content authors to use, they publish their
user manual on the side of a
coffee mug or surface of a
mouse pad. Speaking from experience, the dozen lines of instruction on these products does provide enough information to get started, however, new users will still need to refer to the
online help if they haven’t received any formal training.
Customer Support
The RedDot call center is based in their
New York office at 1
Battery Park Plaza. The 1-866-RedDots number is available during normal business hours (
eastern time). There is rarely a delay in reaching tech support, who can often diagnose and resolve a problem over the phone. If they can’t they’re more than willing to use a
WebEx session to review the problem online in real time, or have you export your project and send it to them for review. Support is very good.
References
www.reddot.com
www.reddotcommunity.com
Personal experience.