Informative Graphics Updates Document Redaction, Collaboration

Brava 7 Document Redaction

Informative Graphics released Tuesday version 7 of its Brava software for document redaction, viewing and collaboration.

Brava 7 lets users "view, annotate, redact and publish any file format, such as office documents, image files and CAD drawings, in a single, simple interface," according to the company. Brava users can collaborate on documents; redacted documents created using Brava in PDF or TIFF format can be read by any application or web plug-in that can handle these formats.

SMBs who use redaction in digital documents include law firms, insurance companies, banks, medical and other companies who need to share content while hiding specific portions of the document, according to Christine Musil, director of marketing at Informative Graphics.

Informative Graphics also offers a free reader application for redacted documents created in the company's own proprietary CSF format, which, according to Musil, includes the ability to 'expire' a document, meaning specify a date or length of time during which the document is viewable, restrict printing, and limit some screen-capture approaches."

"Redacting" refers to the process of removing portions of a document, such as names, personal or financial identifiers, or other sensitive information, before sharing these documents with a business partner or publicly. Redacting is similar to cutting out words from a physical letter, file or newspaper article -- as opposed to "hiding" the information using a black marker, or, in a digital document, using document markup or some other technique that might be reversed by another, revealing the original information.

"Viewing refers to looking at a document such as an invoice," said Musil. "Collaboration can be multiple people commenting on a document, or even having conversations within a document."

New features in Brava 7 include, threaded discussions with "Changemarks;" text comparison to quickly identify changes between versions; Takeoff Counts and Aggregate Area/Length Measurements (which is useful for engineering and manufacturing firms); and the ability to customize the user interface, including "skinning" to match any website or content management system, and showing toolbars only when needed.

The company also released Redact-It Enterprise 7 to provide deeper integration with SharePoint 2010.

The Threaded Discussions with Changemarks feature is intended to help with review and approval processes, by allowing users to not only reply to each other's comments, but also add a Status indicator like "Question" or "Accepted."

Other companies offering document redaction tools, according to Musil, include Adobe (Acrobat) and smaller companies like Deja.

Brava is available as a desktop application, and as Brava Enterprise, which also includes the Brava Flash Viewer. Both the desktop and enterprise versions of Brava run on Windows; the enterprise version can also be accessed as a Flash application, from any device running Flash 10.1 or later.

Available now, the desktop version starts at $49.00, up to $345 including all the optional functionality and format support; contact the company for pricing for the enterprise-oriented server version.

Informative Graphics also released new versions of companion products Net-It Enterprise and Redact-It Enterprise, which now include an enhanced directory-monitoring mode that requires no integration or scripting.