Mobile device data visualization vendor Roambi has announced an electronic document layout program, Flow, that takes layout and control to the next step beyond Word without the complexity and cost of professional-level layout systems such as Adobe. In fact it is available free to subscribers of Roambi’s online data visualization creation service.

Initially intended as an extension of the Roambi data visualization tool that allows business end-users to create their own visualizations with a few mouse clicks for use on iPads, Flow was designed to allow users to add context to their visualizations, says Roambi Co-founder and President of Product Innovation Quinton Alsbury. It ended up as much more than that, basically a model for the next generation of PDF, a standard way to create and publish professional-looking business documents that can include text, graphics, and both still and moving images that are locked against third-party alteration. It provides important features impossible to create with paper such as the ability to control distribution precisely and to update or delete all copies of a document when desired, and creation and maintenance of subscription lists for documents intended to have monthly updates. Its one major limitation that at this time it only works with iOS devices.

Flow is created on the same design principles of simplicity and reimagination of the document for electronic media as Roambi’s data imaging product. It allows end-users without training in professional layout tools to easily create a document that goes beyond what is possible in Word. And unlike Word or PDF, it has built-in distribution tools that allow the creator to control exactly who receives the completed document. Documents can be distributed across internal corporate networks or the Internet to specific recipients on a distribution list. They also can be distributed on a proximity basis, for instance to a group in a meeting, via either WiFi or Bluetooth. Access can be restricted through use of a machine generated numeric access code that, for instance, can be given only to people in the room.

Presentations

This makes it very useful for presentations, provided that everybody attending has iPads. In presentation mode, the creator can lock the copies to the master document so that users cannot skip ahead and so that everything the presenter does – for instance drilling down into a visualization or moving to the next page – is repeated on each attendee’s device. At the end of the presentation the presenter can either leave the document on recipients’ devices or delete it “and walk out of the meeting leaving everybody amazed,” Alsbury says.

Like PDFs, Flow documents are locked; only the creator can make changes. And Flow can ingest PDFs and allow the addition of more material to them either by direct insertion into the document or by a system that works like links except that the material is all attached to the document, not held on the Internet.

Like the Roambi visualizations, all components of the document are delivered to the device. This allows readers to read Flow documents while off-line, an important feature given that mobile users often do not have Internet connectivity, for instance in their cars, in many restaurants, and on airplanes.

Overall this is a well thought-out re-envisioning of document layout and distribution with many nice features and details not mentioned here. It has major potential to move business publishing off paper and in the process save huge amounts of money that businesses now spend on printers and printing supplies, physical document distribution, and eventual disposal, as well as benefiting the environment. The big limitation is that it is limited to iOS at this time. Roambi is rumored to be developing an Android version of its data visualization tool. If it releases Android and Windows 8 versions of Flow as well, it could easily become the PDF of the 21st Century. That is a much larger market than data visualization alone.