An integration of SharePoint with the Quark Publishing System is promising to deliver easier collaboration and workflow for marketing organisations.

It builds on Quark’s existing integration between Microsoft Word and QuarkXPress, which allows Word users to contribute and control content in QuarkXPress layouts.

“In most organisations, knowledge workers and publishing teams waste valuable time and resources trying to collaborate using ineffective tools and processes. Critical activities such as project management, content creation, and publication review involve enormous manual effort and coordination. The pain is shared by all – these inefficiencies affect both knowledge workers and publishing teams,” said PG Bartlett, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Quark.

“The solution we’ve developed with Microsoft offers organizations a publishing platform that enables complete collaboration, giving subject matter experts a way to self-publish – working in Word and producing print, Web, and digital content – and giving creative teams an automated solution for managing brand assets.”

The new integration delivers the ability to create, edit, and copy-fit content directly into QuarkXPress layouts, and add images to layouts through a Web-based editor inside the SharePoint user interface.

SharePoint will provide a repository for all assets used in the production process, regardless of output format, while users continue to work in familiar desktop tools such as QuarkXPress, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office.