A new mobile app for editors plans to make monitoring a print publishing operation as easy as digital.

Germany-based EidosMedia director of marketing and business development Jörg Drees says that while monitoring a digital news operation from outside the newsroom was relatively easy, keeping track of the print edition of a newspaper is more of a challenge. A new iOS and Android app named PageTrack has been developed to give editors a real-time view of print pages and editions as they are being built.

Users can zoom in from thumbnail views to see details of page layout, headlines and titles, exactly as they will appear when published. "Editors on the move can get a constantly updated view of one or more print editions, allowing them to carry out their supervisory role without being tied to the local newsroom," he says.

PageTrack can also be used to feed a high-resolution 'video wall' display over a network connection, providing support for planning and progress meetings which can now be held at any location. "It also eliminates the waste of producing the hard-copy page proofs that are usually printed to track the progress of a print edition."

Developed for EidosMedia customers in Germany, PageTrack is being used by a variety of European publishers including Nordwest-Zeitung, the Funke publishing group and Mediahuis in Belgium.

A new release incorporates features and enhancements based on extensive user feedback, including the possibility of setting filters to display sub-sets of pages or sections, allowing the user to quickly zoom in to examine areas of specific interest.

"Distributed teamwork has brought flexibility and productivity benefits to many digital media operations in recent years," says Drees. "PageTrack now enables print-media workflows to enjoy similar advantages by allowing print editions to be managed and monitored from any physical location."