Insider’s unique FontFlex™ technology intelligently automates the various elements of font management into a unified architecture for managing and distributing fonts securely across your organization.
Inside the FontFlex engine, the crucial elements of font management automatically interact with each other as you import fonts, add users and assign fonts to them. Its intelligent architecture handles all the data management actions that must occur as you:
- Manage user and group properties
- Manage font metadata and set definitions
- Distribute fonts to users as admins assign them
- Distribute set definitions and tags to the users
- Recall fonts whose assignments have expired or have been revoked
- Track which users have downloaded and activated which fonts
FontFlex supports your font management and distribution initiatives, scaling to meet the requirements of your strategies and organization as they grow in size and complexity.
Configure to Distribute All Fonts to All Users
The simplest server configuration for small teams is to distribute all fonts to all users. Here’s an overview of the steps required:
- Add fonts to FontAgent Server
- Use the browser-based Server Manager to invite users
- Assign fonts to the users, and the server downloads the fonts to your users
Later, as you add more fonts to the server it automatically distributes the fonts to your users.
Add Sets to Organize Your Fonts
Use sets to organize your font collection by type, style, classification, project, team, foundry — whatever you need.
- Upload sets to the server or create them manually using the Server Manager
- Distribute the sets to users and groups
Later, as you add and delete fonts in a set, the server automatically propagates the changes to user systems.
Add Tags to Your Fonts
FontAgent allows you to create tags, associate them with fonts and sets, search them, use them in Smart Sets, and even share them with other users. Tagging opens the door to a world of new ways to organize your font collection.
The most powerful use of tags is to describe fonts using a variety of subjective terms such as:
- Styles such as handwritten, woodblock, shadow, outline or symbol
- Topics such as athletics, aerospace, religion, food or nature
- Feelings such as humorous, scary or silly
- Projects such as poster, menu or party
- Holidays such as New Year, Halloween or Christmas
- Client names, project names or job numbers
Avoid using tags to describe font characteristics that are already identified in their metrics, such as italic or bold. You are better served by creating Smart Sets based on slant or weight values for those font characteristics.
Configure for Centralized, Top-Down Font Control
As organizations’ font collections and user communities grow, they centralize control to specify which users have access to which fonts. Admins assign fonts and sets to users and FontAgent Server distributes them. Admins can also expire or de-authorize fonts and the server takes them back from users automatically.
Add Groups to Organize Your Users
You can use groups to organize your users by role, project team, department, cost center, location, etc.
- Define one or more groups
- Assign users to the groups
- Assign fonts and sets to the groups to distribute fonts to multiple users in one step
Monitor License Compliance
To monitor font license compliance, you can:
- Define font licenses and their details
- Assign the licenses to fonts and sets
The server automatically tracks font usage and alerts you when your team’s usage exceeds legal license limits.
Authentication and Directory Integration
If your organization uses Active Directory, Azure AD, Open Directory or another LDAP-compliant directory, you can integrate your directory entries with the user and group settings in FontAgent Server.
Integrated Font Management Services
FontAgent Server includes a variety of services that integrate with its object-based architecture to provide a unified solution for managing fonts across your organization. Those services include:
- A centralized database of vetted fonts licensed by your organization, including their associated metadata
- Directory services for managing users and groups, and assigning permissions to server functionality and fonts
- A file manager that distributes fonts to users with appropriate permissions
- A font integrity engine that tests the validity of fonts
- A sets manager that enables font admins to define nested sets of fonts to distribute to users
- A metadata manager that discovers, stores and searches descriptive information about your fonts
- A tag manager that allows admins to associate descriptive tags with fonts and download them to users
- A multi-threaded, high performance, input/output manager that transmits fonts to user computers
- A font license manager that helps you stay in compliance by tracking your font purchases, available seats and their license terms
- A reporting service that delivers real-time insight into font usage and activation by user, group and computer