Canto Universal Connector: what you can do

by Antra Silova | Mar 16, 2020 | Canto

Canto Universal Connector: what you can do

With Canto Universal Connector anybody can build connections to other apps running on premise.

Canto has created this universal connector including the most common API calls. The common inclusions packaged into the connector are:

OAuth Canto login authentication/ authorisation
Global text search
Folder and album filter
Filtering by content type via Smart albums

The connector works with any JavaScript supported application.

The connector is complimentary for Canto customers. It can be customised as needed to suit your application.

Canto + CRM

With the Universal Connector it is now easy to integrate with your favourite CRM. Here is an example of how to integrate Salesforce with Canto.

Please contact databasics for more information info@databasics.com.au

Canto + CMS

Canto makes it easy for users to browse assets from within their CMS interface. Canto provides connectors for WordPress, Drupal, and Sitecore. Info on connectors for Episerver and TYPO3.

Facial Recognition in Canto Best Practices

by Antra Silova | Feb 13, 2020 | Canto, Facial Recognition, Image Recognition

Facial Recognition in Canto Best Practices

Introduced in 2019, Facial Recognition in Canto has been improving ever since. Based on Amazon Rekognition technology, this technology matches faces “based on their visual geometry, including the relationship between the eyes, nose, brow, mouth, and other facial features”.

In Canto, due to privacy concerns of some organisations, your Canto account manager needs to request this feature turned on (please contact databasics). Next, your Canto admin needs to enable this feature in Settings. To set up Facial Recognition in Settings, go to Configuration Options – Recognition. Here you will have to select different options:

Confidence Level (0-100%)

The Amazon Rekognition uses what is called “probabilistic system”, where determinations cannot be made with absolute precise accuracy, it is instead, a prediction. Thus, when setting the Confidence Level, you need to determine how important accuracy of these predictions is for your organisation. For example, law enforcement and public safety might require a 99% accuracy. For most companies a level of 80% might be acceptable.

Maximum number of people recognised in an image

By default, maximum number of people is set to 10. You can change this number according to your preference. The higher you have set the required confidence level the fewer faces may be recognised.

Best Practices

To achieve best results, the following is recommended:

Upload a portrait of a person, by doing that the FR feature will be able to identify and allow for a person to be tagged.
Use images with one face only large enough in proportion to the whole image.
If you only have images with multiple faces, make sure the face used is large enough proportionally to the image and not too close to other faces or other objects.
Otherwise crop and upload single face images.

To better illustrate this, please take a look at the images below:

* People faces marked in red squares could not be tagged (returned the information message listed below).
* People faces marked in red circle could be tagged successfully.

* People faces marked in red squares could not be tagged (see information message below)

* Other faces already tagged in the system

*Face to small

*cropped, can be tagged

Just to clarify, this only refers to the feature allowing manual entry of names for unrecognised faces (screenshot below) and is a measure designed to ensure the quality of the reference images used for facial recognition.

It does not relate in any way to the capability of facial recognition technology in Canto or AWS.

Once you have entered a name manually the system will recognise that face in other images even if there are multiple faces, the face is smaller that 10%, on angle, next to other objects, or sharp, etc.

*once the faces have been picked out, you can tag them with appropriate names

In summary, every organisation might have slightly different needs when using facial recognition. For one, it might help identify images of individuals that have requested strict privacy protection, making sure their images don’t get shared or published. For another, it might be the timesaving need to avoid manually adding metadata.

The facial recognition technology is not always 100% accurate, however one of the advantages of this technology is that it continuously learns and improves, so false positives can be reduced over time.

A recent study concluded that even older technologies could outperform human facial recognition capabilities.

Top 10 Canto features 2019 (survey results)

by Antra Silova | Jan 9, 2020 | Canto, Canto SaaS

Top 10 Canto features 2019 (survey results)

At the end of 2019 we conducted a survey asking our customers what they think were the best Canto features/ enhancements introduced in 2019. Please note this survey does not include the latest features/ enhancements released in December 2019. Thank you to all who participated. Here are the top 10 (for a complete list of results scroll to the bottom of page):

AWS GuardDuty – intelligent threat detection service that monitors your account for malicious activity and unauthorised activity.
Password protected share-links – enable and set a password when sharing content via links or email collections.
Bulk convert – convert your images in bulk from JPG to PNG or vice versa, as well as bulk convert colour modes RBG or CMYK.
Duplicate check enhancement: Scan and Remove Duplicates – you can now check for duplicates even after files have been uploaded. Canto will create an album called Duplicates and assign all duplicates to that Album.
Contributors and Consumers can see expiration dates for Approved files.
Adobe Connector – this free plugin now supports 4 Adobe CC apps: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Premier Pro.
Download options: edit on the fly – users can now resize, crop and compress an image on the fly and either download or save as a new version.
Facial Recognition: auto suggest names – if a person has already been tagged in an image, Canto will now auto-suggest a name. The Facial Recognition feature has been further enhanced in latest (Dec 2019) update allowing to import names from CSV as well.
Canto Connect desktop app – available for Windows and Mac OS, allows to access your Canto account directly on your desktop.
Custom Fields Sections – Admins can create the Sections and add Custom Fields to their respective Sections grouping the fields together.
Facial Recognition – based on Amazon Rekognition service, this free tool (activation required) allows you to tag, browse and filter your images based on recognised faces in the them.

And here is the full list of the survey results:

Cumulus Enterprise – why do organisations choose it, and is it for you?

by Antra Silova | Nov 11, 2019 | Canto Cumulus, Digital Asset Management

Cumulus Enterprise – why do organisations choose it, and is it for you?

The Cumulus Enterprise, as the name suggests, is more suited for large, multi-office or global organisations that have complex workflow needs to oversee the content creation and management process, with typically several different stakeholders and associated teams involved. A great example here would be retail and manufacturing industries, or institutions such as universities. Don’t think your organisation fits this description? Take a look at Canto solution, the lightweight yet powerful sister of Cumulus.

The Enterprise server architecture is very powerful and allows for use of all available hardware resources, thus able to deliver greater loading and faster throughput, as well as providing a more powerful and robust database engine.

The extensive built-in features of Cumulus Enterprise allow to add specific tools to customise the software to suit your business processes and reporting obligations.

Distinguishing features of Cumulus Enterprise

Single Sign-On (SSO) integration

For some customers this has been a critical reason to go with Enterprise. SSO allows Cumulus end-users to access web applications without the need to log in again, and still retain their permissions.

Second license for UAT/ dev

Most importantly, Enterprise comes with a second license of the software that can be used as a staging, failover or development server. The ability to have a development server to test latest releases or new options based on your current solution prior to going ‘live’ on the production server is a major consideration. This is especially significant for those users reliant on 24-hour access to the solution with no downtime, and/or the IT department having strict standards relating to implementation of business solutions.

You could use your second license to run a mirrored copy of your Cumulus server. This enables you to split Web access requests between two machines, or limit Web access to the mirrored machine, reducing the load on your main Cumulus server.

Higher number of CPU threads

Our Cumulus Enterprise customers can take advantage of faster and larger processing of content which is key for larger organisations.

Modules inbuilt into Cumulus Enterprise

Extended Permissions

The primary value this feature presents is data integrity. Using category and asset-level permissions, the built-in scheduler can scour your catalogs regularly for issues of concern – such as expired usage licenses – and apply a permissions template that removes access to the assets, ensuring no one can access them until the situation is resolved.

Roles and Extended LDAP

In Enterprise, complete user management and access permissions can be controlled by a central system such as Active Directory (AD) and LDAP. Thus, users are not managed by the DAM team but by the IT team or by business administrators. Content can be controlled at a more granular level with individual characteristics of an asset, e.g. status or applicable usage, defining who can do what with it.

Usage Statistics and Reporting

The Usage Statistics and Reporting module expands on the standard collection of asset usage statistics. Create automated reports that help you value assets, fine-tune Cumulus and plan for the future.

discover which assets provide the most value
fine-tune metadata by discovering which search terms fail and which are most common
determine the value of an entire collection on a per-asset basis and anticipate growth and budget needs in advance
configure recurring, automated graphic and textual reports without IT involvement.

Additional modules to customise your Cumulus Enterprise solution

Digital Asset Request Solution (DARS)

This module provides option for external users to request download of selected assets from Portals when download restrictions are enabled.

Asset Lifecycle and Channel Distribution

Developed by databasics, this module provides an easier way to manage asset and content lifecycle giving you more control over content approval, publishing, expiration and distribution. Built as an approval workflow and channel distribution solution it uses standard Cumulus technology that can be easily supported, extended and repurposed. More on dbApprove in our blog.

If all this seems like more than you require, consider Canto – a lightweight yet powerful SaaS DAM. Canto is loaded with some great features, is easy to implement and manage.

Visit our website to learn more about Canto or give us a call to discuss 1300 886 238.

Questions to help determine if Cumulus Enterprise would be a good match for your organisation

How many power users need to be managing the content? How many will need training on the solution and require read/write level of access?
How many users need to upload content and enter metadata along with the upload?
Do we have detailed statistical usage and reporting requirements?
Do we need email ordering of images/documents/products?
Do we need automation of processes and workflows e.g. for approvals?
Do we need integration with other systems?

Canto + InDesign: things you can do

by Antra Silova | Oct 14, 2019 | Brand, Canto, InDesign

Canto + InDesign: things you can do

The plugin

Canto InDesign Connector is like a bridge between your DAM and InDesign. This plugin will save you time going back and forth from platform to platform and downloading and uploading files separately into INDD projects. The Canto InDesign Connector now supports CC2018 and CC2019. Here are instructions on how to install the plugin.

How it works

After you’ve installed the plugin, you can place images straight into your INDD document via drag n drop. What happens next is your image is automatically linked to your Canto SaaS library, any changes that you make to that image will appear in your INDD document (you will need to click “update link” to apply the changes).

From your Connector window you can adjust the resolution, update the status of the image to the latest version. All changes that have been made to the image in Canto will show in the InDesign Connector window.

When sending the INDD document to someone else for editing, the recipient needs to click “update links” icon to receive all the Canto assets used in the document. Here is a helpful article on how to package and share InDesign files.

The Brand Templates

The last update of Canto brought us the support for InDesign Brand Templates. This add-on feature (additional charge) in Canto allow non-designers make changes to certain parts in the document right inside Canto without accessing InDesign.

How it works

After opening InDesign, you will need to install the PrintUI extension and log in using the credentials provided by databasics (please contact databasics to receive these credentials).

After designer creates the InDesign template in InDesign, he chooses elements that can be editable by those who will receive the document. Only local images can be used in templates, no embedded images.

Once the templates are created and uploaded into Canto, anyone with access can open them and edit them right within Canto. They are saved under the Documents and have a BT as an icon. To edit, open the document preview and click on Edit. Only parts permitted for editing will be editable, those permissions are set by the template designer in InDesign.

After editing you can either save or download the document.

Helpful resources

Troubleshooting:

Clearing cache

Uninstalling/ reinstalling InDesign Plugin

Connection issues

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