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?

HOW TO select your Canto package

by Antra Silova | May 3, 2019 | Canto SaaS, Digital Asset Management, HOW TO

HOW TO select your Canto package

Now that you have selected Canto as your DAM solution, how to pick the right configuration package for your needs. Are you worried about your storage needs – is 1TB enough? And how about the number of Users (administrators and contributors) – do you have many outside parties that contribute content?

Let’s start with storage.

The amount of storage

How much cloud storage do you really need? We see very few customers go past the 1TB. A great way to get an idea of how much storage you really need is to look at how much you’re currently using. It is also a good time to start cleaning up and re-organising your files and folders. Canto has inbuilt de-duplication which is really handy at helping you clean things up. Here are a few other things to consider when choosing the storage amount.

Type of data

Some types of files require much more space than others. Video files are the largest. Audio files rarely surpass 20GB. Images can vary in size and quality. Document files don’t take much space at all.

Number of user licenses

The next big question in choosing the configuration is: how many user licenses do we need.

There are 3 types of users – Administrators, Contributors and Consumers.

There are 2 types of licenses – Users or Consumers.

Both Admin and Contributors (any combination) are grouped as user licenses, they distribute content to Consumers.

Administrators control your Canto account; they are business users (not IT). Contributors can upload content, add metadata, organise your library.

Do you have external agencies, photographers or other independent parties that contribute content to your library? If so – and they don’t need to have access to your Canto account – all they need is an Upload Link to upload the content to, and the Admin can then approve the content to be added to the Main Library. It is a much more controlled process, and it saves you money for getting additional user licenses.

I hope this article has been helpful in clarifying some things on the different package configurations of Canto SaaS DAM. There are custom configurations available, if necessary. Make sure you talk to databasics about your needs, we are happy to help.

Top 10 Canto Features 2018

by Antra Silova | Mar 20, 2019 | Canto SaaS, Digital Asset Management

Top 10 Canto Features 2018

Approaching the end of the first quarter of 2019, we are looking back at what great features Canto introduced in 2018. Besides the ever popular – ease of use, modern interface, free updates throughout the year, ease of content sharing and collaboration, and other popular features, the latest features continue to establish Canto as a strong player in the DAM market place.

The following features introduced in 2018, have our top votes.

Style Guides

Creating your brand style guide is now easier than ever with the introduction of Style Guide feature at the end of 2018. You can create public or private style guides to be shared with your team, partners or public. All you need to do is showcase your colours, typography, imagery and copy. See more in our blog HOW TO create a Style Guide.

Asset-level reporting

Are you interested to see how a particular asset is used? Admin can set up Usage History and Activity sections of a single asset. This information will then be visible in the asset information window.

WCAG 2.0 compatibility

This is a big win for Canto User Experience. The WCAG 2.0 compatibility makes Canto more accessible to people with disabilities. You can find the Keyboard shortcuts to help navigation here.

Drupal integration

Pull content from your Canto library directly into Drupal.

Amazon Translate and Set Your Preferred Language

Besides the powerful Amazon Translate feature that would translate the extracted document text for you right there inside Canto, each user can also set their own preferred language in Profile Settings.

Free API keys

Canto has made it easy to build an integration with the DAM using self-generated API keys.

Inbuilt CloudFront – Content Delivery Network

Canto now uses AWS CloudFront, a highly secure global content delivery network from Amazon that delivers content to almost anywhere in the world with low latency and high transfer speeds.

Add a note to specific area of an image

@mention in annotations

In the preview view, you can add a note or a comment to a specific area of an image.

@mention users

Set up self-registration for multiple Portals

If you’d like to setup self-registration for multiple portals at once, it’s now easy to do through Users & Groups Settings.

Expanded S3 Regions for Optimal Performance

Store your files in Sydney with this new AWS S3 location. Being closer to your files means faster upload and download speeds.

We chose these features based on what our customers ask for most frequently. That being said, we feel we need to mention a few other features that are frequently requested and are now part of your Canto DAMS:

Asset Request – distribute low resolution and/ or watermarked content, or send request for original
Edit Existing Keywords – easily edit existing keywords in the Configuration Options in Settings
Superzoom in full screen
Folders and Albums show Portal information – see in which Portals you can find the particular Folder or Album
Terms & Conditions viewable from Portals
Follow Folders – you can now follow Folders along with Albums
Updated reports page – all analytics on the same page
Easy access to My Uploads, My Collections, Portals and Workspaces – select them from the left pane.

There are many more features we could talk about. You can find the Release Notes in Canto Help Center.

What are your favourite Canto features? Let us know and we might write a blog about it!

Image Recognition and DAM

by Antra Silova | Feb 8, 2019 | AI, Canto Cumulus, Digital Asset Management, Image Recognition

Image Recognition and DAM

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on top of everyone’s mind for the last couple of years – will it improve our lives, or will robots be soon taking over? However, for DAM users it is hard to ignore the benefits of the image recognition (or more accurately – object recognition) and automatic image tagging technology in digital asset management. The most time-consuming (and – important) process in managing your digital assets is tagging your images with accurate metadata so they can be easily searched for and found.

What is Image Recognition?

According to Clarifai, one of the providers of this technology, Image Recognition “refers to a computer vision’s ability to identify the dominant subject in an image and apply the relevant “concept” or “tag”. This could be objects, places, people, words, and even actions.”

Simply said, image recognition picks out the central object in an image that the camera was focusing on.

What are the benefits?

Improved search results – with improved metadata quantity and quality by automatic object recognition and tagging, your search will be a breeze
Increased efficiency – the content is automatically uploaded with metadata, saving thousands of hours of manual work and frustration
Focus on core strengths – with the labour-intensive manual tagging out of the way, you team can now focus on their core strengths.

How does it work?

Select one or more assets from your collection, hit Run Auto-Tagging in your tool box.

auto-tagging

The tags are generated. Review, edit or delete tags.

Why Upgrade to Cumulus 11

by Antra Silova | Aug 5, 2018 | Canto Cumulus, Digital Asset Management

Why Upgrade to Cumulus 11

Have you jumped on the Cumulus 11 bandwagon? Not yet? Here is a summary of what you’re missing out on. For more detailed descriptions of features and enhancements please refer to the resources at the end.

Improved InDesign Client – now supports Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud 2018:

Select multiple assets from Cumulus at once using the common keystrokes
Selected multiple assets can be placed together in documents
Right-click on the file and view, modify, etc. that asset in the Cumulus Web Client with the new entry “Open in Cumulus”
New “Relink” function – replace any link or resource with an asset from Cumulus Catalog

Portals:

Customisation: a new lighter theme available out of the box
Transparency support
Playback for audio files
Static URLs for all main pages
Deep link functionality – to facilitate the integration of 3^rdparty applications
Field labels in overview, search result pages, and the basket overlay
Controls for page navigation display on top of search results
Show asset relationships if desired, browse related assets
Configure the number of assets per page
Static URL for Upload Collections

Web Client:

Similarity search – detect visually similar files and potential duplicates
Define asset actions in toolbox for better workflows – send a sample workflow that supports the similarity search and handling of similar assets, add selected asset functions to workflow states
Asset navigation – navigate through list of files in details view, edit or preview modes with controls and keyboard shortcuts
Improved container browsing – Vertical Container Tree on the left side of the window
Audio playback
Support for native language environments: define a default language, auto-tagging in multiple languages, email notifications in multiple languages
Easily change your download collections
Select All – Deselect All function
New Crop Editor Tool to deliver proper renditions of the asset
Focus Area Cropping – a “region of interest” can be defined for images and PDFs. This region of interest is saved along with the asset’s metadata

Roboflow:

Better overview of workflows – toggle switch
New folder filter: combine “including” and “excluding” in a fresh folder filter
New action: call-external-script

Cumulus Office Connector (Please note this feature requires additional purchase):

Browse in and insert images directly from Cumulus into your Microsoft Word documents or PowerPoint presentations
Pull and insert PSD Photoshop files, when placing a PSD file into document a PNG file is generated by Office Connector

Image recognition (AI) and Auto-Tagging – this optional feature allows for all your images to be scanned and auto-tagged by Cumulus. These tags can be added to the metadata of the assets. Please note this feature requires additional purchase.

SharePoint Search Connector – search for Cumulus assets within the SharePoint search, view assets along with metadata and preview, save to SP Document library. Please note this feature requires additional purchase.

Useful resources

If you’ve fallen behind a couple of major releases here is what you’re missing from Cumulus 10and Cumulus 10.2

Wondering what does Cumulus Office Connector do? More here.

From Canto:

Cumulus 11 update

Cumulus 11.0.2 update

Cumulus 11.0.4

Cumulus 11.1

Canto Community

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DAM for Business

by Antra Silova | May 16, 2018 | Digital Asset Management

DAM for Business

DAM is more than just a marketing solution to make your job easier

Imagine a single photo, taken by a freelance photographer, undergoing some initial retouching, uploaded to a client’s corporate network, reviewed, commented on and changed, all before being searched, retrieved, and used in a marketing campaign. Repeat that thousands of times.

DAM for engineers, architects, designers and photographers

Organisations in nearly every industry could benefit from adopting solutions that better promote the creation, organisation and distribution of content across enterprise.

Whether it is an employee, supervisor, subcontractor or client who is looking to access a blueprint or job site photograph, these assets can be readily available and easily accessible within a DAM to keep a project moving along at a productive pace.

DAM will not only allow end users to view files, such as CAD, product cut-sheets, digital photography, and others, but to also make necessary edits in a collaborative manner, especially when multiple parties are required to provide input on a project checkpoint.

It is hard to imagine a more fitting field for DAM than in a business segment where critical, collaborative files are constantly on the move throughout the network – an expansive web of devices and applications that now includes mobile elements.

DAM for marketers and brand managers

When you’re working with hundreds of graphics and logos, managing your organisation’s brand, and executing multiple marketing campaigns, quickly finding digital assets can be a challenge. Sharing your assets with others, including colleagues, partners, graphic designers, can be an even bigger issue.

How do you handle this torrent of creative assets? How do you manage an increasing number of stakeholders and their different requirements?

If you would like to talk to our team of DAM consultants, send us an email at info@databasics.com.au or call 1300 886 238