Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities

Transcription

1 Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Published Oct 2011 Content Manager Enterprise Technology Guide Page 1 of 19

2 Table of Contents 1. The purpose of this document The scope of DAM in the context of this document DAM and Alterian Content Manager Alterian Content Manager DAM Capabilities Content Storage Asset Types Asset Storage Asset Security Multilingual Digital Assets Content Classification Metadata Metadata Extraction Metadata and Third Party Services Using Taxonomies Content Classification Content Delivery / Presentation Regular Website Dedicated Media Website Video Delivery Social Media Alterian Content Manager Manual Drag and drop Views Multichannel HTML Component HTTP/URL API RSS / XML / JMS / SQL / / Other Asset Editing and Manipulation Asset Editing via ACM Asset Editing via a regular website or dedicated Media Website Automatic Asset Manipulation through Workflow Integrating Third Party Applications Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007 / 2010) integration How does it work technically? Brightcove integration Disclaimer No rights can be derived from this document; it is for informational purposes only. Alterian reserves the right to change the Alterian Content Manager feature set without prior notice and at its sole discretion. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 2 of 19

3 1. The purpose of this document This document aims at providing the reader with a clear understanding of the Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities of Alterian Content Manager (ACM). The document is split into two main sections. The first provides an overview of the built-in features of ACM in support of managing digital assets. The second area describes the integration options that allow organizations to use 3rd party solutions to manage digital assets and hook them up with ACM. While we have tried to make this overview as comprehensive as possible it is only intended to be an introduction. For more detail on how ACM can assist in your asset management requirements, please don t hesitate to contact us The scope of DAM in the context of this document There are many definitions about what the term DAM means. Depending on the industry and application, it has meanings that range from the simple storage and management of images, through to the management of tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. For the sake of clarity, we will define here what we mean by DAM in the context of its application in the Web Content Management space, and Alterian Content Manager in particular. Websites usually consist of a hybrid collection of formats for publishing information. Regardless of their application intranet, extranet, internet all websites comprise web pages made up of (X)HTML markup language with built-in logic/scripts, enhanced with text and rich content such as images, video, sound and (downloadable) documents (PDF, Word, Excel etc). In the context of this document we therefore use the following definition: Digital Assets are pieces of information that can be stored in a single binary file. Digital Asset Management comprises the storage, management, retrieval and publication of digital assets, with the overarching objective to publish these assets via a website or some other digital channel. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 3 of 19

4 2. DAM and Alterian Content Manager Alterian Content Manager (ACM) is a Web Content Management System that has extensive built-in Digital Asset Management capabilities. Often organizations require a robust, secure and flexible solution for their Digital Assets, but do not require the complexities of a top-tier standalone DAM system. Standalone DAM systems introduce a range of overheads, as they: introduce yet another technology product to an organization require additional training, support and maintenance introduce often substantial license and support costs require integration with other systems such as CMS, PIM, ERP will require implementation and customization to meet customers requirements By integrating a rich set of DAM capabilities in Alterian Content Manager, Alterian allows organizations to overcome these issues and address both their web and digital asset management requirements with a single solution. Typically Alterian customers find that the facilities in Alterian Content Manager are more than sufficient for their DAM requirements, thus representing a major saving in cost, management time and systems complexity. A lot of ACM customers are multinational organisations, in some cases with many brands, many products and/or many services. They have to manage multiple variations of their digital assets, which may be due to language, country, region, culture, regulatory requirements, compliance, legal and other factors. ACM has proven to be capable of handling this sort of requirements Alterian Content Manager DAM Capabilities ACM can be deployed as a pure DAM installation, using the facilities in the Content Explorer area of the product. Alternatively ACM can be used as a closely coupled DAM / WCM solution, with managed digital assets directly linking into ACM / WCM managed websites, intranets and extranets, as well as third party applications and other channels such as for mobile delivery. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 4 of 19

5 2.2. Content Storage As ACM strictly separates the management of content from the management of the actual sites, both can be dealt with by separate (groups of) people. Digitals assets are stored in an area of ACM called the Content Explorer, and sites are managed via the Site Planner. Items can be stored in the Content Explorer, controlled through folder structures, access rights and workflow options. Only items that reach a Published status in their workflow in the Content Explorer will be visible to the outside world. Fig: ACM Content Explorer area, showing thumbnails of stored digital assets Content can be stored in ACM in a variety of ways. The most commonly used mechanisms are: User initiated Drag & Drop of items from the desktop into the repository. This applies to single items, multiple items, as well as entire folders and subfolders, allowing bulk import of assets Using Upload buttons in the editorial user interface Utilizing Drop folders from which items are automatically picked up when they are dropped into it Via the ACM Content Importer, an (administrative) importing tool Via API access, which means that any external system can store Digital Assets in ACM Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 5 of 19

6 Standard ACM functionality applies to digital assets stored in the Content Explorer, including: Check-in / Check-out Access rights Workflow Clean URLs Versioning, incl. ability to Roll Back Audit history Full metadata management Search Content Tracking Asset Types ACM supports over 140 file types, including all the most common audio, video, image and document types. There are also facilities to add custom item types and mime types, to support new, custom or industry specific file formats and applications Asset Storage Digital Assets are stored securely within the ACM repository, and ACM is built in such a way that media is stored utilizing any database optimization techniques available for each platform. This ensures fast performance in terms of creation, categorization, manipulation and delivery Asset Security ACM has a very flexible, granular and secure access rights model, which can be integrated with existing security systems using links into LDAP and other technologies. Digital assets can be secured in various ways including: by item type, e.g. a Skyscraper Banner or Medical Condition Image by location in the Content Stores, e.g. EMEA Image Library by Workflow status, e.g. when at Compliance status, only certain users can signoff, view or change items by Collection/Audience e.g. to identify assets accessible only to Partners by View, e.g. a high res view of an image is only available to certain visitors/users Multilingual Digital Assets ACM fully supports multilingual assets in various ways. An image may be the same for all regions but have different ALT text fields, of there may be a different image for each country or region. Video and audio content can also be stored as different languages, and related to each other as translations. The same processes and workflows that ACM has for managing multilingual web pages (translations etc.) can also be applied to maintain digital assets such as images, documents, video and audio. For example if an English version of a product image is updated or amended, then processes can be triggered that force or advise update of the related language versions, whether translation or design changes need to be done. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 6 of 19

7 2.3. Content Classification Content can be classified in multiple ways, to ensure it can be tagged with the relevant information to facilitate Search Metadata ACM has a wide range of standard built-in metadata fields which are mandatory for all digital assets, such as short name, long name, author, item type, locale, status etc. Some of these fields are populated automatically by the system; others are supplied as part of the input process (either mandatory or optional). In addition, ACM allows unlimited extra metadata fields to be defined against each type of asset. For example a video item may have fields for copyright, description etc. Administrators can use the ACM Content Type Designer to add and maintain metadata fields, as well as add and maintain Content Types for any kind of digital asset. Fig: Metadata fields for a particular Asset type, as specified through the ACM Content Type Designer Metadata Extraction Certain asset metadata can be extracted automatically as ACM has Rich Media Extensions for digital asset searching, and automatic generation of metadata. For example EXIF information can be extracted from images on the fly, or stored as metadata against the image item for later search and other purposes: Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 7 of 19

8 Fig: Automatic extraction of EXIF information from an image Metadata and Third Party Services ACM also has a range of options for connection to Third Party services for automated processing of digital assets. One example is a component that leverages the ACM Extensibility Framework to connect to the OpenCalais service ( to extract metadata from a digital asset. Fig: Example of OpenCalais metadata generation using ACM Extensibility features Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 8 of 19

9 Using Taxonomies Unless you are consistent with the terms you use to describe your digital assets, it is difficult to gain the benefits of a metadata strategy. A taxonomy is a hierarchical set of terms that give organizations a standard way to describe assets. Many industries and large organizations have invested in developing (sometimes mandatory) taxonomies and there is an international standard for defining them (ISO 2788). Fig: ACM Taxonomy browser Alterian Content Manager enables organizations to capitalize on these investments and encourages user adoption through the taxonomy browser; an easy to use interface for associating multiple taxonomy terms with assets it will even suggest terms by auto-completing the words you re entering. Digital Assets can even be tagged with information from multiple taxonomies Content Classification Based on classification rules, it is possible for items to be processed and classified as they arrive, based on their content. For example, if there is a category field in a feed of digital assets, it can be interrogated on import, and the asset can be stored in the correct location in the repository or published automatically on a specific webpage. Classification rules can be used for many types of filtering and processing of incoming content as well as for existing content. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 9 of 19

10 2.4. Content Delivery / Presentation Depending on the application, digital assets can be delivered in a variety of ways. In this section we ll explore a number of commonly used approaches Regular Website Due to the integrated nature of the DAM capabilities inside ACM, it s very easy and straightforward from within the Site Planner to utilize digital assets on one or more websites. Staff responsible for managing websites can work in the Site Planner and then dip into the Content Explorer area to use digital assets that are stored there for publication on one or more sites. In this way a single digital asset can be published and reused across multiple sites, without the need for duplication. Each occurrence will have its own unique URL. A change to the centrally stored asset in the Content Explorer will result in an automatic update across all sites. And through ACM s special Content Tracking feature a user can instantly identify across which sites a digital asset is being used Dedicated Media Website For staff and authorised 3rd parties that need browse access to digital assets, a DAM website can be set up, offering the ability for visitors to browse assets, search for them, review detailed characteristics of the asset, and then perhaps download them or record the link to them. Any users of the site will automatically only see assets they have permission to. So a logged-on user could possibly see many more assets than a public user, and the logged in user s view on the asset could also be personalized to their security rights and their areas of interest. Example features in a Media Site would be: Asset Browse facilities, e.g. Galleries of images, with Silverlight and other technology providing preview facilities Search options, including search by asset type, tag, metadata, product, owner, copyright, date, language, culture, region or any other field Search for related assets/images, e.g. assets with similar tags Faceted search, to offer a drill down to find assets, by any required criteria Download/embed facilities, access rights dependent RSS feeds Preview different views or versions of assets, e.g. Mobile, high res, low res, different languages Version History My Assets functions, to tag assets that user may access regularly Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 10 of 19

11 Fig: Example of an ACM Media Website Video Delivery ACM has a range of facilities for storing and presenting Video content. Video can be stored in ACM and reused across many sites. Multilingual versions can be related, managed and the correct versions delivered to the correct language sites. In terms of video presentation there are many options, including: - Video delivery direct from ACM through players such as FlowPlayer - Drag and drop presentation of videos directly from Youtube and other sources, using ACM Page Studio to position videos anywhere on a page or even inside the body text of a webpage - Delivery through our integration with the Brightcove Online Video Platform This integration allows users to drag and drop videos into the ACM repository, after which they are automatically uploaded to a designated Brightcove account. Brightcove players can then be dragged and dropped onto pages, for streaming delivery from the Cloud, and multiple configuration options exist for flexible presentation. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 11 of 19

12 Fig: Example of Page Studio Components for Video delivery Fig: Drag and Drop of a Brightcove Tabbed Player onto an ACM page Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 12 of 19

13 Social Media If the digital assets are public (e.g. instructional videos) and companies wish to distribute these to Social Media sites, then ACM s Social Media Publisher can take approved digital assets from the repository and output them directly to channels such as Flickr, Youtube and Facebook. In addition, responses, ratings, retweets and comments can be tracked alongside any other information available from the Social Media sites. Fig: ACM s Social Media Publisher displaying Social Responses to published assets Alterian Content Manager Staff as well as 3rd party or external trusted partners such as design agencies or externally located freelancers can be provided with the ability to browse, search, upload and manipulate media items through the ACM Web Client, Alterian s browser based authoring interface. Through its advanced access rights model you can control on a granular level who is allowed to do what. And as the Web Client can run over SSL you can rest assured that usage by remote users is completely safe Manual Drag and drop Any digital asset can be dragged out of the system and dropped into a filesystem, for passing on to a third party whether by , manual ftp, sftp or other method Views ACM has the concept of views for all content, which can be very useful for presenting content in different ways, e.g. Standard, Thumbnail, RSS, XML, Watermarked, Low-res and more. Once assets are added to the system they can be viewed through various views, automatically showing different appearances of that same asset Multichannel ACM also has very thorough facilities for publishing digital assets to other channels such as mobile devices, kiosks, Sky/iDTV, XML, RSS, and . The ACM ability to have different views of content is often used for this sort of requirement, and once setup, it does not require the user to publish content again. The content is automatically available on all channels as soon as it is in a Published status. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 13 of 19

14 HTML Component ACM can expose assets as a component that has a URL, whether through Ajax, JQuery, JSP, Aspx or other technology. For example a simple component may display a series of product images in a generic HTML format which can be consumed by the remote system and styled and branded as it is re-presented on a remote site HTTP/URL All assets by default have a clean URL when they are stored in the system, and when that URL is accessed, the digital asset is displayed. This is a built in feature of the system which requires no configuration. The URL is a properly constructed friendly URL, so can be logically structured such as /products/respiratory/ventolin/hcp/images/evohaler.jpg API ACM has very mature and thorough APIs for both Java and.net (C#), and full Web Services and SOAP interfaces, which can be used to present digital assets in many ways. Web Services are very quickly created to link in with those external systems that can consume Web Services. Custom connections and functions can easily be created using the APIs, for example exposing content in a certain format for exchange (import/ export) with e-commerce or PIM systems. These APIs can also be used for a range of other functions, such as generating several size variations of the image, and storing and relating them to the original image when an image is loaded RSS / XML / JMS / SQL / / Other Any digital asset can be exposed through RSS or XML for remote systems to monitor and download. ACM also has connectors to use technologies such as JMS, SQL and others, which can be used as methods to expose content to third parties or external systems. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 14 of 19

15 2.5. Asset Editing and Manipulation Digital assets obviously need to be edited as part of their life cycle. Even though web based editing solutions exist for certain types of digital asset (see figure on the right), the very nature of most digital assets is that they require a dedicated desktop application such as Photoshop or Microsoft Word to make more advanced changes to them Asset Editing via ACM To address this requirement, any digital asset in the Content Explorer can be opened and instantly edited from within ACM using Direct Application Editing. It allows users to edit content in a desktop tool of choice; the one that they know, prefer and are familiar with. For example an image can be opened from ACM in the user s preferred image editing application Fig: Browser based image editing (new in ACM Web Client v7.1) such as Photoshop, PaintShop Pro etc. It can then be edited and saved straight back into ACM without the need to manually deal with the cumbersome downloading and uploading of temporary files. Whilst the asset is being edited, it is automatically being locked (checked-out) to avoid simultaneous edits being made. Upon save and close it is automatically being unlocked (checked-in) again and a new version is created in the system. The same process applies to any other asset type that can have a related desktop application, including Documents (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Video, Audio and other common file formats. Fig: Alterian ACM Direct Application Editing with Adobe Photoshop image editor Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 15 of 19

16 Asset Editing via a regular website or dedicated Media Website Any website whether regular or a dedicated Media Website can provide the ability for people to check-out items, download and edit them with the tool of their choice, and then upload them again. Of course this is only possible if the user is authorized to do so Automatic Asset Manipulation through Workflow ACM s customizable workflow engine allows Tools to be plugged into it. Tools are custom pieces of programmable code that can perform any action as part of a workflow transition. As a result Tools can be used to perform automated digital asset manipulation when items move through their workflow. In addition to the tools, also the workflow steps themselves are freely definable. Examples of how this can be used include: After an image is uploaded, automatically create a thumbnail version of it when it moves to the next stage in its workflow Automatically create a PDF when an item reaches status Published and archive the PDF Automatically upload a video to Youtube as soon as it appears on the live website Branch-off country specific versions of a digital asset when the source asset reaches workflow status For Translation, and send an to the people responsible for translation Watermark an image when it reaches the workflow status Protect asset Fig: Example Workflow Tools in ACM Many other applications can be thought of when it comes to using the workflow engine. Due to its open and extensible nature, any action that needs to be automated can be triggered and executed by the workflow engine. Custom made Tools can easily be built by Alterian, its Partners and by Clients themselves. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 16 of 19

17 3. Integrating Third Party Applications Due to its open interoperable nature, Alterian Content Manager can be easily integrated with 3 rd party systems. In the context of this document we will look at two examples of such external systems that can play a role in the management of digital assets Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007 / 2010) integration Due to its ubiquitous nature, most companies have digital assets stored in Microsoft Sharepoint. As SharePoint is much more a collaboration and document management system than a web content management system, it is likely that organizations would use a Web Content Management system such as Alterian Content Manager next to SharePoint to expose these digital assets to the outside world. Alterian has recognized this need, and has added a productized SharePoint integration to ACM. Through a straightforward Wizard driven process, any number of SharePoint connections can be set up. This allows you to pull content from multiple SharePoint servers, surpassing the silo ed nature of SharePoint. For each of those servers you can specify which content needs to be made available inside Alterian Content Manager. This may vary from entire Lists to individual items of content. In addition, the SharePoint Connector can even bring in attachments associated with those items and links between them as well. Once the connection has been defined, the system will automatically replicate the selected SharePoint content to Alterian Content Manager, ensuring that future updates in SharePoint are automatically pushed to ACM to keep content consistent. Content is stored in the Content Explorer area of Alterian Content Manager, ready to be used on any site. ACM users then simply browse to that content and use it on their websites. If desired fully automated publication of such content is possible too. This way the SharePoint Connector allows you to dramatically extend the reach of the digital assets held in your SharePoint repositories How does it work technically? The ACM SharePoint Connector plugs into the generally available standard collaboration and communication services of SharePoint (called WSS), so there is no technical setup required. The Connector ensures that if SharePoint is down the website is unaffected, meaning that you can architect your resilient technical architecture more efficiently. Due to the way the SharePoint 2010 Connector for Alterian Content Manager has been designed, it s extremely easy to implement avoiding lengthy and expensive consulting work and yet it delivers all the powerful features that you need to fully exploit the joint power of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 and Alterian Content Manager. And last but not least: if you re working with MOSS 2007 rather than 2010, it brings you exactly the same benefits. Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 17 of 19

18 3.2. Brightcove integration Brightcove is one of the leading cloud based platforms to store, manage and distribute digital media. The company's products include Brightcove Video Cloud, a market-leading online video platform, and Brightcove App Cloud, a content app platform. Together, more than 3,000 customers in 50 countries rely on Brightcove's cloud content services to build and operate media experiences across PCs, smartphones, tablets and connected TVs. Many of Alterian s customers use the Brightcove technology for managing their digital assets, in particular video. A huge benefit they get from using a cloud based solution provider for video is that bandwidth issues belong to the past. When streaming video from your own system architecture you might have to invest significantly in additional network capacity, which makes the ROI for using an external provider very compelling. Refer to paragraph Video Delivery for an example of Brightcove integration Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 18 of 19

19 Corporate Headquarters The Spectrum Building Bond Street Bristol BS1 3LG UK T +44 (0) F +44 (0) E info@alterian.com W Alterian 2011 Alterian Content Manager 7 Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities Page 19 of 19