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Digital Asset Management Use Cases

Jul 23 2016

Digital Assets Management with Box and Crooze – Part 1 of 4

By Digital Asset Management Use Cases
Have you implemented Box and now find yourself asking the question “What do we do next?”  If you answered yes then you will find our next series of posts very useful. 
The subject of our first use case series is Digital Asset Management (DAM). Every company manages digital assets of some type from simple logo management to more complex Brand Management. DAM is very easy to implement and is very popular in any number of industries including retail, media and entertainment and publishing to name a few.  
Why implement your DAM solution using Box?
  • Box’s new MetaData capabilities allow you to consolidate your content on Box including digital assets while reducing the number of information silos.
  • Metadata allows users to find images or assets using metadata, instead of navigating large complex folder structures.
  • Send and Access Large Files. Collaborate and share large creative files and videos. No more email file attachment limits, clunky FTP or misplaced flash drives.
  • Share important content with vendors, agencies and press simply and securely. Track when your files have been viewed, and by whom.
Why is Box/Crooze the best solution for digital asset management?
  • Easily add metadata to content while uploading, and bulk apply or edit metadata on content already in Box.
  • Extracting and mapping IPTC or other metadata from images eliminates tedious and error prone re-entering of data.
  • Create custom searches to allow users to quickly get to and view any of the metadata associated with images.
  • Use saved searches to quickly share content with co-workers, or select files to share with your customers or other external entities.
  • Use thumbnails to quickly preview and scan for images after narrowing your search using metadata.
  • Quickly get to content on your iOS mobile device from anywhere.
What are the benefits of Crooze PowerSearch for Digital Asset Management?
  • Dramatically reduce the time and effort of adding and modifying document metadata (up to 95%)
  • Increase efficiency by using metadata to find files instantly and improve overall productivity.
  • Keep files securely maintained while collaborating with internal and external teams.
  • What would typically cost tens of thousands of dollars can now be done for a fraction of the cost.
 In our next post, we look in detail into Brand Management use case for the retail industry.
Part 2 of 4
Jul 22 2016

Digital Assets Management with Box and Crooze – Part 2 of 4

By Digital Asset Management Use Cases

Getting Started: From Photo Shoot to getting assets into Box

In this Digital Asset Management use case, we will cover how an on-line appliance retailer manages images from photo shoots using Box and Crooze MetaData Tools and PowerSearch. 
Periodically, the appliance retailer has a designer and their team create new digital assets to be used on their website and in marketing campaigns. The photo shoot generates a large number of high-resolution TIF images.  Those images are first processed using image processing software like DxO, Lightroom or Capture One.  The images are processed, touched up and custom metadata is added in the IPTC fields. The end result of this process are high-resolution TIF and lower resolution JPG files, both containing custom metadata in the IPTC fields. 
Let’s discuss the folder structure and metadata attributes required to support this process. Then see how content is uploaded.
Folder Structure:
 The structure of the digital asset library depends on details of the use case. It can be organized by
  • event (like photo shoot)
  • file type (TIF or JPG)
  • product (shoes, belts, shirt, pants, etc)
  • or to simplify the box permission model

Most companies with many digital assets will take a combined approach, with different parts of the library organized differently. Our recommendation is that they choose the structure that makes the process easiest to manage. Why? A folder structure might work for one set of users but might not be suitable for another set. Best to use metadata to find documents which allows users to pick what attributes they want to use to find images.

Since these images are created in photo shoots, they decided to use an event based folder structure for the digital library. The top level folder are named using the following convention: Year – Style – Designer Name. This retailer only does a few photo shoots per year. If the number of photo shots is large, you can add a folder level for each year (2016, 2015, etc).

Metadata:
Choosing metadata attributes doesn’t need to be complex. There are 2 types of metadata. Metadata that supports your process and metadata used to find content. Since this was the retailer’s first implementation of DAM, they kept it simple and focus on the metadata used to find content. The approach we recommended was to understand how users want to search for content, what metadata they want to see and from that define a series of use cases. Based on those use cases, they chose what metadata attributes would be effective. Using Crooze MetaData Tools and PowerSearch for Box, they built a quick prototype and got user feedback before investing time in tagging content. Rapid prototyping is difficult and expensive using other approaches. If you need help with choosing the right metadata, Crooze provides Mentoring and Training to assist.

The metadata contains some of the same information as the folder structure or even the document name. This is a recommended approach. Folder structures can be altered and documents can be moved or renamed. If the metadata is attached to the image (and embedded in the image) you will never lose your metadata.

Once the Brand Management metadata is defined, the template can be created in minutes using Box’s Metadata Tool. Note that you need Co-Admin or Admin privileges to manage metadata templates.

                  
Uploading Content:
Since the images contain all the metadata in the IPTC fields, the next step for them was to configure MetaData and PowerSearch for Box to extract the metadata during upload. Here is a sample mapping that includes making a required attribute. 
To upload the images for a new photo shoot, they first create a folder called ‘2016 – New America – Elma Gardner. In this case, the folders don’t need any metadata. The images aren’t inheriting any metadata from the parent folder since all images have all the metadata embedded the images.
When they upload an image, a preview appears on the right and the metadata on the left to allow you to view the image and metadata in a single glance. In this case, metadata is extracted from the IPTC metadata in the image and the attributes are pre-populated as shown in the screenshot below. They use the “Upload ALL files with metadata” button and all the design images are uploaded at once. For images that don’t have embedded IPTC metadata, they set the common metadata such as Document Type on the folder. When documents are added to the folder, attribute values will be inherited from the folder.

MetaData Tools and PowerSearch for Box makes it easy to add content with metadata by leveraging embed IPTC metadata or folder inheritance.  In our next post, we look at  how they manage metadata on existing content and how users get to content by using Metadata Tools and PowerSearch for Box.

 

Part 3 of 4
Jul 21 2016

Digital Assets Management with Box and Crooze – Part 3 of 4

By Digital Asset Management Use Cases

Managing and Modifying MetaData

Auto capture of metadata on upload helps automate the initial process of adding metadata but the on-line retailer had additional requirements to add additional metadata.  They also had lots of content that did not have any IPTC data captured at the time of upload.  For example, images, design guides and product specifications supplied by appliance manufacturers. To further streamline their process they are able to browse or search to a content and apply additional metadata in mass.  
In this example, they are applying metadata to new appliance images they received from manufacturers. They apply metadata to images one at a time and in bulk.

Overtime metadata can change and there is a need to update metadata in order to keep the quality of search effective.  This on-line retailer is able to change metadata in mass.  In this example, they are updating all Date Taken attribute on all several images that we incorrectly added to assets in the Digital Library.

The online retailer also exports search results with all the associated metadata to Excel for review by team members. When errors are found they update the metadata directly using PowerSearch, or by importing the spreadsheet. They also found importing metadata using a spreadsheet useful to bulk assign metadata when moving content to Box during the initial setup.

 

Part 4 of 4
Jul 20 2016

Digital Assets Management with Box and Crooze – Part 4 of 4

By Digital Asset Management Use Cases

Find Digital Assets and Share

This post covers how users find digital assets and deliver them to users.  The overall process was streamlined so the organization can get things done more efficiently. 
As new images are added from photo shoots, those images, now digital assets, need to be shared within the organization. To make the content readily accessible the on-line retailer decided to use search with thumbnails. Here is a screenshot of the image.

Their marketing group also needs to create a list of assets they recommend for used in upcoming campaign. These collections of images or Lightboxes can be shared with others simply by using a link.

One process that was tedious for users was generating a link to use on the e-commerce website. The steps required to generate the link were not complicated but presented a barrier to adoption. They worked with Crooze Services to add a small customization to allow users to get the required link in a single click.
The on-line retailer used searches to support other business processes. They liked that the searches were easy to modify in response to changes in how users wanted to view  information and that searches could easily be distributed in Box or using the PowerSearch Dashboard.
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