Get the DAM out of the way

May 29, 2013

Let’s face it, no matter how great the UI, a DAM can be cumbersome for the typical power user.

We routinely hear, “so how do the assets get into the DAM? Do our designers have to upload them? Because that’s not going to work, they’ll never upload all of their files at the end of the day.”

Without digital assets, there is nothing to manage, there is no collaboration, there are no workflows — there’s no value. For firms with multiple team members working on a single project, it can be difficult to track work-in-progress assets and the status of the project, if assets aren’t being uploaded into the DAM. For this reason, Netx developed its I/O Tool (input/output).

The desktop tool keeps designers’ work-in-progress assets stored and organized in the DAM, without disrupting the designers’ workflow — while at the same time allowing project managers and other designers to stay up to date on the status of the project.

This process is done by setting up Watched Folders within the I/O Tool, which allows users to map folders from their local machines to categories in the DAM. The user can choose to map assets from their local drive up to the server, pull down assets from a category in the DAM, or perform a bi-directional sync of assets.

So if a designer in San Francisco is working on the same project as team members in Seattle, they can configure the I/O tool to pull down all of the new assets the Seattle team has uploaded into the DAM at set intervals throughout the day, so they’re aware of how the project is developing.

For work-in-progress assets, the user can also tell the tool whether to version, or replace older assets. By selecting “version”, the DAM will provide a clear picture of how the project has progressed, showing versions of the project as it has evolved through the creative cycle. If the project took a wrong turn at some point, simply find the last version that was on the right path and begin working from that asset.

The Netx I/O Tool also features the ability to drag and drop entire folder structures, including nested folders, into the DAM. This feature is incredibly handy for bulk ingesting assets into the DAM from an existing file structure without having to worry about going back to reorganize things.

The I/O Tool is especially ideal for fast-paced creative and production teams.

Related article on CMS Wire: Can DAM Increase Its Role - and Disappear? DAM Vendor NetXposure Says Yes

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