Cumulus X Features

The Cumulus X (v10) major release and successive updates from Canto come with a range of new and exciting features to enhance and improve the use of their digital asset management solution.

Portals Like its predecessor Sites, Portals is the Cumulus X web solution that provides read-only access to Cumulus - built with responsive web design to ensure the best user experience. Publish and market your digital assets online with ease across all possible screen sizes and any device. This means fast and secure self-serve file access and distribution to anyone on the web. Some of Portals capabilities include:

• Enabling of large preview files • Create collection landing pages - send links to non-Cumulus users and set your

own permissions • Create brandable publishing portals • Automated search engine optimisation (SEO) support • Not to mention built-in security.

Portals Interface

Portals Preview Window

Other spiffy features include files in a Basket or Collection sorted by name, date and type, ascending or descending, and the visibility of categories may be controlled by Container Type. The ability to configure the root category means you can set any category as the top level category for the Portals landing page and it will only affect the visibility of categories, not access to the records. Users can subscribe to a specific asset such that when changes are made, users are notified.

InDesign Client One of the most exciting features of Cumulus 10.1 is the powerful new InDesign solution that represents the culmination of Canto’s previous InDesign integrations: from InDesign Extended Pack for page by page cataloguing (now built in to all Cumulus editions), InDesign Companion that placed a Cumulus menu inside InDesign, to the Adobe Drive Adapter for access to a Cumulus catalog and assets from every Adobe application supporting Adobe Bridge. In response to user feedback, Canto now offers the best digital asset management integration to InDesign ever. It enables 2-way communication with the ability to access and work with assets catalogued in Cumulus directly from within Adobe InDesign - plus a whole lot more! It includes four InDesign panels that you can customise as you would any standard InDesign panel, e.g. resizing and repositioning, then saving the arrangement.

• Categories – shows category tree of open catalogues; • Records – shows the records according to the selection in the categories panel,

or the results of a quick search. You may also sort the search results, add/save into a Cumulus catalogue.

• Information – shows metadata of the record selected. • Preview – shows preview of the selected record.

Categories and Records Panels of Cumulus InDesign Client

Information and Preview Panels of Cumulus InDesign Client Cumulus customers who already have an earlier InDesign add-on integration should contact DataBasics to find out if they get access to new InDesign Client as part of their Software Maintenance.

Web Client Improvements Web Client now offers Print Templates for printing a selection of assets as contact sheets. The selection of assets can result from a search, a collection, or be individually selected. Select or deselect multiple files in a row by using the Shift / Click selection option. An important security feature is the redirection to https – connections always use https no matter what the user enters to ensure protection of content.

All-new Cumulus iOS Mobile App The iOS Mobile App gives the user all the read and write functionality of the desktop application whilst mobile. And now it comes built in with all new Cumulus purchases.

• Read/write, commenting, markup, search, download, upload, crop, and share • Create a branded interface • Secure access to assets anywhere – ideal for today’s digital workplace.

Cumulus Mobile App for iPhone and iPad

Controlled Vocabulary Support Search for content faster and in a more organised way. The use of controlled vocabularies restricts the choice of indexing terms to only those keywords in a specified list and improves metadata input for later asset retrieval. Cumulus 10.1 introduces a new field “Vocabulary” and a special catalog called $Vocabularies. Once the Vocabulary field type is enabled, Cumulus will only allow the use of those search terms included in your predefined vocabulary list. Create a controlled vocabulary – our blog shows you how - or import an existing one.

Custom Asset Relationships Relate assets to other assets – define custom names for relation types that are meaningful for your business. Organic relationships are now expanded to not only those defined by Canto such as asset alternates and variants, or provided out of the box like contained and referenced assets, but also to those that our customers might require.

The Relations menu with a range of relation types

This allows users and managers to determine how one asset relates to another for greater control over how a relation is applied and used, making it a more powerful function. Cumulus 10 only displays the tabs for relations that apply to a given file.

Category Handling via Drag & Drop You now update a category tree automatically or provide a dialogue box to determine the outcome when dragging & dropping records. Before, when copying records to another catalog, a dialogue box was always shown that asks whether missing categories should be created. Now, the user does not have to click OK in the dialogue box.

The dialogue box for dragging & dropping categories Categories to which the dragged & dropped records are assigned in the source catalog but are missing in the target catalog, can now either be ignored, or created in the target catalog.

Summary With the release of Cumulus X and its successive updates, Canto has raised the bar with regard to delivering the best digital asset management solutions. With the new Adobe integration capabilities along with a host of CMS integrations, new web solutions, and deployment options, plus the myriad new features and improvements, Canto maintains its lead as the global award-winning DAM provider.