We are pleased to announce this minor release of Brandworkz Brand Management Software to our clients, which includes some key new features to our Web-to-Publish module and the introduction of a built-in asset commenting tool for our Approval Workflow module, and an option for accelerated uploads of large files. This release also contains bug fixes and client suggested improvements. Finally, this release provides a speed improvement of over 50% on many page functions due to updating to faster AWS servers.
New Features
More Template options for the Web-to-Publish module
We have made a number of improvements to our Web-to-Publish module to give both template admins more flexibility when configuring template and users more options to easily create artwork. The improvements include:
Key features:
- Improved template configuration options for admins to better control the end-user experience when creating artworks;
- Ability to configure the template options more granularly (e.g. PDF/bitmap output options, artwork editor options, messaging to end users).
- Easily attach a workflow to a template, e.g. for approval or publishing purposes.
- Ability to map template areas to external XML data sources, allowing for artwork to contain areas of information that is auto-populated from this data*.
- More flexibility when creating templates* , such as
- resizing artwork within pre-configured parameters
- ability to select from pre-configured colour schemes
* Advanced templates to be created by Brandworkz
Workflow Commenting and Annotations
We have developed a commenting and annotation tool for images and documents attached to a workflow stage, streamlining workflow review cycles. The tool is now part of the workflow module so no additional add-ons are required to use this functionality.
Key features:
- Ability to comment on images and multi-page documents
- Ability to highlight and annotate directly on image/document previews
- Ability to reply to comments and annotations
Please contact us if you would like to have this feature enabled on your test and/or production instance as it is not enabled by default.
Accelerated Uploads
For clients which have very large files (typically HD videos) and/or have a user base which is scattered over multiple continents, the transfer of these files can be slow due to the fundamental design of one of the main network protocols underpinning the internet (TCP/IP) where transfers over long geographical distances slow down exponentially.
We have integrated Brandworkz with IBM Aspera which is file transfer software utilising a different protocol (UDP) which does not slow down over long distances.
The speed-up of file transfers over long distances can be dramatic, e.g. if the uploader is in the US and the server is in Europe the file transfer will typically be 5-10x faster, and if the uploader is in Australia and the server in Europe the file transfer can be 25-50x faster!
Note that this is an add-on module which must be purchased. Please enquire for further details.
Also, note that in an upcoming version we will be expanding this to include end-user downloads.
Integrations
We are delighted to announce our most recent integration with Templafy, the template management and document creation platform. We have formed a strategic partnership that expands the scope of brand management across businesses. To read more about the integration please view the press release here.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
DAM
- Fixed issue with selecting registered users for sharing albums via the auto suggest field within digital asset management.
- Fixed issue with cropping in a shared album.
- Improved handling of large Illustrator AI and JPG files
Workflow
- Workflow members can be configured to appear on the dashboard
- Added more flexibility to the ‘approver(s) for users group’ functionality.
- Reminders for workflow expiry dates
API (v1.2)
- Additional simpleSearch call for integrations that require basic search functionality.
- Ability to get additional keywords and metadata from the category calls.
- New calls for asset comments and annotations
Additional improvements
- Minor styling fix for users with long names.
- Various other bug fixes
Monitoring and alerting
We have over the past quarter been improving and overhauling the monitoring and alerting tools we use to keep a watchful eye on our clients’ sites and keep things running optimally (Pingdom, Uptime Robot, PagerDuty, GeckoBoard) . This has enabled us to create a live, unified dashboard in our offices so we at a glance have visibility on the status and health of our hosting infrastructure. Similarly, this has enabled us to create consolidated alerts coming from multiple systems and escalate any major issues to the relevant system administrators.
What’s coming in upcoming releases
- HTML5 web-to-print editor
- Full release of completely overhauled reporting
- New asset detail page using more screen real estate and multiple view-options for end-users
- Improvements to on-artwork annotation and commenting tool and roll out to non-workflow assets
- Improvements to search results page to enable more end-user actions
- More integrations/connectors to 3rd party software apps (e.g. WordPress)
- “My stuff” page allowing each end-user to easily access all their latest items such as generated artwork, assets, saved searches, etc
- And more…