ADAM
These days, digital assets are an inevitable part of every marketing process, be it brand management & distribution, packaging workflows, marketing collateral roll out on print or web, product data management or catalog building. They are used by companies in various industries using dif-ferent processes, but without exception they represent a huge intellectual and monetary value.
ADAM is a versatile digital asset management solution that helps you manage those processes from creation to distri-bution. It streamlines your asset’s lifecycle by letting you store, find and publish all types of assets: pictures, video, sounds, documents, presentations, page layouts, etc….
Asset Lifecycle Management
ADAM automates the import and classification of new as-sets, full text indexes any textual content and extracts file specific information, like XMP for photo and video. It lets you control access rights on asset, classification and user level, keeps track of versions and provides full workflow capabilities to lead your assets through all stages of their lifecycle. It finally organizes the delivery of your assets by enabling resizing and transformations on images and video for cross-media usage, and ordering of assets via down-load or FTP.
By plugging in additional ADAM Connectors you can go even further and use your assets directly in Adobe InDe-sign or Quark XPress, in MS Word documents or Power-Point presentations, from within the native applications and transparent to the end user. Soft proofing of high reso-lution assets can be done using the (Kodak) Smart Review System Connector. To further streamline your asset delivery you can control localization and roll-out of media-rich pub-lications with DocMaker Studio or fully automate product catalog generation with PIMS Studio (Product Information Management) together with the InDesign
Connector.-Integration and interaction with internal and remote systems
ADAM integrates seamlessly with your existing enterprise applications, from exchanging product information with your ERP system to integrating with your user’s favorite comfort zones like MS Office or Adobe Creative Suite. Adam provides connectors for those and other market lead-ing applications and lets you connect to all others thanks to the provider model of ADAM 4.0.
Flexible and open for customization
The ADAM Engine is built on the Microsoft .NET Frame-work, giving you all the benefits of this standard technolo-gy where the most significant is its level of interoperability with other languages, applications and systems. .NET also allows the integration with third party applications through Web services and enables communication using standard Internet protocols such as XML and SOAP, creating a chan-nel through which internal and remote systems can easily interact.
ADAM is designed using a Provider Model to allow choos-ing from multiple implementations in the application con-figuration. This allows you, for example, to provide your own implementation for creating previews of legacy/cor-porate file formats, or delivering content using a 3rd party secure delivery mechanism or even send out text messages (SMS) when a workflow task is overdue. The open API of-fers expanded application interoperability and integration, and is designed to support any file-format.
ADAM also supports and facilitates interface customiza-tions: from adding a custom banner and color scheme to creating a complete custom interface from scratch. RAD controls make this even easier by allowing easy exposure of ADAM functionality on your custom built web interfac-es.
ADAM Solution
“Let the Media Flow”
We take our baseline seriously. We believe that the Marketing Supply Chain is controlled
by the same principles as the Production Supply Chain: cycle time, output control and cost
control. ADAM can do for your Marketing Supply Chain what ERP-systems did for the
production supply chain: reduce costs, improve time-to-market and enhance control over
every step in the digital asset lifecycle.
Introduction of Studios and Comfort Zones
ADAM 4.0 introduces Studios as logical workspaces that group functionalities by process or role. Included in the Engine are the Asset Studio, which bundles the core asset management functionalities like previewing, managing meta-data and ordering assets together with Config Studio, which is the brand new ADAM administration interface, organized into one workspace.
Next to the two standard Studios, you can easily plug in additional ADAM Studios, like Workflow Studio to control your media business processes, PIMS Studio to manage your product information and DocMaker Studio to automate your document localization and roll-out.ADAM 4.0 also introduces the concept of Comfort Zones, providing integrating seamlessly with your user’s favorite applications like MS Office, SharePoint or Adobe Creative Suite.
Additional modules merged into one Engine
In earlier ADAM versions, additional modules like Resize on Export, FTP Order-ing and Import/Export functionality were optional and had to be purchased separately. In ADAM 4.0 these modules are incorporated in the standard En-gine.
Extended security model
Permissions can be controlled in User and Field management, allowing admin-istrators to delegate part of ADAM administration without giving away full control. User roles are no longer fixed but can be custom defined, allowing you to be flexible in matching user and group permissions to specific needs. Classification security provides new configuration settings and additional se-curity levels including “deny” permissions. A graphical Access Analyzer gives administrators a clear overview of a user or group’s access rights for classifica-tions and records on all levels.
Increased performance and scalability
Improved distribution of application processes between the database server and web servers allow to more easily scale your ADAM environment to specific needs, boosting performance and response times both on the workstation cli-ent and on the server.
Fully multilingual
ADAM 4.0 enables a fully multilingual interface for any user: translations are
provided on button labels, error messages and other interface elements. Field values can also be entered in multiple languages, allowing management of as-sets or product metadata in different languages. The full text indexer supports unilingual searching to find matching assets in all languages.
Enhanced Field functionality
The whole approach on Fields as custom metadata attributes has been ex-tended significantly, new data types have been added and Fields are no longer reserved for Records only, but has also been enabled on files, users, classifica-tions and indexer tasks.
Based on .NET Framework
The ADAM 4.0 Engine has been completely rebuilt on the Microsoft .NET Framework, giving all the benefits of this new standard technology where the most significant is its level of interoperability with other languages, applica-tions and systems.
.NET also allows the integration with third party applications through Web services and enables communication using standard Internet protocols such as XML and SOAP, creating a channel through which internal and remote systems can easily interact.
Provider Model
ADAM 4.0 is designed using a Provider Model to allow choosing from multiple implementations in the application configuration. This allows you to develop your own Graphic Engines, Notification agents, Maintenance tasks, Ordering agents and Indexers and plugging them easily in your ADAM environment. Rapid development
ADAM 4.0 allows Rapid Development for customizations and custom develop-ment:
- support for all .NET enabled languages allows the use of Microsoft Visual Studio, giving developers IntelliSence, color-coding and state-of-the-art debug functionalities, reducing errors and increasing programming speed. - enhanced API, offering expanded application interoperability and integra-tion, and designed to support any file-format, which means that assets are no longer image-specific.
- RAD controls allow easy exposure of ADAM functionality on your custom built web interfaces
Key features:
P Introduction of Studios and Comfort Zones
P All supplemental modules merged into Engine (like FTP ordering or Resize on export)
P Extended security model
P Increased performance and scalability P Fully multilingual
P Enhanced Field functionality P 100% .NET
P Allows Rapid Development for customizations and custom development
Asset Studio
Let the Media Flow on the Microsoft .NET platform
ADAM 4 is the latest and fully redesigned version of the ADAM Engine
Adobe Creative Suite is usually the preferred working environment for designers, editors and publishers. ADAM understands this and created comfort zones, providing a seamless integration of ADAM with market leading applications such as Adobe CS3.
ADAM’s Adobe Version Cue® Connector makes it possible to use
Adobe Bridge® as a client on ADAM. This means that creative
profes-sionals can stay in their Adobe ComfortZone with ADAM’s Digital Asset Management functionalities at their fingertips:
• One central media repository, always available • Controlled metadata management
• Classification management with multiple taxonomies • Robust security model
• Full text and complex metadata searching • Workflow management
• Automatic generation of previews, even for file formats not supported by Adobe
From within Adobe Bridge users can view, pick up and save their media assets in ADAM and browse through the same Classification tree structure as set up in the ADAM interface. They can view ADAM metadata in the Bridge Inspector Panel while taking full advantage of ADAM’s metadata management capabilities, such as default values, validation rules, asset security and field permissions.
When searching for a specific asset using the ADAM full text search index, users can also filter and sort the displayed media set using ADAM metadata. ADAM also generates the thumbnail images and high quality previews, even for file formats where Adobe does not pro-vide preview functionality, like PowerPoint, Word or Excel.
From within ADAM you can even influence the user menu in Adobe Bridge, allowing users to perform specific actions by right-clicking an asset, for example starting a workflow or catalog the asset in additional classifications
more info available at : www.adam.be/versioncue
Adobe Version Cue
®Connector
in real life , a few scenarios
A designer, working in a Mac environment, creates an image in Photoshop and saves it directly into ADAM via Bridge. ADAM automatically extracts any IPTC or EXIF information, color space and raster info, attaches the image to a workflow for review and approval before it is labeled as “Released” and available to editors and publishers.
Adobe Bridge as an interface on the assets in ADAM
A publisher looks for an image to include into InDesign : he uses the search functionality in Bridge to search the images in ADAM, filters the search results using the ADAM metadata and can easily choose the right image because of the high quality previews that are provided. He can also be sure that all images he finds are suitable for publication because he is only allowed to see images that have been reviewed and approved.
He inserts the image into his InDesign document and saves his document into ADAM. ADAM extracts and full text indexes any textual content and attaches the document to a new workflow to be translated, approved for publication and printed.
The editor-in-chief gets an e-mail in his inbox asking him to approve a new document for publication. He clicks the link in the e-mail and is taken directly to the document in ADAM where he can preview the document on his Windows PC and and approve or reject the document. ADAM will route the document further through its workflow depending on the decision made.
Adobe Version Cue
®
Connector
The Adobe Version Cue
®Connector combines the strengths of ADAM and Adobe CS3
®,
allowing creative users to stay in their own ComfortZone while taking full advantage
of ADAM’s Digital Asset Management and workflow capabilities.
Key features:
P Deliver ADAM-controlled assets directly to Adobe CS3® users
P Seamless integration, transparent to the end user P Custom dialogs to utilize ADAM workflow capability P Mac & PC interoperable
P No additional software or plug-ins needed on user’s workstations
Key features:
P Variable catalog pagination based on tagged templates PFixed InDesign® templates stored in ADAM avoid
repetitive lay-outing
P ADAM functions as your central Product Information Management System (PIMS)
P Shortens the cycle-time in lay-out and prepress considerably
P Fully multilingual
P Output is a native InDesign® document, ready for final
modifications
P Streamlines your publication processes using work-flows and version management
P Powered by industry standard Adobe® InDesign®
Server Software
Nowadays building an audience-targeted product catalog with the highest possible cycle-times is becoming more and more important.
However, composing such catalogues, people are confronted with the same challenges over and over again, such as:
• recovering the correct product info and matching images • synergy between all involved parties in creating a new
catalogue
• management and follow-up of the various tasks in the creation process of a catalogue
The operational workflow is becoming larger and more complex, resulting in less space and time for creativity.
ADAM InDesign® connector allows you to simplify this
opera-tional workflow to save time and money in lay-out and prepress, leaving more space and time for creativity and resulting in a higher commercial level of your catalog.
Product Managers have more control over the structure of the-catalog, because it is directly managed from within ADAM, the central Product Information Management System (PIMS). Graphical people no longer have to spend weeks or even months on lay-outing every page of the catalogue. Tagging the different templates once and storing them in ADAM allows the InDesign Connector to automate:
• Complete pagination
• Automatic sizing of the objects on a page
• The generation of a native InDesign® Document, open for
final editing
more info available at : www.adam.be/indesignconnector
InDesign
®
Connector
Automate your catalog creation directly from within your ADAM database
Shorten your cycle time in lay-out and prepress and reduce production costs
Automated catalog-creation: browsing through the ADAM classifications with multiple language options.
ADAM InDesign
®Connector gives you the opportunity to considerably reduce your production
InDesign
®
Connector
ADAM InDesign
®Connector in real life,
a sample scenario:
Setting up a new catalog is a task handled by a
product manager using the PIMS studio.This
catalog consists of several product categories, each with their own products, assets, images, technical info and SKU’s.
Lay-out people built product set templates using
InDesign® in combination with the Adam
ID-con-nector.This allows to design templates that be-have according to the rules set-up: boxes can be-have floating top and/or bottom, can be removed if no content etc.These templates are stored in ADAM. The product manager can select for each product set one or more templates to be used. The information that has to appear for the productset and for the different products are also stored in the database, with possibilities to link product categories, products, attributes, assets,images…
The lay-out operator can than simply select any level in the hierarchy to start the automatic page building process. Additional parameters at this stage include the language(s) that need to be paginated as well as the master page that will define the look and feel of the catalog. In case multiple languages are selected, they will be paginated on different layers into one document. When the pagination is finished, a new native InDesign® document is generated and again
stored in ADAM. Alternatively, the system can be setup to store PDF documents next to the native InDesign® documents.
The catalog can now be attached to a workflow in the ADAM Workflow Studio before it gets printed, or can immediately be downloaded for further processing, modifying and publishing or printing.
ADAM InDesign® Connector integrates with:
ADAM Engine
P Digital Asset Lifecycle Management
P One central asset repository for publications and
contained items
P Version management PAccess control
P Content delivery via download or ftp
ADAM PIMS Studio
P Product Information Management System P Complete product classification, including
im-ages, technical info, attributes, assets,…
P Multi-regional, multi-lingual, multi-market,…
product-database
P Mother/child-, brother/sister-links between
different products
P Complete SKU-management
P Controlled access to the database by different
user-types
ADAM Workflow Studio
P Business process management
PADAM Smart Review System Connector
P Soft proofing on high res publications
ADAM DocMaker Studio
P Manages creation and editing of InDesign®
ADAM Workflow Studio brings the configurability and flexibility of a workflow solution to your desktop. Companies nowadays use different media, target different audiences and deliver their message in a wide range of chan-nels. Therefore the tools they use to do this need to be versatile and easy to use. Most important of all: users need to be able to quickly change the flow of a process as business requirements are constantly changing. The challenge lies in reacting equally swiftly.
ADAM’s Workflow Studio provides the tools to help you organize, fine-tune and adapt the existing way of doing things. It puts the power into the hands of the person that knows best: your business analyst.
Marketing and communication processes depend highly on hu-man interaction, therefore a system that wants to structure these processes needs to be able to handle situations that are inher-ent to working with people. Adam’s Workflow Studio can auto-matically distribute a given task to a group of users depending on their workload. The engine can also take in account business hours, sick leave and holidays and distribute or delegate tasks accordingly.
The Workflow Studio contains building blocks for all major Adam functions such as creating, editing and deleting records, classifications, orders and more. These building blocks can be dragged and dropped onto a Visio drawning to build an Adam workflow process. This framework is fully extensible and allows you to develop your own building blocks and workflow triggers if necessary.
more info available at : www.adam.be/workflow
Workflow Studio
Add BPM capabilities to your PIMS & DAM solution with ADAM Workflow Studio
Manage and optimize your digital supply chain
Key features:
P Design workflows using Microsoft Visio 2003 or 2007 P Manage and control your processes with an easy to
use web based dashboard
P Automatic delegation of tasks when users are unavailable
P Extensible and configurable BPMS framework
Use Microsoft Visio® to create your DAM workflows
ADAM Workflow Studio in real life,
sample scenarios:
Scenario 1: A manager
wants to be notified whenever a restricted asset is requested for download. He designs the process in Micro-soft Visio and uploads it into the Adam Work-flow Studio. Once the workflow definition has been published, every order will pass through a workflow that checks the status of the file and asks for management approval.
Intuitive screens guide you through your workflow
Workflow Studio
About ADAM Software NV
ADAM is a Digital Asset Management company that provides clients the ability to manage, structure and deliver media between people, processes and systems. Our software has an intelligent open architecture that provides the ability to customize and continuously develop new applications using our ADAM SDK. We understand our clients’ needs to share and collaborate, automate mundane tasks and control quality. We are passionate in providing our clients with intuitive and easy to use software to help them organise media and distribute assets as quickly as possible. We have the knowledge of the way the media supply chain works, its people, the workflow and the common goal to publish and distribute quality content.
CRM
ERP LegacySystem ... ADAM API
ADAM ENGINE
ADAMBUSINESS PROCESS ENGINE
Adobe InDesign® INDESIGN® Connector Adobe VersionCue® VERSIONCUE® Connector Microsoft Office Suite MS OFFICE® Connector WEB/CMS MRM ... CUSTOM Connector ADAM WEB SER VICE ASSET Studio CONFIG Studio PIMS Studio DOCMAKER Studio WORKFLOW Studio + Kodak SRS® CUSTOM Studio ADAM Software ® 2007 Backend Systems ADAM Engine
ADAM Business Process Engine ADAM Studios
ADAM Connectors 3rd Party Products
ADAM platform and architecture
ADAM Workflow Studio in real life,
sample scenarios:
Scenario 2: Whenever a new
asset needs to be published to all users within the ADAM Download Centre a specific tagging process needs to be followed. The regional manag-er needs to decide whethmanag-er he wants the asset to be available for his region. The marketing team needs to tag the asset with a range of keywords and the content manager needs to approve the work of the mar-keting department.
Scenario 3: Whenever a product gets updated within the Adam PIMS Studio, all regional managers need to be notified. These managers can then decide whether they want to update their product information. Once this has been done, the workflow process will invoke the InDe-sign Connector to refresh the associated InDesign docu-ment using the latest product information. Afterwards a PDF is created and the content manager could receive a task to review and approve the latest version using Kodak’s Smart Review System.
