Digital Asset Management
A DAM System for TYPO3
Published under the GNU General Public License Copyright 2005
René Fritz, Daniel Hinderink
1 What is Digital Asset Management
A DAM system is a tool to handle digital content like images, text files and virtually any other data format.
These media files can be attributed with meta information. Such information can describe the content (description, keywords, location), provide technical data (image size) or copyright information for example.
All these information can be used to handle, find and categorize the media files. Two different forces drive the necessity for advanced management of such assets:
• Large number: even smaller sites tend to produce large numbers of assets, often
stored in random folders and with incoherent naming, making the organisation and overview increasingly hard over time. Digital asset management adds a meta-layer of information to every file in a semi-automatic indexing process, allowing users to search for attributes in a database associated with the files.
• Automated retrieval: assets as building blocks for content often are used to produce
automated output, like image galleries and download areas. Digital asset management serves these output functions by providing an interface for retrieving assets filtered by any combination of metadata criteria.
2 DAM for TYPO3
The Digital Asset Management now available from the TYPO3 Extension Repository on TYPO3.org, was developed to address the growing demand for professional asset management in TYPO3 applications and implementations. Even though the first final version is still to come, previous versions have been used in various production settings.
3 The DAM Module Structure
3.1 Media
The DAM introduces a new main module, providing several submodules that group functionalities.
The submodules itself are containers that can be extended (also by custom extensions) with submodule functions that can easily be accessed by tabs.
3.2 Media>File
This Module allows for a standard file view enhanced with functions for uploading files to the server, as well as the indexing submodule, which is used for creating metadata for batches or individual files.
The DAM counterpart of the old file module gives the user file manager feeling but with enhanced functionality.
3.3 Media>List
This module is used for handling files through the metadata layer, which have already been indexed previously. Files can be searched for and filtered by categories or other meta data.
The media files can be found by filters. Such a filter rule can be: "Show all files of the category 'Press' which are text type files but not PDF". This can be done easily by clicking on the + = - icons in the navigation frame. The selection result can be saved for later use.
Features:
• searching by rules
• saved selections (rules) for later use • editing of meta data
• editing the category tree
The DAM provides several ways to access and view your files.
Special features: Own category trees can be supplied by extensions. If one needs more or custom categorizations than the standard categories, extensions can be employed to enable this. Custom category trees show up in the navigation frame below the standard
category tree by default.
List
This submodule gives a compact list view on the current selection.
Thumbnails
Similar to the Media>List>List submodule this module displays the same output with larger thumbnails.
Selection
The current selection can be viewed and modified here.
Process
A current selection can be batch processed with this module. This can be used to enrich already indexed files with new meta data.
Features:
• batch processing of the current selection • overwrite meta data of your selected files
• append meta data: eg. add a keyword or add a category to your files
Batch processing fields can be extended by own extension. Special features include automatic metadata extract (EXIF, IPTC ... XMP), text extraction and automatic detection of content language.
3.4 Media>Lightbox
The lightbox provides a Clipboard-like functionality, through which a user can save his selection under any alias and share this selection (read only or read & edit) with other users and usergroups.
The lightbox is a tool similar to a clipboard
which has the additional feature to share content with other users.
3.5 Media>Categories
This is a temporary module to provide global category management and will be integrated seamlessly into the other modules at a later time
3.6 Media>Info
This submodule serves as the interface of the DAM for standard content authors, using assets already indexed for content creation and delivery.
Currently this submodule provides the following materials:
References
The references submodule gives an overview of the used assets in the system. This feature depends on the experimental references functionality.
3.7 Media>Indexing
The indexing module is used to index a bunch of files or folders with subfolders (in contrary to the file module which will index single files after upload).
Features:
• mass indexing of files and folder
• apply rules while indexing (eg. assign category from folder name) • preset meta data before indexing
• save index setup as preset
The indexing module has four steps where the preset for the indexing will be done.
Special feature: Indexing rules can be extended by custom extensions. For example file names could have a special format which makes it easy to categorize the files. This can be processed by a custom indexing rule to match the file name pattern to categories during the indexing process.
3.8 Media>Tools
Generally Functions for Administrators are placed here.
Cron job
This module is similar to the indexing module with the difference that the indexing setup can be saved to be used as a preset for a cron script. The cron script itself can be called periodically or triggered by some event to index new files automatically while operating in the background.
3.9 Element browser
The element browser is TYPO3's ubiquitous tool enabling content authors to access files and assets from the webserver. The Element browser enhancements coming with the DAM include an interface for choosing files from categories or mime types. An integrated lightbox function is also planned and in production.
4 Beyond file handling
Simple file handling can be improved when metadata is available, moreover the database based storage of metadata allows new features. As an example we want to show assets can be used as reference.
TYPO3 regular technique to handle file content is to create a copy for each content element (record) where the file is inserted. This is a safe solution and there's no problem removing the original file. But this is also very limited when an editor wants to know where an asset is used in the website. Using references instead of copies gives more control over the available asset.
The usage of assets can be displayed when used by reference.
The DAM has experimental support for references which can be enabled with the extension manager. The submodule Media>Info>References displays a list of used assets. While the assets itself is listed it can be seen to which page and to which record the asset is linked to.
Deleting an asset which is in use as reference gives a warning and shows the records where the asset is in use.
5 Applications
As stated in the beginning, metadata and their handling by the DAM serve many purposes associated with automatic retrieval of assets by criteria matching attributes of assets. Classic examples are image galleries and download areas, but the next step are product data management systems (PDM), like online product catalogues, e-commerce shops and the complete range of media management for print and other channels. One more hot topic is the integration with document management systems. As of today examples of almost all of these types of applications already exist and further development leading to standard DAM modules for these puposes are to surface in the mid-term.
6 DAM for Developers
The DAM has not yet an API to access the functionality of the system which is of course the basis to develop applications based on the DAM. A first version of the API is planned to be shipped with the Beta 3 (end of Sept. 2005).
Nevertheless there are already (frontend) applications in production and in use that access the database tables of the DAM directly. The tables are not expected to be changed very much in the future, so that's currently the way to go till the API is available.
Also many paradigms introduced to TYPO3 through the DAM have found their way into other areas of development. One such example are services, that extend the DAM, but meanwhile are used to extend other parts of TYPO3 in a similar fashion as well. In that sense the influence of the DAM goes well beyond it's immediate use and is about to serve as a basis to many new functions (like a new ecommerce shop) and also brings new technical solutions to detail problems (like services) as well as introducing new
backend interfaces (category trees, multiple step datahandling).
Demo extension
To demonstrate the possibilities to extend the DAM with new features a demo extension is provided. While there's no further documentation for developers available at this time, the demo extension (dam_demo) is currently the best resource for developers.
7 Development
The DAM is planned to be shipped with the TYPO3 version 4 as a system extension which means it will be fully integrated and can be used as the standard tool for organizing files instead of the file module.
The project page on TYPO3.org gives further information about the planned features and the roadmap.
The mailing list is the place for discussions, sharing thought and ideas but also for organizing the further development.
Project page on TYPO3.org
http://typo3.org/development/projects/digital-asset-management/ Roadmap http://typo3.org/development/projects/digital-asset-management/roadmap/ Mailing list http://lists.netfielders.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/typo3-project-dam Bugtracker
The bugtracker on http://bugs.typo3.org provides the category tx_dam for bug reports depending the DAM.
8 Outlook
The future of the DAM, given the rather complete list of features already or close to publication, might rather lie with the aspirations of it's parts than with the ongoing development of the whole. The core DAM will be still refined and grow through extensions built on it's API, but the most thrilling prospects are offered by applying innovations and principles introduced to TYPO3 by the DAM to other field of application. Examples might be a coherent global metadata management no longer limited to assets but stretching to generic content generated in the CMS and layered from metadata used in authoring workflows to formats catering to public display and information retrieval by external systems, such as semantic browsers.
