Learning Cumulus (Exploring Series): Tapping the True Power of Cumulus Categories

More flexible than folders, much smarter than keywords, use Cumulus categories to build and manage any taxonomy.

TOTM: Categories – Smarter metadata tagging

This Term of the Month explains how Canto Cumulus categories offer the best of both worlds—and then some. Once you understand the potential of categories, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to tag and organize files without them!

Power Tip: Using Related Categories to Create Asset Indexes

Even the best Canto Cumulus category hierarchies can become so “deep” that they confuse users. To simplify file finding in your catalogs, use Cumulus related categories to “flatten” things a bit. It’s a solution so easy and elegant, you’ll be kicking yourself for not thinking about it sooner. (Or, maybe you did!)

Power Tip: Interactively Find Assets that Share Categories

Canto Cumulus tracks relationships between files, including which files are assigned to all or some of the same categories. Thanks to real-time search technology, you can take advantage of relationship tracking to interactively fine-tune your search results. Make it easier to find what you need, even when you’re not sure what to look for!

TOTM: Live Filtering – Dynamic, Rules-based Access Permissions

The conventional user permissions models used by Windows, the Mac OS, Linux and most DAM systems, offer only a few options with regard to file access. They enable an administrator to determine whether a user or group can read file, create or overwrite files, or both.

Once set, these permissions are typically left as is—until someone complains, that is. If a user needs access to a file she can’t open, she needs to contact a system administrator—a process that could take many days to rectify, not to mention the time she and administrator waste.
Though Cumulus supports static permissions models like these, it also offers a far more advanced way to determine who sees what. It’s called Live Filtering.