Portfolio catalogs

In Portfolio, a catalog is a collection of digital assets, typically related either in the simplest sense (they are all of your organization’s assets) or based on some organizational principle (they are all the assets used by the News department of the East Coast division).

Portfolio allows you to have multiple catalogs to satisfy your organizational needs. The benefit of dividing assets into catalogs is that you can specify a user’s ability to access assets at the catalog level. A user who needs to access News assets may not need to access Reality TV assets; by creating a catalog for each set of assets, you eliminate issues that can arise from too many users having access to assets.

Creating a catalog#

To create a Portfolio catalog:

1. Click Catalogs.

2. Click Add above the list of catalogs.

3. Enter the catalog name.

4. Specify a catalog template.

5. Choose a Collation method from the drop-down menu.

   This setting determines how information in your database is sorted.

6. Choose a Storage Type.

   For a Vault catalog, you can enable Asset Versioning.

   For a Watch Folders catalog, you can create an AutoSync folder that users can access immediately.

7. Click Create.

Catalog types#

Portfolio provides two types of catalogs: the more traditional Watch Folder catalog, in which asset files are stored on your network; and the Vault catalog, in which assets are stored in a location that is managed by Portfolio.

The advantages of the Watch Folder catalog are that it can take advantage of available storage anywhere on your network, and users can add assets to a catalog by adding a file to a “watched” folder. The main disadvantage is that these files are open to access from other users and applications, and could potentially be modified, damaged, or deleted.

The advantage of the Vault catalog is that access to your assets is managed by Portfolio, which allows users to check out assets to modify them, with Portfolio retaining multiple versions of assets so that the risk of loss is greatly reduced. The primary disadvantage is that you need a potentially large amount of storage space on your server for your catalogs. (This disadvantage is mitigated by the fact that server storage is typically faster and more secure than networked storage.)

Catalog templates#

Catalog templates make it simple to configure a new catalog for a specific purpose. Portfolio provides four catalog templates. Each template is a starting point from which you can further customize your catalog.

The benefits of choosing the appropriate catalog template can be measured in time. Since Portfolio automatically creates many custom fields for you, the setup time required will be considerably shorter. Also, if you don’t need to have a large number of custom fields, accessing and searching a catalog is much quicker.

Regardless of which catalog template you choose at the start, you can add and delete custom fields and update metadata mappings to fit your specific needs.

The default catalog templates are:

• General Use: The General Use catalog template includes many default custom fields for a wide variety of metadata, including EXIF, IPTC and XMP fields. Use this catalog template if you want to include all of these fields in your catalog, or if you aren’t sure what type of media will be in your catalog.

• Simple: The Simple catalog template does not contain any custom fields, and is not configured to extract metadata from files. The simple catalog template is useful as a starting place for complex catalogs that require specific custom fields and metadata extraction settings that you want to configure manually. This catalog template contains Keywords and Description fields, and can be configured to extract metadata into these fields. Keywords are automatically generated in the catalog, based on the file’s parent folder and filename.

• Spectrum: The Spectrum template is based on the primary specification for collections management activity in museums. For more information, see Spectrum - Collections Trust.

• VRA Core: The VRA Core template is based on the data standard for the description of works of visual culture and the images that document them. For details, see VRA Core Support Pages.

Catalogs and users#

In Portfolio, you must assign a user a role in a catalog in order for that user to access the catalog’s assets. You can assign a role manually at any time, automatically when you create a user, or through your network’s Active Directory service.

• To assign a role manually, see Catalog access.

• To assign a role when you create a user, see Adding user accounts.

• To assign a role through Active Directory, see Mapping users from Active Directory.

Deleting a catalog#

When you no longer need a catalog, you can delete it from Portfolio. Deleting a catalog removes all asset metadata, and should only be done when future user access to assets is not required.

Deleting a Watch Folder catalog does not remove the assets referenced by the catalog.

To delete a catalog:

1. Click Catalogs and select a catalog.

2. Click Remove above the list of catalogs.

3. Click OK in the confirmation dialog.