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Documentation & User Guides | Fotoware

Filtering out files that have insufficient metadata

This topic explains how Color Factory can be configured to filter out files with insufficient metadata from workflows for manual metadata entry.

What this workflow does

When submitting files to an archive, you need some level of metadata governance to make sure that the files can be successfully found later. Color Factory helps you do this, for example using routing by required metadata. This allows you to create a workflow where assets that have sufficient metadata will pass right on through the workflow and be stored in the location you've configured, while assets that don't contain enough metadata will be routed elsewhere to allow you to review and edit those files.

Note: There a plethora of levels at which you can enforce metadata governance in the Fotoware system - for example you can configure clients so a user must add metadata to certain required fields before a file is submitted. However, this topic only deals with the Color Factory side of things, and we'll leave it up to you to choose where this is best enforced in your asset management system.

Setting it up

  1. Start by creating a channel with the AutoRouting feature enabled.
  2. Expand the channel tree and go to the AutoRouting node and click on Add to create a new routing method.
  3. Choose the Required Fields routing type, then name the routing and click Select.

    routing by required fields 1.PNG
     
  4. Now choose which folder file file should be routed to if the required fields are not filled in. By default, they will be stored in a folder called Required text missing inside the channel's output folder, but you can choose to store these files in any folder on the network. Asset that have content in the required fields are be default stored in the channel's output folder, but you can override that too if you like by choosing another folder.

    routing by required fields 2.PNG
     
  5. Tick off the fields that are required - i.e. have to be filled in before the file is approved.
  6. If you want to make sure that users have not simply inserted a space character in the required fields to avoid having to type anything in, you can tick the corresponding option to ignore white spaces. Any file with a blank space in the required field is then routed as a file that does not contain the required metadata.
  7. Click OK to store the routing preferences and make sure you save the Color Factory configuration (File | Save in the program menu) to incorporate the changes.