Case Study: Digital Asset Management in Drupal

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Digital Asset Management Photo Resource Management in Drupal

A Case Study

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

About Me

Web Developer for College of Sciences

Graduate Student at Georgia State University

Twitter - @esembrat

http://ericsembrat.com

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Eric Sembrat

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Game Plan

Our plan tonight is simple:

1. The Problem2. The Research3. The Plan4. The Product5. The Future6. Questions? Comments?

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Game Plan

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Problem

Scene: College of Sciences: Deans Office.

The original Digital Asset Management (DAM) system was composed of:

• All assets located on a Shared Network Drive.• Stored in various file formats.

• No metadata present.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Setting the Stage

Metadata was available in two ways:

• On paper.• Photo releases, student names.

• With Personnel.• Memory of events, locations, etc.

It just was not being utilized.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Metadata

Files were stored using multiple image formats:

• .CR2• .TIF• .JPG/.PNG

Lossless formats ended up hampering OS photo preview capabilities.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

File Formats

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

NutshellComplexity of Asset Access

No Preset Standardizations

Haphazard Storage Specifications

A Mess

When I started work at Georgia Tech in July 2012, I devoted my free time to planning out a solution to this problem.

The concept was simple:

• Can’t this DAM be managed via software?

• Can I make the software more flexible than what the campus offers?

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Goal

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Research

Before diving into building a system from the ground up, it would make sense to look at existing systems.

ResourceSpace showed up as one of the few open source solutions that were flexible and feature-complete.

Most software was fairly limited.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Reinvent the Wheel?

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

ResourceSpace

However, ResourceSpace wasn’t as slick as I was hoping for.

The ease of customization and design I had become accustomed to in Drupal was non-existent.

Moreover, the plugin community in ResourceSpace is slim-to-none.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Researching

Moreover, limited use-case tests with the target audience showed that the system, workflow, upload process, and language was all unwieldy.

Rather than hacking together changes that would not be scalable to upgrades, I thought:

“Why not build this in Drupal?”

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Usability

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Plan

The plan with designing DAM was to take:

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Planning out DAM

Best Features of ResourceSpace Drupal’s Flexibility + = DAM

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Planning out DAMBest Features of ResourceSpace

Multiple File Uploads

File-Specific Metadata

Tag-Based Searching

Batch-File Meta-tagging

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Planning out DAMDrupal’s Flexibility

CAS Views Panels Taxonomy

Content Types Theming

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Product

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Finished Product

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Finished Product

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Content TypePhoto Album contains:

• Title• Description• Category (Taxonomy)• Photo Uploads• .CR2• .TIF• .JPG/.PNG

- Multiupload Filefield Widget- Multiupload Imagefield Widget

- File entity- File entity inline

- File Entity Preview Multiple- File MIME

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

File Fields• Multiupload Filefield Widget & Multiupload

Imagefield Widget• Allows multiple photos to be uploaded at once.

• File entity, File entity inline, & File Entity Preview Multiple• Allows file previews to appear when editing a

photo album.

• File MIME• Treats raw photos as Images rather than Files.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Photo Processing

Photo Processing:- ImageMagick

- im_raw- ImageMagick Advanced

ImageMagick - Basic Photo Conversions from RAW to Lossy.

im_raw - Allows raw ImageMagick commands.

ImageMagick Advanced - Allows file extension renaming.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Taxonomies

Tagging:- Taxonomy

- Taxonomy display- Tagadelic

- Tagadelic Views

Taxonomy Display - Override default taxonomy page with View.

Tagadelic - Tag clouds.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Taxonomies

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Future

DAM has been in place since December 2012, although it has gone through a few iterations since its initial release.

• Changes to site workflow for tagging.• Simplifications of views/displays.• Patches for taxonomy_access,

imagemagick, entity, and multiupload_filefield_widget.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

The Future

Access has been opened slightly to allow select members to download photography and assist in tagging / identifying.

However, DAM is still very much a CoS-internal system.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Access

DAM also works with video - although it is restricted to logging and tagging CoS-uploaded videos on YouTube.

For us, there is no current need for a video database of raw campus-shot video files.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Potential for Video

One major goal of constructing DAM was to minimize the maintainability of custom code.

All of DAM’s features are built using contributed modules and patches.

Edge-Cases - File Entity Preview Multiple.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Maintainability

One future goal for this project will be transposing the theme to the new Georgia Tech Adaptive/Responsive theme.

We have decided to wait on an official GT adaptive theme, instead of the custom themes we have set up.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Mobile

If there is interest, some features of this site can be exported for more widespread-use.

Caveat - Complexity of setup would require documentation for usage and server configuration to properly work with the Drupal Feature/imported design.

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Exportability

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

Demo

GT Drupal Users Group (GTDUG) - 2013 - Eric Sembrat

eric.sembrat@cos.gatech.edu

Contact information is also available on my personal blog:

http://www.ericsembrat.com