While the Nuxeo Platform has a fully featured and configurable digital asset management workflow capability, many clients like to connect their content services workflow to an existing external specialized project management system to integrate core PM functions like resource management, financials, and calendar tracking. This can help with change management as users continue to work with a familiar PM system, while also getting the DAM benefits of the Nuxeo Platform to manage their content assets and associate metadata.
This is not an issue as long as the PM systems to be integrated with uses a REST API. In those cases, we have developed three different approaches to integration depending on the client’s use case: Handoff, Umbrella, or Full Sync.
To illustrate these approaches here are actual examples of each approach we have done while integrating the Nuxeo Platform with an incumbent Workfront project management system.
Approach #1 - Handoff - Global Advertising Agency
Nuxeo is the central place for the agency’s media asset management processes, from collaborating on the creation of master assets to management of adaptations. It is one of the most complex parts of a global marketing campaign.
The agency is composed of many different design and production agencies who all use their own PMs systems, a number of which are Workfront but with unique implementations. Each individual sub-agency’s business flows and data are different but the global agency needed to aggregate for distribution/delivery and support future reuse/reexpression across the whole organization.
Once complete the creative work is aggregated in Nuxeo – which requires some enrichment and to normalize the data for uniform accessibility and ease of use across the organization (though many fields remain unique to the creating agency, client details, etc.). Then assets can be distributed and published via Nuxeo, including client portals and other standardized exchange mechanisms.
There are also workflows where master assets are created and ingested into Nuxeo – specifically designed to be re-used across many sub-agencies – especially for major creatives campaigns, with adaptations, localizations, and regionalization requirements. So when each agency receives adaptation jobs they can access pre-built content sources which dramatically saves time and maintains design consistency and messaging alignment.
Approach #2 - Umbrella - Media Company
One of the leading licensing and retail merchandising organizations in the world required a DAM to capture creative assets to license content for consumer products. With licensing and merchandising programs, retail initiatives, promotional partnerships and themed experiences, this consumer products organization needed to create a brand library for external licensees to access the assets that they have licensed. For example, only give access to a partner to see digital assets related to a particular movie because they have a contract to make toys based on that movie.
An external licensee can submit a request for new digital assets for consumer products. Once submitted and approved, a new creative project is created to capture the digital assets. After the creative team completes the project to create new digital assets, the final brand materials are linked to the original request and enriched with corporate master data and licensing information.
Digital librarians then curate the digital assets and publish them for distribution to the external licensees. External licensees can then search and download any assets that they are entitled to use.
The projects are defined in Nuxeo which then kicks off the initiation of projects in Workfront. The creative work is managed in Workfront (asset ingestion to the Workfront projects can either be done through Nuxeo via agency portals, or it can be done via Workfront directly) where it automatically inherits the corporate master data defined when the project was created in Nuxeo - relation to product and character data etc. This avoids the need for a manual enrichment stage when assets come to Nuxeo and speeds time to market. When the creative tasks are done it all gets updated in Nuxeo (moves lifecycle stage etc). Then there is some further tagging to support downstream use (like rights etc.).
Approach #3 - Full Sync - Non-Governmental Organization
As with the advertising agency above, this non-governmental organization is a global operation with satellite offices around the world. However, in this instance, the organization’s headquarters does most of the creative work that is then shared with, and used by the remote teams. In some instances, the central team may also want to use assets created by the remote teams.
While the headquarters team uses the Workfront PM system, the remote teams do not and use the Nuxeo DAM Platform for accessing assets (even when a project is in progress). Managing translation and managing the reuse of existing assets is also a major requirement.
In this case, the integration is not just a one-way ‘push’ of content but rather an ongoing linkage allowing data exchange, controls, and use tracking.
