Televisual: Flow Server

Newspapers & Magazines

Outsourcing

Corporate Development Tools

Read how Televisual's customers use Asset to lower their cost of content ownership.

Flow Server

Flow Server maintains content during the publishing cycle. It provides the functions of a copy desk, news desk and picture desk with task scheduling and page and web management workflows to provide the primary content management functions used in publishing.

Flow Server is XML based, using an object oriented SQL database, which thanks to the database independence of the Asset PT infrastructure can be either Microsoft SQL Server 2000™, Microsoft SQL Server 2005™ or Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express™. Flow Server is Unicode based, making it entirely language independent.

It is also highly scalable, and can be implemented on a single server, or across a group of servers on a VPN. Whether on a single server or a diffuse group, the content environment appears unified to the user. Flow Server provides sophisticated database replication using a publish and subscribe model. Digital Assets are replicated as well as database entries. This can be used to provide a live backup server for redundancy, or for more complex multi site scenarios for web publishing and disaster recovery.

Although content is stored in the database, Flow Server presents users with a basket structure to organise content and move it through the various stages of the publishing process. The basket structure can mimic a traditional flat folder system, making the transition to Asset Flow simple if it is your first editorial system.

A simple but powerful access rights system based on users and groups allows customised workflows to meet differing editorial models for content origination, editing and approval. User and group management is web browser based, allowing the systems administrator to control permissions remotely.

Flow Server has full version control, and tracking every edit, and allowing immediate roll back to an earlier version. This applies to all objects, not just to text, so, for example, a user can roll back an image crop done in Flow Server.

Workflow can be automated with the Asset Flow Rules Engine, which can validate, route, age, edit and delete content according to a set of rules applied in the master configuration file.

As well as proving editorial workflow, Flow Server is used to manage content prior to archiving. It integrates tightly with Archive Server to ensure that content is archived after use.

Related Articles of Interest

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Multi Media Workflow in Asset Flow

Last Updated: Friday 18 May 2007 - 06:35