MediaFiler – constantly developing features

Read how some of the features available in MediaFiler were developed to support clients. Now these are available for all MediaFiler users. Do you also have a specific wish? Let us know.

Connect with Apple and Android Apps – MediaFiler Mobile: Zeeman

Zeeman is a major retail chain with more than 1,000 stores serving over 60 million customers a year in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, and France.

The company has a large team of field support engineers for onsite maintenance of equipment, such as the checkouts, cash registrars and bar scanners. After MediaFiler had been installed, the IT department realised it could use MediaFiler to hold images from their stores: the equipment, the damage, the repairs and stock parts. Initially, these digital photographs were taken from the engineer’s cameras, uploaded and tagged directly into MediaFiler at the end of the day.

Challenge: To support field engineers on site with fast and easy access to MediaFiler
Engineers on the road, rather than in offices was their target by speeding up the delivery of images back to head office. To report damage, the completion of work and also visually seek advice during repairs.

Solution: MediaFiler created MediaFiler Mobile, the client app for Android and IOS
Zeeman’s upgraded all their engineers’ smartphones and the MediaFiler bespoke team created MediaFiler Mobile. A mobile app for the engineers to upload images directly from their phones, using updated drop down tag lists retrieved from the Zeeman’s MediaFiler. simplified to almost point and shoot, a massive time saver and it reduced errors, avoiding captioning off site after the event.

Bonus benefits: MediaFiler Mobile client app now available to all clients
MediaFiler Mobile – iPhone and Android – is now available for all MediaFiler clients to use. It can be customised for your own company; logo, selected metadata fields, etc. Change the look and feel to make it your own corporate app.

Please contact us if you would like to use an app in your MediaFiler workflow.




Single Sign On (SSO): SURF

SURF is the organisation that manages the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for higher education – including all Universities – and the graduate and post graduate research centers in Holland.

We are delighted that a leading technology organisation such as SURF selected MediaFiler as their DAM solution.

Among the many services provided by SURF is SURFconext, an infrastructure for online collaboration providing users access to services provided by various different suppliers, which they can use within their own online systems. This opens up new opportunities for collaboration within and between the various institutions. Access to SURFconext is via Single Sign On – Users only have to log on once to safely access a large number of services. These services integrate seamlessly with the existing online environment at their own institutions.

Challenge: SURF wished to add MediaFiler to the SURFconext infrastructure

Solution: Single Sign On connecting MediaFiler to SURFconext
Single Sign On connecting MediaFiler to SURFconext. All users now have easy and secure access to the SURF MediaFiler with their own corporate user account which they also use for access to other corporate and educational systems.

Bonus benefits: Single Sign On to MediaFiler for all higher education and research institutions.
All MediaFiler clients in the education and research sector connected to SURFconext have the SSO option and can use their own corporate user account to logon into MediaFiler.

SURF’s opposite number in the UK is known as JISC (formerly the Joint Information Systems Committee), based in Bristol.




Plug-in: Syngenta

Syngenta is one of the world’s leading companies with more than 28,000 employees in some 90 countries, dedicated to increasing crop production through world-class science. The in-house design studio is responsible for brochures, reports and packaging design and they use Adobe InDesign as their creative software and MediaFiler as their DAM solution.

Challenge: Work faster and more effectively by never leaving InDesign
The designers wanted to search and import photographs and graphics direct from MediaFiler and have the images automatically open up inside the layout.

Solution: MediaFiler Plug-in for Adobe InDesign
MediaFiler technology partner, Laidback Solutions, have created a range of Plug-ins for MediaFiler. Plug-ins can do more than just import images; they can be pre-set to convert and re-size images, open up captions in the right font and font size in the user’s application, in this case InDesign.

Using the Adobe Plug-in has save a vast amount of time – now the Syngenta designers can simply search and import the pictures directly from MediaFiler into their layout. How easy is that! Read more about our Integrations.




Distribution and Workflows – News Module: Colprensa

The leading Colombian news agency Colprensa managed their large photo archive with MediaFiler. Video news clips and infographics were then added to the library. The agencies’ journalists generate news from every corner of Columbia, but these were both filed and then distributed by email.

Challenge: Incorporate a news archive in MediaFiler
Colprensa wanted every facet of the News Story in one place – as a package. The images, the infographics, the video and the story – the written word. Colprensa wanted journalists, staff and contributing agencies to upload directly to the ‘story’ folder.

Users had to be able to search the news archive by topic, date and content. Then MediaFiler had to automatically alert newspapers, publications and broadcasters that the ‘news package’ was ready to download, as soon as the last component had been uploaded. Automatic delivery to a subscribed distribution list, with the content delivery triggered by topic, keyword or date and time – such as a single daily transmission.

Solution: A News module in MediaFiler to link stories with visual media
This was the way forward. Many of our clients running a traditional ‘picture agency’ started to encompass supplying the full package; adding video and stories alongside their images.

MediaFiler meet Colprensa’s requirements 100%. Providing an automated system. All the news stories sorted in packages along with all the associated media, a headline picture visually attracting the user. All stories are fully text searchable, with advanced searches to filter by topic, date, etc. Users can quickly scan the daily submissions and Colprensa provides a daily news round-up for ‘news in brief’ stories.

Bonus benefits: Fully searchable, valuable historical news archive
Each day the archive grows to become a valuable historical news source. Easy for publications and broadcasters to research and review annual events for yearly reviews. An additional revenue generator.




Maps/GIS: Water Authority Vechtstromen

The Vechtstromen Water Authority is responsible for their region’s water, everything from providing fresh water, treatment of wastewater and managing almost 5000 km of rivers and waterways. Quite a task when you consider most of Holland is below sea level!

The Water Authority uses IRIS the American geographic information system (GIS), to process, analyse, integrate and present environmental data and information in their region.

Challenge: Link the images in MediaFiler to the IRIS data
Provide more information to each image held in MediaFiler by linking images to their geographic location and using additional data provided by their IRIS solution.

Solution: Connect MediaFiler to Geographic information system IRIS
Photographic images are now combined with the geographic data and displayed on maps. The combination of linking the images in MediaFiler to the IRIS geographic data has provided information faster and increased the overall value of the information to Vechtstromen Water Authority.