Kadanza | New features

Assets in Adobe CC, MS Office, Figma, Sketch,…

Kadanza is able to integrate our Asset Manager with third-party software such as Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop,…), Figma, Sketch, and others. And that’s not all! You can also use the Asset Manager in Microsoft Office so you can place assets directly in your Word file or PowerPoint presentation.

We've teamed up with Ci-Hub for this one. An external plugin allows you to load our Asset Manager in your production software after which you can easily search, select and add assets to your designs. All you need is an extension that allows your users to load the Asset Manager in the desired software tool. The assets are synced, which means that if changes are made in Kadanza, these changes are reflected in your files. This allows you to manage your assets in one central place and you can rest assured that the version used by the design team is the correct version from inside Kadanza.

Note: As these plugins are third-party extensions, some changes to your current license are required. Let us know if this sounds interesting, we’re happy to discuss all options, pricing, and more.

Shared collections

Shared collections - or collaborating on collections - is a feature that allows registered Kadanza users to share collections with other registered users. Shared collections have the same functionalities as private collections, depending on the sharing permissions.
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You can invite other users and have them participate in your collections. Different permissions are possible:

Can edit: The invited user can edit the collection (add or remove assets).
Can view: The invited user is only allowed to view and download assets from the collection.

Once a collection is shared with a user, the collection will be added to that user's ‘Shared with me’ panel.
Note: This feature is automatically enabled for all Kadanza installations.

Tagging

Tags are a great way to describe what an asset is about and using them helps users to easily find the assets they are looking for. You can create tags manually or use our improved auto-tagging feature to generate tags. This no longer works for images only, it is now also possible to tag video files.

Manual tags: use these for business-specific information, such as brand, product, content,…
Automated tags: these can help you to tag the more obvious items on an asset, such as “tree”, “indoor”, “man”, “woman”,…

While it was already possible to generate tags in English, we now offer this functionality in different languages as well.

Note: adding languages requires some configuration on your tenant, so let us know if you would like to add more language options to your tagging possibilities.

Custom metadata and metadata schemes

Metadata is a powerful way to enrich your organization’s assets. But not every organization uses the same metadata scheme. Kadanza got you covered with three interesting features:

Note: This feature is automatically enabled for all Kadanza installations.

Reorder metadata fields

Admins have the power to change which metadata attributes are displayed on an asset, and in which order they are shown. More important attributes can be placed at the top while the less important stuff can drift at the bottom.

Add or delete custom attributes

Our setup of Kadanza always includes a default list of metadata attributes. But now you can also add custom attributes to tailor Kadanza to your organization's needs. There are different types of attributes available that you can use to create your very own metadata scheme.

Group sets of metadata

Looking at a long list of input fields can be very daunting for users. To help remedy this you can add (sub)titles, dividers or some descriptive text to visually group metadata attributes that belong together.

Metadata injection

You can use our APIs to connect other systems to the Asset Manager. This allows you to inject metadata into your assets. Sync data from your PIM system or other platforms to enrich your assets. Or push information from the Asset Manager to other applications to use the metadata outside Kadanza. Combined with a (custom) metadata scheme, this is a powerful way to manage your data in one environment and use it across different platforms.

We have extensive API documentation available for all your integrators. Contact us to discuss the possibilities and access to the documentation.

Asset lifecycle management

The lifecycle of assets is shown in the frontend and can be managed via category permissions. The lifecycle ranges from “scheduled” or “expired” to “for approval” and “rejected”.
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Assets can have different statuses, which helps to improve managing them. The five different statuses are:

Active: this is the current live status. Every user with reading permissions can see these assets.
Scheduled: assets that have a publication date in the future.
expired: assets with an expiration date in the past.
Scheduled: assets that need to be reviewed. When approved, the status changes to “Active”.
Approval needed: assets that have a publication date in the future.
Rejected: assets that are not approved.

With these new statuses, it is possible to create an approval flow so you can review and approve (or reject) newly uploaded assets. You can meticulously create a permission scheme that allows your users to see, edit or delete assets with a specific status. Just decide per category if the approval feature is enabled and define which user groups have permissions for each status.
As an admin - and with the correct permissions - you can review assets in their categories in the front office, or you can use the “unapproved assets” page in the back office.

Note: The lifecycle feature is made available for all kadanza customers, but it needs to be configured before it is ready to use. As long as no updates are made to your existing configuration, assets can be uploaded without approval, and your users will not see any of the new asset statuses.

Embedding assets

Kadanza lets you embed assets into other web applications via embed links. That way, you can ensure that your assets are always shown in their most recent version, anytime, anywhere.
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Currently, only browser-friendly formats, such as JPG, PNG, and GIF are supported. Fonts, videos, PDF, EPS, and other formats will be supported and added through widgets or conversions later on.
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Embedded assets are publicly available but contain a tenant and asset reference to avoid exposing sensitive data. Asset statuses, publication, and expiration dates are also respected, if applicable.
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The Kadanza embedding feature supports three ways of delivering assets:

Original: Returns the original asset
Convert: Uses a predefined Kadanza Assets conversion profile
Resize: Returns a resized version of the asset on the fly

You can decide per category if embedding is allowed. That way you have full control over which assets can be embedded and which can’t. Real-time updating ensures that every time you update an asset in Kadanza, the embedded version is also updated.

Cropping profiles

Image conversions were already available in Kadanza, but we also allow users to crop images to their desired size.

Through a custom conversion profile, you can activate a cropping tool that allows you to resize, rotate, flip and crop the image according to your preferences. The cropped version of the image will not be stored in the Asset Manager but is downloaded immediately.

Note: Activating this cropping tool requires some additional configuration on your installation. If you want to start using this cropping tool, let us know.

Layout Manager: approval and print partners

With Kadanza’s Layout Manager, your users can create on-brand communication material without any design knowledge or tools. But did you know you can add approval flows to the process as well?

Users can create documents and download a low-resolution pdf, but before they can download a production-ready pdf, the document needs to be reviewed and approved by an administrator. The admin can review the document and add comments. And when approved, the user can download the production-ready file or send it immediately to a print partner.

That’s right! We can integrate with different print partners so your users can order their documents from inside Kadanza.

Note: setting up approval flows and print partner integrations require some configuration. Get in touch if you like to know more, and we will gladly discuss what the possibilities are.

Curious about our new features?