The term cataloging describes the process of importing and storing information about your digital assets. This information, called metadata, is the data associated with a digital asset beyond the actual file data itself. So, while the words you type in a Microsoft Word file constitute the file’s data, the file’s name, size, location, author, creation date etc. are examples of the file’s metadata.

Some metadata is added to assets automatically by the software used to create or edit the asset. This is the case with the most common file metadata, such as size and modification date. But, depending on the creating software (or hardware), additional metadata can be embedded, too. This is the case with digital cameras that embed photo shoot dates, camera type, lens aperture and shutter speed, and even the GPS coordinates of the shot location into the files.

Additional metadata can be added after the asset has been cataloged. An asset's metadata serves as the basis for how you find the asset, so it’s important that your DAM system enables you to create as much metadata as you need. For example, if you need to find photographs based on the photographer’s name, you want to make sure photographer names are included in the metadata stored for your photograph assets. If you need to find a Microsoft Word file that includes a certain text phrase, is associated with a given fiscal year's revenue, and edited within the last month, the proper metadata enables that too. A complete DAM solution like Cumulus can also enable you to automatically find all images used in that document, and even find the PDFs that were later generated from it.

With regard to file formats, Cumulus can catalog any type of digital asset and offers enhanced support for the most popular formats. (You can download an overview on Cumulus enhanced format support from Canto’s website.) The term “enhanced support” means different things, depending on the file format in question. For example, Cumulus offers enhanced support for Adobe® InDesign® and QuarkXPress® files by enabling you to preview individual layout pages right from within Cumulus. Enhanced support for Microsoft® PowerPoint files enables you to actually generate new PowerPoint presentations—right from within Cumulus—using assets and PowerPoint slides cataloged in Cumulus. Enhanced support for Microsoft® Word, Excel, Illustrator and PDF files includes extracting text that's included inside the files and making it searchable catalog metadata. So, not only can you find the files in Cumulus based on metadata—file name, modification date, production status, etc.—you can also find some files based on their actual contents.

When you catalog digital assets, Cumulus performs a number of behind-the-scenes tasks in order to generate an asset record that best represents the asset. It’s easiest to think of these tasks as a series of steps through which the asset flows during the cataloging process. They are: