Cumulus catalogs can serve various purposes. For some special purposes catalogs require special preparations.
Optimizing Standard Metadata Format Support
Cumulus supports the standard metadata formats IPTC, EXIF and XMP. To prepare a catalog to support these standards Cumulus offers wizards. See “Prepare Catalog”, for details.
Configuring Web Links
The Cumulus Client offers a function that enables users to get Web link URLs for selected records, their assets, thumbnails or previews (Asset > Configure Web Link URL.) The links will work only if your Cumulus installation includes Cumulus Portals or Sites and the catalogs containing the records are set to be accessible via the Web (Catalog Settings > General). The catalogs must:
• contain the following record fields (provided by the Cumulus application module): – Asset URL enabled (allows users to get links for the assets) – Preview URL enabled (allows users to get links for the previews) – Thumbnail URL enabled (allows users to get links for the thumbnails) Note that if a catalog does not contain one of the corresponding fields the respective links cannot be created by any user.
Also following prerequisites must be met:
• The function is available to users only if at least one Base URL for Web Access is defined in the Cumulus Server Settings (Server Console > Remote Admin> Settings). (See “Cumulus Server Settings”,for details.)
• In order to be able to configure Web link URLs, a user must have permission to write metadata for the catalog containing the respective records.
• If using the User Manager in advanced mode the following Application Permissions for records: – Modify Items
• If using the User Manager in simple mode the following permissions: – Write Metadata
Configuring Controlled Vocabulary
Controlled vocabulary schemes provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. Any Cumulus catalog supports controlled vocabularies once a custom field of the type Vocabulary was added. This type of field only accepts predefined values (= vocabulary terms) as input.
Both record fields and category fields can be of the type vocabulary. Users can add vocabulary terms as metadata to records, but controlled vocabulary terms can also be used to build the categories in Cumulus catalogs, or to provide additional information on the categories.
The $Vocabularies Catalog
The predefined values that are needed for vocabulary fields – the vocabulary terms – are stored in a special catalog, $Vocabularies. This catalog has no records, but only categories. Each category of the $Vocabularies catalog represents a term of the vocabulary. Therefore, adding terms to or removing terms from the vocabulary is a matter of creating or deleting categories in the $Vocabularies catalog.
Cumulus categories have their own metadata. The metadata fields of a category in the $Vocabularies catalog can be used to store various additional information on a vocabulary term – a definition, information about the scope, or the terms that must not be used, a thumbnail, whatever.
However, there is one category metadata that is especially important: the Container Type. With the controlled vocabulary feature, the Container Type of a category is used to distinguish different vocabularies within one single $Vocabularies catalog – terms (categories) with the same Container Type belong to the same vocabulary. The Container Type is also used as a means to precisely control which terms can be entered into a given vocabulary field, and which not (see below).
A vocabulary administrator can add terms and their metadata either manually, or by import (for details see Importing and Exporting). Importing offers an easy way automatically maintain or update your controlled vocabularies, and to use common controlled vocabularies instead of developing your own. There are many different vocabulary schemes available in a broad variety of user environments and disciplines.
The $Vocabularies catalog must only be available to the user(s) who are in charge with maintaining the vocabularies. It must not be shared.
Preparing a Cumulus Catalog for Working with Controlled Vocabularies
• Adding vocabulary fields to Cumulus catalogs
As said before, controlled vocabularies can be used with any Cumulus catalog that contains at least one field of the type Vocabulary. You can add as many such fields as you need.
When adding a Vocabulary field to a Cumulus catalog, you can specify
• whether the field can contain one single term only, or multiple terms (Enable multi-select);
• whether the field accepts terms fro all available vocabularies, or from selected vocabularies only by selecting the respective container types (Restrict Terms).
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• Preparing View Sets
In order to use controlled vocabularies, the respective fields in a catalog must be available to Cumulus users, which is achieved via Record View Sets and Category View Sets that contain these fields. The view sets must be shared. (For details see Record View Sets and Category View Sets)
Additional information on vocabulary terms can be stored in the category metadata fields of the $Vocabularies catalog and can be made available to Cumulus users. Such information can be provided in the Add Vocabulary Term dialog, or as a tool tip that is displayed when the mouse pointer hovers over a vocabulary term in Cumulus Portals, Cumulus Web Client, or Desktop Client. For this purpose, you need to prepare at least one additional (shared) Category View Set that specifies the category fields of the $Vocabularies catalog that shall be displayed.
NOTE: Only metadata fields of type String, Date only, and Picture can be displayed as tool tips.
This category view set must be referred to as Category View Set for details in the display properties of any Vocabulary field that is enclosed in any view set to be used with the Cumulus Web Client, or Portals, or the Desktop Client. If no Category View Set is selected here, the standard Category View Set is used.
NOTE: With the Dynamic Field Visibility feature and the usage of separators you can refine and optimize the display of additional information even more, which is especially advisable if you employ multiple vocabularies that require different information on their terms. Thus you can ensure that only relevant information for a specific term is displayed. (See Dynamically Displaying Fields).
