This guide will help you to start using Curator to improve the way your business works with media - or you can click here to watch an intro video.

To understand how Curator works, you’ll first need to look at each service individually and understand its role in the overall process.

Here’s a list of the different services that are part of Curator:

• Curator Server - the core of Curator, where all of the information about your assets and their associated metadata is stored.
• Process Engine - the service that drives all the processes that come into the Curator suite.
• Device Director - controls the devices available to the system, and distributes and manages the flow of tasks provided by Process Engine
• XChange Manager - XChange is used to monitor files which have been added to or removed from predefined volumes or system folders).

The Curator services in depth

Process Engine

Process Engine drives all the processes that come into Curator through pre-installed and configured workflows. System Administrators can use the Process Engine Monitor website to do the following: 

• Browse existing workflows (Process Definitions)
• Manually trigger workflows
• Monitor running processes and see which processes have completed.

Home and Help Tabs

To interact with any running processes or spawn any new processes manually, you‘ll need to visit the Process Engine Monitor website (Defined in your Administrator URLs document). Once logged in, you will be presented with 4 tabs:

• Home
• Processes
• Process Definitions
• Help

The Home tab will take you to the main page, shown immediately after logging in.

The Help tab provides a link to the user documentation for Process Engine, giving further details on usage for Process Engine.

Processes tab

The Processes tab shows running processes, as well as any recently completed or failed processes. There are two view modes that can be set here:

• Tree view: Parent process displays spawned child processes below it, using an expandable arrow, linking related processes together.
• List view: All processes are listed independently, typically arranged by submitted time.

An overview of the state of each process is shown by the colored icon in the left column. The color of these icons represents the following process states:

• Green: completed process successfully
• Yellow: currently executing the process
• Orange: currently queued the process
• Red: Faulted process stopped during execution due to errors

You can filter the displayed results by state type, name, or token.

Clicking on any process name will show a new screen with more detail on the selected process.

Process Definitions Tab

The Process Definitions tab takes you to a list of installed workflows, allowing you to filter through and select an individual workflow, or to create a new instance of the workflow.

Expanding the Details section will display details of the process definition. As well as basic data such as created and modified times, from here, you can include descriptive notes on the process when it’s defined.

You can also start a selected process definition by clicking Create Instance.

Workflows

As there may be occasions where workflows fail or are stopped due to server maintenance, it’s useful to understand which workflows should always be running in the background.

XChange Workflows

These workflows are used in conjunction with the XChange Manager service to detect new files dropped into a specified location. When XChange knows about a file modification, it will provide this information to Process Engine. Process Engine will take this information and start the process of determining what to do with the file.

The Core XChange workflows are as follows:

• XChange - Import File - Spawn by type
• XChange - Import Metadata - Spawn Import Metadata

Depending on the complexity of the system, infinite variations on the above workflow could be started to monitor different file systems. To ensure that all the correct XChange manager workflows are started, simply find the Setup – Start XChange Manager Processes workflow from the Process Definitions tab and click Create Instance.

To start the workflow, click Create Instance once more (Leave the Token field blank).

*If you navigate to the processes tab, you should now see one or more XChange workflows automatically spawned and in an executing (yellow) state.

Device 

Purge Workflows

To keep the system clean and well-maintained, automatic Purge workflows need to be running in the background. These workflows have pre-defined tasks, triggered on a set timer, such as log clearances or trash emptying.

Similarly to the XChange workflows, to start the Purge workflow, find the Persistent Scheduled – Purge MediaStores process definition from the Process Definitions tab and select Create Instance.

This time however, make note of the arguments. The ReportOnly field allows you to specify whether the Purge will actually take place, or whether a test run should be carried out, with the results of what would be purged outlined in a report. Simply type true or false into the text box and then click Create Instance.

Device Director

Device Director’s role is to control the devices available to the system, distributing and managing the flow of tasks from Process Engine.

The Device Director website allows a System Administrator to monitor running jobs against different devices and their state. It provides the following features: 

• Browse details of all jobs
• Create instances of those jobs
• Organise devices by group in order to balance jobs out over different devices
• Configure profiles for use with devices and jobs run against them
• Connect and manage devices and jobs sent to them

Home Tab

To interact with any running processes or spawn any new processes manually, you’ll need to visit the Device Director web interface (Defined in your Administrators URL Document). As illustrated below, the layout is similar to Process Engine.

From here, you'll find the following tabs:

• Home
• Jobs
• Groups
• Profiles
• Devices 

Jobs Tab

The Jobs tab shows the currently running jobs, as well as any recently completed (or potentially failed) jobs. There are three filter options:

• Type: Filters the displayed results based on the device/job type
• Name: Filters the displayed results based on the job name (free string)
• State: Filters the displayed results based on the status of the job

 A top-level overview of the state of each process is shown by the colored icon in the state column. The color of these icons represents the following process states:

• Green: completed process successfully
• Yellow: currently executing the process
• Orange: currently queued the process
• Red: Faulted process stopped during execution due to errors (hover for description)

You can apply a number of actions to an existing job or create a new one. In order to apply actions to existing jobs, select the jobs you want to affect using the radio button in the far-right column.

Clicking on any job name will show a new screen, with more detail on the selected process.

Groups Tab

The Groups tab is used to bring multiple devices of the same type together. For example, customers with multiple locations may wish to separate out the same type of devices into groups. Device Director can then filter each job that comes in, providing it with a relevant location-based device.

If you have multiple groups set up, you can also filter groups by device type.

  Profiles Tab

The Profiles tab shows a list of configured profiles. Each profile is for a specific type of device, and will determine some of the parameters which are passed through when jobs are created.

You can filter profiles in two ways:

• Type: Filters by the type of device that the profile is applied to
• Name: Search against the profile’s unique name

Devices Tab

The Devices tab shows available services with which Device Director can communicate to submit and track jobs.

Devices can be added or removed using the Create Device or Delete Device options on the Devices page. Device Director will attempt to distribute jobs between available devices of the same type. The status of each device is illustrated as either a green tick or a red x, and any connection errors can be seen by clicking the device name.

You can edit a device by clicking on its name then clicking Edit Device.

You can filter connected devices by type via the drop-down list.

You’ll be able to see how many of the devices you’ve purchased are available on the host, as well as how many are being used by a running job.

Reviewing jobs

You can use the filter in the upper right corner of the Jobs tab to search through jobs by type of device, the status of the job or simply a text string.

An example of a completed job can be seen below.

Approval

Sometimes a metadata field is used to prevent jobs from taking place on certain assets until a system administrator has given approval. Jobs for assets with this value will be listed as Pending, indicated by a blue icon.

Jobs of this type can be approved by selecting them from the jobs list, taking you to a details page similar to the above. Click Submit Job or Abort Job to approve or deny the job.

2.3 XChange Manager

XChange Manager is used to monitor files which have been added to or removed from pre-defined volumes or system folders.

The following tabs are displayed:

• Home
• Devices
• Create Device
• Search

Devices/Volumes

Volumes should not be added or removed often, or without first consulting an IPV expert. However, this section of the website can be helpful in that it displays the online/offline status of your devices/volumes.

You can verify that specific volumes are accessible to XChange Manager by navigating to the Devices tab and selecting a device. This will show you each of the volumes set up within the chosen device, and you’ll see a green tick or a red cross in the Online? column depending or their current state.

The Curator Applications

The Curator applications have been created to make the end user experience as effortless as possible. You can find out more about how to use the Curator applications in our Quick Start Guides and videos, which you can view here on our Customer Portal.

Support

IPV understands that quality of support can have a significant impact on end user experience. You can access our support system at https://ipv.helpjuice.com/ .

You can use our Customer Portal and Knowledge Base to access additional support and training resources. You’ll also be able to raise support requests straight to the IPV Tech Ops team.