The Asset Manager helps you organize and track all of the art files, elements, and other digital collateral for a job ticket.

The Clients & Profits X asset manager helps your creatives, production staff, and AEs better organize a job's digital elements -- graphic files, word processing documents, page layouts, web pages, Shockwave files, fonts, and more. With all of a job’s assets in one place, there’s no more searching for disks or roaming the servers looking for a certain file. Each asset includes a thumbnail and description plus the ability to open the file with a single mouse click.

The asset manager will also keep track of acquisition, ownership and usage information that other asset management systems don't. This optional information can be used to build a complete accounting of your shop's job digital assets.



How the asset manager works

The asset manager doesn't actually store your digital files. Instead, it displays the contents of a specially designated server on your network -- the art server -- where your job's file will be saved. This server can be a dedicated server (i.e., all it does is store art files) or can be an art folder inside an existing file server. The art server will contain a folder (i.e., subdirectory) for every job you do. To use Clients & Profits X to track your assets you'll need to enter the name of the art server in preferences, then get the creative, production, and art departments to start saving all of their digital files into the art server. When you set up the asset manager's preferences, Clients & Profits X will create a folder on your art server for every existing open job. Thereafter, a new job folder will be created automatically every time a new job is opened. Do note that there is no live link between the C&P database and the art server so one will not affect the other in terms of stability or ability to make backups.

The asset manager is part of the job ticket. Clicking on the assets link from the Job Ticket window displays the contents of the job's folder on the art server. All of the files that have been created for the job are listed.

The assets list includes file name, kind and application icon, file size, and modification date. This information is supplied from the art server (i.e., it is not stored inside the Clients & Profits X database).

The asset manager will only display the contents of the job's folder one level deep. Digital files can be stored inside user-created folders inside the job folder. However, the asset manager can't display files stored inside folders inside of these folders. The job folder should not have folders stored inside folders.

All of the files that have been created for the job are listed. The list will be empty if the job folder on the art server has no files or if the name of the art server in asset manager preferences has not been entered by your system manager.

Once you've selected a digital art file, you can open it using the application that created it by clicking the open file link. Clients & Profits X will open the file's application (e.g., Photoshop, Quark, etc.) then open the file. If you don't have the file's application (i.e., Photoshop) on your computer, the file won't open.

If you use Clients & Profits X to track the ownership and usage information for your job assets, digital files can be searched for by name, keyword, and other fields from the Find Job Assets window. The Find Job Assets window will prompt you to enter any part of a file name and one of the asset's keywords. Clients & Profits X will then search through all of the job asset information records in your database and find the assets that match for all jobs. To search for art files, click the find button.