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Home > Tech > Tech Tools > Annotations

Digital Asset Management Tools

Annotations

Xinet^® WebNative^® Suite Annotations streamlines document markup for faster approvals and review cycles.

For more on Annotations, please see:

Annotations on your Mobile Device

Annotations for InDesign

Annotations for Illustrator

Annotations for Photoshop

Feature Overview

This standard feature within WebNative Suite allows multiple reviewers to comment on shared files and see comments made by other reviewers, whether local or remote. With files centrally located on a WebNative Suite server, the Annotations feature streamlines workflow—by eliminating the inconvenience of sending documents back-and-forth for reviews, by reducing confusion caused when duplicate files circulate among team members, and by consolidating review notes in one location for approved users to view. Annotations can be used with supported file formats that have web previews—including videos, images, and Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Office and PDF documents.

Centralize Reviews with Annotations

The unique set of tools provided with Annotations simplifies the review cycle for clients, creatives, production teams—anyone involved in the approval process. Reviewers can use this feature to add and share notes, draw free-form lines that call attention to a portion of a document, and "stamp" a document with statuses, such as approved, awaiting or with any other message customized for your team. Users can zoom in for a closer view, move comments to different locations on a page, and make additional notes that will display when a user's mouse hovers over a comment. Because these notations occur on a separate, presentation-only layer of the file, the original data remains unchanged.

Comments made with Annotations can be searched to locate specific comments, find approved or pending files, or for other specific searches a user might need.

Annotations: As comments are added to this video key frame, each one is tracked, as shown above. Once the file is saved, other reviewers can see the notes and make additional comments.

When you select a text box in media viewer, it can be easily converted to an annotation. The editable text is automatically added to the annotation, making correcting typos and translations much faster. As an added bonus, the new text is available within the layout application—with the correct style and size—in a text box within the annotations layer. You can then transfer in the new text with a single keystroke.

Manage Access and Control

Administrators control who can add, view, edit and search for comments made with Annotations. Additional controls can be established with the Asset Timer feature, based on metadata, file type or even file location. For example, an administrator might use Asset Timer to limit a user's access only to approved files. If a file has not yet been approved, the user will not be able to view it on the server.

Colored text can be used to organize annotations from multiple reviewers. By asking each user or user group involved in the review process to use a specific color, such as green for the production team, and blue for the client—comments in a document are easily identified.

Expedite Approval Workflows

Your production team can use Annotations to expedite client communications when proofing a job. Sending and receiving review comments becomes a seamless flow of information sharing. Rather than saving multiple versions of a file for distribution to multiple reviewers, everyone on the team can work from one master file, centrally located and easily accessible from any web browser.

Two possible workflow scenarios are described here.

Workflow 1:

Client logs into the WebNative Suite server remotely and uses Annotations for final review and to stamp the master file as approved.

Once the master file is approved, an email is automatically triggered and sent to the content owner who will oversee the next phase of the project.

Workflow 2:

Designer uses Annotations to mark up a document for a client to review and saves the file. Because this particular file has been saved by this particular designer, an email is automatically triggered and sent to the client with a link directly to the annotated file.

The client, from any location, can click this link and gain instant access to the marked up document (after securely logging into the WebNative Suite server).

The client annotates the file in response to the designer’s notes.

Upon saving the file, a new email is automatically triggered and sent to the designer, stating that the client has provided comments.

Features

Annotate files on a separate layer without changing the original file data

Control a user’s ability to add, view, edit and search for annotations

Use colored text to identify a specific user or user group

Identify which comments were made by which user

Search text in annotations quickly to locate specific comments

Customize your own stamps with any message needed by your team

View a report of all annotations made

Benefits

Centralize review comments on one master document to promote and simplify collaboration among team members