Acquia DAM (Widen)

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The perfect solution to manage all the assets of your business

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Resetting password sometime could be complicate

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The searchable option and the ability to organize all of our thousands of assets. As well as the ability to download these assets in different file formats.

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If spelling isn’t accurate in the metadata or search bar, it will not be able to find what you are looking for.

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Widen is a great receptical to all of our imagery for our products. Downloading images from the portal is easy as well

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Finding documentation seems to be difficult. Not sure if it the actual software or if it is the manner is which our company set it up.

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Its searchable content. As long as metadata is used, searching for assets is relatively easy.

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Upload process. The Drag/Drop feature was nice! Now I'm forced to go through a wizard. Too time consuming for my liking.

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I love that I can easily store all of my content in the system, then make a website like portal to share and organize my content in a neat way.

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I wish there was a way to add hyperlinks to Asset Collections so that I can link out to other internal websites within my company or to an eCourse within Workday.

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It is a great tool for finding all of our products in one place, easily!

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honestly, cannot say yet and I have been using it for almost 2years

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Easy to use. Secure. Excellent support and development teams. Flexibility of features

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I could really use the ability to link raw assets with compound documents. This is currently a manual process and time consuming.

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Ease of use, ease of empowerment for the user. I LOVE being able to share collections with clients.
And I LOVE when someone asks for an asset, I just add them as a user on Widen, and tell them to find it themselves!

Nachteile

I'm still waiting for drag and drop functionality with Indesign. A small workflow addition that would make things easier!

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The ability to organize and share digital assets from all across our global company into one central location has been incredible. It empowers our employees to quickly find the approved assets that they need.

Nachteile

Honestly, it's hard to come up with something. Everything about Widen from the software to the people is fantastic. If I were to pick something...it might be that there are so many options for customization, that I wish I had 2 days to just sit and go through each one. Unfortunately, I'm too busy to do this, so I just ask my CXM how to do something and he quickly responds to an email, same day.

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It is very easy for me to onboard people, I don't really have to do much training since the program is so intuitive. I am able to permission out who sees what. Widen's customer service is also second to none with any software company I've ever worked with.

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There are a few minor things, but nothing major that would make me start looking into other solutions. One example being that I wish we could organize global collections better

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The marketing team loves the portals, collections, and asset version control.

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The search/filter functionality and the lack of styling on the standard portals.

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Our DAM houses all of the images we use in our catalogs and online. I love it's ability to organize and tag image in order to search for them with ease.

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I think the one thing that I struggle with was the update on how to upload images. My retouch artist and I are usually the main uploads, and we enjoyed the drag and drop feature that used to be on our main page instead of having to click through the Upload Wizard.

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The product is easy to use and modify as needed. There are always new updates to the features which makes it even easier to use for my users.

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The AEM Integration does not work as it should. This was a big sell for us since our website is hosted by AEM and now we can't integrate the two without AEM working properly with Widen.

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Widen is a fairly easy and efficient way to store, archive, and distribute photographic files. In the year that I have been using Widen, it has changed the way I work. Now when I receive a request for a specific photo, I don't have to resize it and make sure it is the appropriate size to fit into an email. I just choose the file I want, send it to the recipient and they download it directly from the site instead of through e-mail. This is especially helpful to those who are always battling an in-box size limit! It has also made it easier to work off-site. Say I am out of the office on assignment or home sick. If I see a request come in, I can log onto Widen from anywhere and send the requests files out at any time! The search features also work great for us. Users throughout the university can now directly search for whatever type of photo they are looking for instead of requesting it through our department by phone or email.

Nachteile

Though I love Widen there have been a few minor issues we have encountered. The first is that it is a little hard to understand at the beginning. The back end of the program seems complicated to a new user. However, we have now figured everything out and so this really is no longer an issue for us. The other issue I sometimes run into is that the processing can be a bit slow. There are times when I upload my files and then cannot see the previews of my files for quite some time. This can be a problem when I am trying to identify people in the photograph to add their names to the keywords. The only way around this currently is to be patient and go work on something else for a while.

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What I like most about this software is that I can easily see the newest items that have been added to the collective. The search tool also works really well for finding specific items.

Nachteile

The most challenging part of using this software is that apparently the administrator that adds items to the collective is not required to add all the meta tags that would help users find what they need easily. I don't think it's a fail on the part of the software but maybe if adding all meta tags were required it would make searching easier.

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What I like most about Widen is that they are very open to receiving feedback and improving the software based off of user comments. They host annual events to bring other clients together to share ideas and knowledge of how their users work in the software. All of the Widen staff is available for comments.

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What I like least about Widen is that all of the connectors and API's that help integrate our DAM into other business platforms, such as Salesforce, Sharepoint, CreativeCloud come with an additional annual fee.

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I have been very pleased with using Widen for our DAM tool. Their support team is phenomenal! Anytime I have a question or issue, they respond immediately and are very helpful to get to the bottom of any issue I might be having, or explain a feature I may not be knowledgeable in. Their entire team is always looking for ways to improve the tool based on user feedback and suggestions. It's great to have a company so open to what the users are saying.

I have also found that the tool itself has been great in meeting our DAM needs. By building out a thorough and intuitive organization structure through categories, asset groups and metadata, we have been able to greatly increase the use of our tool and have received numerous compliments on the improvements. That along with Widen's new interface launched in 2012, the collective is now a much more user friendly and intuitive tool for both users and administrators alike.

Nachteile

My only complaint at this time is that the "Send File" feature has been discontinued with the launch of the new interface. I believe our company may have been one of the few groups that used the tool fairly often, and were sad to see the feature go. We hope to be able to find a solution either with Widen or with an outside service in order to send large files directly to another user without having to have the asset 'live' in the DAM tool.

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Beauty and brains - the dashboard is legit! You can personalize it to your needs, it's visually appealing without the clutter. The activity feed and the spotlight collection is useful for me and the other admins. Love the idea of the brand portals and can't wait until we can implement and launch it.

Nachteile

As an admin, I'd like to see asset thumbnails in the uploads and downloads tab instead of filenames. Also, the asset versions isn't as easy to use. If we have 3 versions of an asset, I'd love it if when you click on the asset, you can tile the assets to determine which one to download. Currently, you have a "switch version" button that gets lost in the details. Lastly, the batch edit tool sometimes doesn't apply to all assets in the batch.

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The storage capability that Widen offers is awesome. Using this platform has helped our team manage our multimedia content in one single place and make it available for others when needed. Uploading assets and tagging the metadata is easy and can be done in batches for efficiency, which saves us a lot of time.

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If portals can be searched for on the collective site, it will really help our team communicate our newest products. Currently, portals are not able to be searched for and sharing individual portal links can be time consuming.

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This software is incredibly helpful for storing our vast collection of assets. It allows for easy organization and I'm able to find anything I need easily through name or metadata searches. It also has a relatively quick download speed for when you need something off the cloud in a hurry. Their Portals have simplified the way that we can show clients current campaigns and it's given us the ability to send individual commercials to clients with ease, and as a bonus, it's all available on mobile.

Nachteile

Widen just updated with a new upload mode, which would be fine, however, they completely removed the drag and drop option on the Widen homepage.

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Intuitive, strong on basics, interesting road map for upcoming releases.

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It would be nice for non-users to be able to approve digital assets for use when they are sent a collection. However, the road map for Widen Workflow shows promise as a solution for this.

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We use this to hold a lot of our files and it is super easy to use.

Nachteile

One thing I wish it allowed was the usage of HTML files.

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Easy to use and getting easier every day..

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So much to learn and so little time!

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Customer service is personal. People ask and care about your user experience and guide you from start to your entire use of the tool.

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I cannot say anything bad. But what I like least is that collections appear in categories. This only is problematic when batch editing. But it can be filtered.

Vorteile

Il fournit non seulement une gestion des actifs numériques de classe mondiale et primée, mais il prend également en charge votre mise en œuvre avec un service primé.

Nachteile

Honnêtement, il serrait difficile de trouve des limite a ce logiciel car son potentiel est énorme. Toutefois le logiciel semble lent et prend du retard lorsque vous voulez qu'il aille vite. Le traitement des fichiers et le défilement des ressources sont les domaines où j'ai le plus remarqué cela.

Vorteile

I've used quite a few DAM solutions in the past and Widen is by far the best one I have worked with. The thing that I like the best is the ability to manage the metadata just as easy as it is to manage the assets themselves.

On top of that, the ability to assign permissions to access and administer assets by role has proven to be very valuable. We have assets that are only applicable to certain customers, so I can easily manage that through the admin tool.

The time that we spent managing assets went from a full-time person's job before implementing Widen to only an hour or so a week once it is up and running.

My team has to manage over 15 different categories of assets. Most of those categories are individual brands within our company. Some are segments of the brands. All of that to say that we have sliced up our asset offering in many ways to best serve our customers. By being able to segment those brands, we are able to get the right asset served up quickly in a variety of formats to fit most every need.

In addition to that, we can make it so only certain assets can be served to certain customers. All through the use of Widen's "role" and "asset group" functions. We have well over 1000 end-users that we can easily manage.

Nachteile

The only thing I have an issue with is my inability to customize the home page. From what I can tell, you have to be pretty savvy at HTML to do it right. But, I can say that there are some basic things that you can customize that will make your page on brand by adding logos and customizing the colors of fonts, buttons, etc.

Vorteile

Assets are served up quickly around the world and it is a very stable platform. When technical issues do arise, they are very communicative about their progress of solving the issue. I like the dedicated customer rep as well as access to new features and feedback through their Trello boards. I also like the ability to extract metadata from image IPTC metadata and map it to our custom fields.

Nachteile

I like the ability to create portals in order to highlight and add info to curated groups of assets, but there are some weaknesses in portal functionality and portal creation capabilities. It would be ideal to be able to create custom dashboards/homepage without extensive use of html. The current wysiwyg is extremely limited in design/layout capability. We'd like a better way for our users to be able to search for portals.

Vorteile

As someone who loves to have everything neatly organized and labeled, I really appreciated the ability to easily organize, categorize and tag all of my organization's digital assets. It's a daunting task-hundreds or thousands of images and video files, all had to be housed in a cloud in a manner that was intuitive and retrievable. Yet, Widen Collective helped me make that happen.

Nachteile

As with any software, there is a learning curve. But, Widen offers comprehensive training and excellent customer support. Don't let this hold you back!

Vorteile

We use Widen as an asset manager, giving our teams easy access to photos, videos, and illustrative elements. As the administrator, I can create different user accounts, letting some people have more access than others if they need it. I can also provide third-party contractors access to our resources too.

Nachteile

The admin side can be a little bit tricky to navigate, and it would be nice as the administrator to be able to change my view settings to spoof different levels of access, so I can quickly see what kinds of access my users have and make changes or alterations without needing to create multiple accounts for myself.

Vorteile

The customer experience team and help desk teams are great and make you feel like a real person instead of a cog in the giant machine of software life. The portals. The PORTALS! Portals rule. They really do. Best way to organize brand stuff.

Nachteile

I'm waiting for workflow to become even more robust for it to become a Workfront killer. Which I hope that it does.

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The DAM interface is quick and easy to use, the reporting capabilities are robust, and the security allows a lot of flexibility. In addition - we love the Portals - which allows us to provide assets to our non users.

Nachteile

Knowing that a DAM is customized to your company’s needs, I'm not going to lie – implementing a DAM system can be grueling and a lot of work. But that’s the beauty of a DAM – as your company grows, your DAM can also grow and be customized to reflect changes and future needs.

Vorteile

My favorite things about Widen’s DAM software include an easy to navigate interface, very intuitive searching capabilities, customizable metadata fields for great detail to be attributed to assets, the ability to download files in multiple files types (fairly quick conversion depending on size of original file), the ability to customize your login screen and home screen (keeping everything on-brand is important!), and their customer support team is amazing.

Nachteile

I feel that the asset sharing options could be expanded upon. Currently, you can type an email in and send a set of assets. I would like to see additional options implemented because it feels fairly limited currently.

Vorteile

It's the one place for all content to live and get shared out across multiple platforms. Support for project management (through Workflow) and creative implementation (through Adobe CC Connector) enhances our productivity and helps us get our jobs done faster.

Nachteile

The software seems sluggish and lags when you want it to go fast. File processing and scrolling through assets is where I've noticed this the most. The uploading process also needs to be cleaned up and more inviting to users.

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It makes keeping things organized (which is a complicated job) super easy.

Nachteile

It works really, really well, but as with any asset management tool, there is ongoing maintenance and auditing that has to take place. That can get tedious at times, but we realize that it has to be done to keep things current, delete outdated/redundant assets, or just to check things that might have been uploaded with incorrect metadata, for instance.

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I love that it is cloud-based and you can access it from any computer, phone or tablet. It's super easy to create collections and share media with internal and external clients.

Nachteile

Some of the features need updating in my opinion. I have asked several times for certain changes that I'm sure I'm not the only one to encounter.

Vorteile

Widen Collective is being used greatly by many individuals in similar roles in our company due to its many features that allow each of us to achieve our tasks with ease. I use this product for the sake of its archiving purposes, project and workflow management accessibility. The possibility to manage minor tasks, access controls and track employee milestones are important jobs I have to do which is made easy by Widen Collective.

Nachteile

Widen Collective is a broad software with multiple available features, with this is the difficulty to maneuver around this program at a first glance. It may take a few tutoring sessions and practice to be able to perform tasks with this software, especially if you are not that inclined with technology.

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We love portals! We may be even using them more than intended - we find that portals are the most user-friendly way to surface the right assets to our users!

Nachteile

We do have some features that we'd like improved or added, but Widen is all about customer feedback, so I feel heard when I make new feature requests.

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It's so easy and intuitive to use. The metadata search boxes on the side help narrow and refine the search. And the customer service can't be beat!

Nachteile

I don't like how the collections can't be edited between users. We have had to figure out a workaround to be able to share and edit the same collections.

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Digital assets are organized very intuitively and can be accessed/downloaded with great ease.

Nachteile

Searching for specific assets would be made easier if end-users could include additional criteria to narrow down their search (i.e. duration of video assets, file format)

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The user interface is so simply we can add new users quickly and easily and they can find assets with a minimal amount of training.

Nachteile

Some of the role permissions arent explained ver well. There were a few settings we needed to have turned on in order for users to be able to use the system effectively.

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Wixs simplified proofreader makes it very simple to make an expert site without having to know a codel with many layouts and with very great instructions on how to do so. It is very beginner friendly and help with a lot of small business websites to get started.

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A con is that you cannot change templates once your website is live which i believe you should be able to. Also, it has storage limit on all plans.

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I like the ability and flexibility Widen offers to integrate the digital media content with our applications and websites. It also offers nice tools and functionality to add, maintain, organize, and secure content.

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The biggest business problem that it has solved for my company is it allows multiple people to do what once was a one person task. It saves time when being able to have multiple people have access to the same files and being able to send, upload and manage it all. Being able to easily send outside organizations images and documents has saved us so much time and has left very little room for error when sending. With Widen's recent website advancement's, it's given me an opportunity to create a creative brief for projects I'm working on. All within 1 website. It's great.

Nachteile

This doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes I will be uploading files and Widen will time out or freeze during my upload and I'll have to start the process all over. This could be a problem with my internet connection as well.

Vorteile

The tag and search functionality. We no longer have the chief marketing officer instant-messaging our team to find awards, accolades, images, and illustrations. Other departments can self-serve as their needs dictate, and we can track usage of key assets with Insights.

Nachteile

The Insites analytics are not intuitive to use. I would like deep practice, usability, and best practice webinars and or forums to better understand the power this feature.

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Product is very easy to use, If i have to send documentation to customer i have just to click on "share" and send the link, avoiding send big attachments by mail.
Also search engine is very good!

Nachteile

At the moment Widen is not integrated with Salesforce, i don't know if is a decision of my Company or if is not possible the integration

Vorteile

The Media Collective software is easy to use and is easy to configure. If you need some help there is an extensive online help library full of things which can help you, but if you need to talk to someone directly you can web chat, email or call. The help associates are always very friendly and will work with you to understand and fix the issues that you're having.

Nachteile

I guess I don't like the fact that it's not free? I had to put something in this space. If it was free it would definitely be better however that's probably not a sustainable scenario for Widen.

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Widen staff was there to help us every step of the way and the overall functionality of our site is top notch because of it. My team is able to quickly find marketing materials with just a few clicks, saving us time and money.

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There really isn't a single thing that I truly dislike about the site, but it would be ideal to be able to view brochures and catalogs as e-catalogs on Widen.

Vorteile

I like that Widen is an easy way to find assets. It is helpful for a large company--because everyone knows where to find the assets that they need. It is easy for all employees to get to--IT does not have to come and install it--it is just an internet login.

Nachteile

I do not like how sometimes it is hard to find things with searches. I know that this has to do with the upload metadata and probably is related to user error. Perhaps if there was a more automated way to add search criteria when uploading, this wouldn't be an issue.