We’re introducing Satellite Review add-on for on-premise Enterprise customers. Using this new approach, you can perform hybrid cloud/on-prem remote review sessions, which should come in handy during this remarkable era of remote work. Read on to find out how to set up this new feature and maintain creative momentum on your (suddenly) remote projects.
Rarely has the current generation experienced such an unprecedented upheaval of daily life. The coronavirus situation continues to develop and affect us all in unexpected ways, and no industry is safe from its impact. We’ve heard from many creative studios how the outbreak restrictions have increased pipeline complexity, for instance, as creatives set up for work from home and new requirements emerge. As an industry, we must work together and react to these changes in any way we can.
At ftrack, we’re devising numerous approaches to creative collaboration that we hope will alleviate the strain as our customers navigate today’s unfamiliar processes. One such solution is Satellite Review.
Satellite Review is a hybrid cloud/on-premise media review solution add-on for on-prem ftrack Enterprise customers. Once implemented, on-prem Enterprise customers can perform cloud-based remote review sessions with ease to maintain creative momentum in ongoing projects.
We hope that this makes things a little easier as studios find a new way to work within the limitations imposed by the pandemic.
To learn more about how to add Satellite Review to your on-premise implementation, please contact your ftrack account manager, or send an email to sales at [email protected].
Satellite Review
With Satellite Review, Enterprise customers can create a hybrid cloud platform, based on their ftrack on-premise installation, which enables collaborators to perform review sessions over the internet.
We built this solution to make reviewable media files available outside a company firewall, thus increasing ftrack client review process efficiency. This effort included support for a hybrid platform based on a primary ftrack instance inside the firewall and a satellite instance available outside. It was therefore possible to automate client reviews by allowing access to a client review for collaborators over the internet, or for internal collaborators.
A review satellite is another ftrack instance either in a DMZ or cloud that can be accessed from the internet but is completely isolated from the primary on-prem production server.
How to get Satellite Review up and running
Here’s what you need:
- A primary on-premise ftrack production server.
- Another server for Satellite Review. This must be in the cloud or an environment accessible on the internet.
- You must use https and a public SSL certificate to enable access to the Satellite Review
- You must enable timezone support and run UTC on the satellite server.
We have packaged actions for communication between the primary server and the satellite into a Docker container. You can run these actions on any container orchestration system.
When the above requirements are in place, you must configure the satellite server and the production server. Please let us know if you need any support with this!
How to conduct a Satellite Review
Start off as usual:
- Create a client review in a project on your primary ftrack server.
- Add media files for review (images, movie/videos, multipage PDFs, etc.)
- Add your collaborators; either internal, external, or both
- Here’s where things change. If you would like to use the Satellite Review option, don’t send out invites. Instead, open the actions in the client review. You will find two options: Transfer Review and Generate Report:
- Transfer Review: This action will transfer the client review to the satellite and automatically send emails to the collaborators and yourself. If you add new versions of any media or add another collaborator, just rerun the action to update the Satellite.
- Generate report: This action will generate and download a report of all the feedback provided in a review session.
We hope that this makes things a little easier as we all adapt to our new remote workflows! It’s a challenging time, but if we all tackle it together, we’ll come through better and stronger as an industry on the other side.
Magnus Eklöv
CTO, ftrack
“We hope that Satellite Review makes it easier for on-prem Enterprise customers to maintain creative momentum as we react to the impact of the coronavirus. As an industry, we’re great at using ingenuity to tackle times of crisis. At ftrack, we’ll continue to innovate to make ftrack easier to access from remote locations and make the WFH situation as stress-free and navigable as possible.”
ftrack Enterprise
Gain access to everything available in ftrack Studio, plus an additional set of features and services specially tailored to your organization and its unique requirements. ftrack Enterprise is designed to maximize what you can achieve with the ftrack platform – and what it can achieve for you.
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