Press release

Canto announced the release of Canto Cumulus 8.1, built upon technological and usability advances made possible by the new Cumulus 8 system architecture introduced last May.

“The Cumulus 8 architecture has freed Canto to take Cumulus in exciting new directions, and Cumulus 8.1 offers just a glimpse of what’s to come,” says Canto CEO Ulrich Knocke.

Among the new capabilities are a standalone version of the Cumulus Client, which enables users to create and work on local catalogs, connect to Cumulus Server catalogs, and update assets and metadata between the two. This enables traveling professionals to work with catalogs even when Internet access isn’t available.

New report types include assets cataloged during a period, check-out “time spent” reports, asset inventories by format, and the ability to use search queries as the means for selecting report assets. Reports can now be saved to PDF format and automatically emailed.

A new image comparison mode makes even subtle differences between images clear.

Asset cataloging starts up faster, and a bulk editor offers users an “apply to all” option when adding metadata to cataloged assets. Users can also easily create asset “placeholders” for assets in production, which enables them to add metadata and track production long before an asset is ready to catalog.

Sorting improvements can display the pages of PDFs, layouts, presentations etc. by page number, regardless of the primary sort field. A secondary sort order is now available, and algorithm changes speed sorting operations and ensure all field types sort as expected.

New centralized email administration makes it easy for administrators to manage user email addresses for automatic notifications, emailed reports, etc.

Catalog back-up reports and system log (syslog) messages generated by Cumulus can each be emailed automatically, helping administrators monitor system status and performance.

Added support for Microsoft’s Failover Cluster technology offers added protection for Cumulus Servers running on Windows Server 2008.

The Cumulus Web Client (formerly Internet Client Pro) has been updated for Cumulus 8.1. A retooling of Canto’s Web publishing technology is scheduled for release early next year.

Cumulus 8.1 will be available for download the first week of December.