Feature
DeepMeta - Assistance and Collaboration
Invite another DeepMeta user to assist with your uploads and edits. Set the exact access rights they get and switch them on or off at any time.
By Franky De Meyer
DeepMeta now supports Assistance and Collaboration: invite another DeepMeta user to work on your Portfolio on your behalf. You decide exactly what they can do — Upload & Edit, Submit, or both — and you can enable, disable, or remove the relationship at any time.
In this walkthrough we use two users: Franky is a Contributor who wants help managing Uploads. Susan will act as Franky's Assistant.
Step 1 — Franky opens the Assistants panel
On any DeepMeta page, click the Avatar at the top right to open the Profile panel.
The Profile panel contains a section called Assistants & Collaboration. Click the Add Assistant button.
Step 2 — Enter Susan's Assist ID
The Add Assistant panel opens. It explains the flow and has a single input field for Susan's Assist ID.
Franky contacts Susan through any channel they normally use (chat, email, phone, …) and asks her to:
- Create an account at deepmeta.creativ.zone — or log in if she already has one.
- Click her Avatar to open her Profile panel.
- Copy her Assist ID (the copy-to-clipboard button is next to it) and send it to Franky.
Franky pastes the Assist ID into the input field and confirms.
Step 3 — Susan appears in Franky's list
After adding, Susan appears in Franky's Assistants & Collaboration list. A new Assistant starts with Upload & Edit rights; you can change that in the next step.
Step 4 — Set Susan's access rights
Click the Edit icon next to Susan's entry to expand the access-rights panel.
Two rights can be granted individually:
- Upload & Edit — lets the Assistant manage Upload and Edit workflows.
- Submit — lets the Assistant submit Batches. Requires Upload & Edit.
The Edit panel also has a Delete button to permanently remove the Assistant connection. Confirmation is required.
Susan's side — entering Assist Mode
The next time Susan opens her Profile panel on DeepMeta, Franky appears in her list under User you are assisting.
Susan clicks the Assist button next to Franky's name. This puts her DeepMeta page into Assist Mode.
Her Avatar moves to the background, and Franky's Avatar appears on top — indicating whose Portfolio she is now viewing.
Susan's homepage now shows a subset of the menu: only the sections from Franky's account that she has access to. She can start editing Franky's Uploads right away.
Her Profile panel now shows the active Assist context: "Assisting: Franky" below her own name, along with a Stop button to exit Assist Mode.
Managing the connection
Franky temporarily disables Susan's access
Franky can toggle Susan's access off at any time using the Active switch on the Assistant entry.
From Susan's Profile panel, the entry for Franky now shows as Disabled, and the Assist button is greyed out until Franky turns access back on.
Susan stops assisting
Susan can exit Assist Mode at any time by clicking the Stop Assisting button in her Profile panel. Her DeepMeta page returns to her own default view.
Susan removes the connection
Susan can also permanently delete the Assistant connection from her side: click the Edit icon on Franky's entry, then Delete. Confirmation is required.
Security
- Assistants only ever see and edit data belonging to the Contributor they are assisting — access is scoped to the Contributor's Zone.
- Assistants with Upload & Edit rights cannot sign in to or sign out of the Contributor's ESP Accounts; only the Account owner can do that.
- Assistants with Submit rights can schedule and submit Batches on the Contributor's behalf.
- No matter what access rights are granted, Assistants can never see Statistics or financial data from the Contributor.
- The Contributor can revoke access (disable or delete) at any time, from any device, without needing to contact the Assistant.
Planning together
The current implementation is already far more practical than sharing a secondary ESP password with an Assistant. But in any collaboration, a significant amount of time also goes into communicating and planning, typically with many back-and-forth exchanges over email or chat. To cut down on that, Batches have a few extra fields that are never sent to Getty ESP:
- Private notes — Notes shared only between the Contributor and the Assistant. A good place to brief the Assistant in detail.
- Assistant — Assign one of your Assistants to a Batch.
- Deadline — The date by which the Editing needs to be done. Useful for Briefs or seasonal Batches.
- Priority — Low, Medium or High. A higher priority means "do this first", next to the Deadline.
- Task — Move a Batch through stages such as "To Edit", "To Review", "To Revise" and "To Submit", so both of you know whose turn it is.
- Calendar — The Calendar shows Batch Deadlines and Auto-submit dates at a glance, for the Assistant too.
The Assistant, Task and Priority fields appear once you've added an Assistant. Still on our list: auto-assigning an Assistant to every new Batch, and showing Assistants only the Batches assigned to them.
Feedback
This is a brand-new feature and we'll keep expanding it. As always, your feedback is warmly appreciated. You can contact us with your suggestions and bug reports.
Header image: (c) John (Unsplash)