CI HUB integration

The CI HUB integration allows users to access, browse, create and edit assets and asset data within their usual Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office applications.

The CI HUB integration requires a CI HUB license. For more information, please reach out to your censhare contact person.

Prerequisites

The CI HUB integration requires a web-packed censhare installation with Keycloak as an authentication server. For more information, see Setup in censhare.
The CI HUB connector plugin must be installed in the user client applications. For more information, see Adobe Creative Cloud / CI HUB connector.
Users must register at CI HUB. Registration requires a company license key. For more information, see CI HUB/user registration.

Purpose

The CI HUB integration brings the censhare DAM system and Adobe Creative Cloud and MS Office applications closer together for a better user experience. Users can work in their usual context without switching between censhare and their Adobe or Office applications. In the CI HUB panel in Adobe Creative Cloud applications, users can access asset files and asset data:

Browse assets
View and edit asset files (images, videos, audio files, InCopy files, layout snippets)
View and edit asset data (name, description, workflow step, workflow target, metadata, ...)
Place assets in Adobe CC project files (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects)
Create new assets/upload files

Current limitations with InDesign projects and Powerpoint presentations

The CI HUB integration can handle any asset type. However, Adobe InDesign (aka layout assets) and Microsoft Powerpoint (aka presentation assets) are not fully supported when uploaded or updated via CI HUB integration.

Adobe InDesign

If a user uploads or updates an Adobe InDesign project file via the CI HUB integration to censhare, the API that handles the file upload from CI HUB server to censhare Server does not fully resolve the project structure:

Create a layout asset with INDD master file
Extract stories as IDML (Adobe InCopy) assets
Create asset structure from uploaded INDD project file placed images and texts
Render paginated preview of the layout

Due to these limitations, an error message displays when assets are opened in censhare Web. In upcoming releases, we will provide a fix for this limitation. Until then, this error can only be resolved by manually rebuilding the asset structure with placed images and stories.

Microsoft Powerpoint

If a user uploads or updates a Microsoft Powerpoint file via the CI HUB integration to censhare, the asset that is created does not show a preview of the slides:

Create a presentation asset with PPT master file
Render preview of the slides

Introduction

The CI HUB connects Adobe Creative Cloud applications with different content sources (cloud-based or server-based). The CI HUB server handles queries from the different clients (users/applications) and forwards them to the content source (censhare Server or others).

Each content source uses a specific adapter on the CI HUB server. For the censhare Server, this is the censhare Resource Adapter. The censhare Resource Adapter connects to the CIHUB module on the censhare Server. The REST interface of the CIHUB module retrieves data (assets, asset files, asset features, asset relations). The data are JSON-formatted according to the registered schemas. The censhare CI HUB integration provides default schemas. You can also register custom schemas.

On the client-side, the CI HUB connector plugin sends requests and receives the responses from the CI HUB server. The CI HUB panel in the Adobe CC application displays the data so that users can navigate, search, place, or upload content.

The CI HUB server also relays authentication requests between clients and the content source (in censhare: via KeyCloak).

Asset metadata synchronization

Media files such as images, videos, PDFs and media production files such as Adobe InDesign layouts can contain embedded metadata that is important for the usage and production. For example, the standardized IPTC tags contain image caption, author name, copyright notice, etc.

The CI HUB integration can synchronize these metadata, but some special configuration may be required according to your use case. However, there is a limitation in CI HUB that prevents the metadata to be displayed in the CI HUB panel.

Media file → asset data

When a user adds or updates an asset in the CI HUB panel, censhare uploads the respective file and creates a new asset or updates the existing asset. Embedded metadata is written into the asset data using the default File metadata import mapping. The imported metadata can be viewed and edited as asset properties in censhare Web.

You can customize the metadata mapping if necessary. For more information, see Metadata mapping for media file import/export.

Asset data → media file

By default, asset metadata that are stored as asset properties, are not synchronized with the asset file when a user downloads or places an asset via the CI HUB panel.

If your use case requires that asset data are written into the file metadata when assets are downloaded in the CI HUB panel, you must configure a custom action that triggers the Export file metadata mapping command. For example, add a dedicated workflow step Production ready (CI HUB) and trigger the Export file metadata mapping command when the asset is moved to this workflow step.

For more information, see Metadata mapping for media file import/export.

Setup - quick reference

To set up the CI HUB integration, the following steps are required:

Configure Keycloak: After successful authentication via the login page, users are redirected to another page. These redirects must be configured in the respective Keycloak client.
Connect to CI HUB server: To use the CI HUB Server with your censhare Server, you must register the censhare Server with CI HUB. For the registration, you need the Keycloak Client ID and Client Secret from your censhare system.
Configure the CI HUB module: The module must be enabled and configured in the censhare Admin Client.
Install the CI HUB connector plugin on user clients: The CI HUB connector plugin must be installed in the Adobe CC applications. Users must register with CI HUB to connect to censhare via the plugin.