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Approval workflow in Cloudinary for Merchandising

Overview​

Using Cloudinary notifications, it is possible for us to update assets in Hybris in (nearly) real time. If an asset is uploaded, renamed or deleted we could reflect this almost instantly in Hybris. However this isn't ideal for the Merchandising team who would prefer to have an opportunity to review and approve assets before the ingested to Hybris is started. Structured metadata in Cloudinary allows us to introduce an approval status for each asset, which has a default status of awaiting_approval on upload. The status can be changed on a single asset or in bulk, to approved or unapproved. The three actions that will trigger the Hybris ingest are uploading, deleting and renaming an asset. From our investigation, we would propose that the approval process is used for assets on initial upload, but for deleting or renaming assets we would not use this status.

Requirements​

  • We should only ingest assets to Hybris that are approved and ready for use
  • Digital Merch would lie to be able to review asset sets before they are synced with Hybris
  • Identify whether an asset should require re-approval if it is renamed
  • When an asset is approved and ready for use in Hybris, we need a mechanism to start the ingest
  • Events that we are monitoring are uploading new assets, renaming existing assets and deleting assets

Cloudinary options​

Cloudinary structured metadata allows you to define typed fields for media assets, populate them with values programmatically or via the Media Library, and perform searches on them. You can also add validation rules, set default values, and define fields as mandatory. A metadata field is a custom, typed field (key) for storing user defined data (value) with a media asset, and with this feature we can define an approval status for an asset. Changes to structured metadata are captured as events and sent via Cloudinary notifications.

  • Uploading an asset - set the approval status to awaiting_approval for all newly uploaded assets. Every time an asset is uploaded, a notification is sent but we can filter for those assets with status approved
  • Deleting an asset - a notification is sent every time an asset is deleted, however if the asset has approved status we can notify Hybris
  • Renaming an asset - a notification is sent when an asset is renamed, but should the asset's status change back to unapproved or awaiting_approval at this point? Do merchandising need another opportunity to approve the asset changes?

The approval workflow​

From speaking to Merch, we decided that assets would not need re-approval if they have been renamed. Since we have filename checks on upload to prevent errors, the main reason that a filename would change is for re-ordering in which case tha asset would not need to be re-approved. We agreed that approval on upload would be the most appropriate appllication.

Workflow for approval on upload:

Cloudinary worflow for approval on upload

Workflow for deleted assets:

Cloudinary worflow for deleted assets

Worflow for renamed assets:

Cloudinary worflow for renamed assets

Resources​