With the addition of tagging iconik users and groups in comments, iconik's value as a collaboration hub has taken another stride forward. With that, we felt it was a good time to round up what collaboration tools our customers are using in iconik.

The value of collaboration during the planning, production, and promotion of media can't be overstated. Good collaboration is at the core of successful and captivating content. 

And this is what it looks like!

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A complete media collaboration toolbox will allow you to:

1. Easily invite collaborators
2. Share media
3. Deliver feedback
4. Track conversations
5. Manage versions
6. Notify collaborators
7. Facilitate approval processes

The benefit of all this is clear feedback which results in less time between revisions plus having centralized conversations and alerts to prompt specific people to get involved, reducing the time it takes to pass the media production torch.

The iconik Collaboration Toolbox

Iconik makes it simple to share, edit, review and approve media together from anywhere. In this blog post, we will discuss what collaboration tools you can have when using iconik to manage your media. 

As you read/skim through this post, you might be surprised by how much is here now.

🧰 Let's open the toolbox!

Invite Anyone to Collaborate

One of the greatest ways to empower seamless teamwork is having the freedom to add collaborators as needed without having them meet obstacles. 

That's why iconik offers the ability to collaborate with anyone—whether they’re internal, external, an iconik user or not—just add their email to invite them for free! This makes it easy to get started and finish projects together, no matter who is involved.

Related Read: 3 Ways to Improve Collaboration with External Agencies

It's simple, but that doesn't mean it isn't thorough. 

Sharing Made Simple

When it comes to sharing, we want to make it as simple as possible for you, but never at the expense of control. With a few clicks, you can share media for anyone to view, comment on, upload or download. And if you ever need to revoke access, you can do so with a few more clicks. The control is in your hands.

The reasons you share media are as dynamic as the media itself, so you should have options for each share. 

In iconik, you can modify each share with options like:

• Share via Email or copy/paste a link
• Share with individuals or groups
• Adding passwords
• Sending messages with a share
• Controlling what metadata is shown
• Setting a share link expiration date
• Permission to download hi-res or proxy versions
• Permission to comment and approve comments
• Permission to view versions and transcriptions
• Option to update or cancel share permissions later

As you let people access your media, ideas and feedback will fly in from all directions, so your collaboration toolbox should be able to facilitate that as well.

Organizing video feedback can be tricky. You need to collect many important details from many stakeholders, which is made even more difficult if you have to dig through multiple inboxes and apps. 

Iconik's review and approval features include:

1. Comments
2. Drawings
3. Versions

These tools let you keep all your media feedback in one place so you can easily find it. With simple, smooth communication, you can get approvals faster.

Comment on Media Assets

You can do a lot with comments in iconik. You can add in/out points to for time-based comments, reply to other comments, mark comments as "done", and tag other users.

Time-based Comments

Time-based comments are great for communicating about video because they provide a specific point in the video to reference. This can be helpful because the person on the other end will have less confusion when figuring out feedback for edits for a specific scene or moment.

Tagging Users and Groups

The "@" symbol can be used to tag iconik users or groups in a comment in an asset. When a user or their group is tagged, they will receive either an iconik notification or email alerting them. This will help keep everyone on the same page and projects moving along with less time passed between collaborators.

Reply and Approve Comments

When working remotely, it is important to communicate clearly. Iconik allows you to reply inline to comments and approve comments to confirm a comment has been seen, or that a task has been completed. This helps teams know that they are being heard and understood.

Draw on images and video

A lot of information can be lost when we’re not communicating face to face. Visual feedback is one way to overcome this. 

People are more likely to pay attention to and remember information that is presented visually. Draw-on annotations in iconik are a great way to deliver very clear visual feedback. By being able to draw on images and videos, users can show and tell exactly what they want they need from other collaborators.

Annotations in iconik can be turned on and off in the comment panel, so you can easily find drawings related to specific comments.

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For more features and higher-quality reviews, consider integrating iconik with cineSync. cineSync offers high-frame-rate media reviews regardless of bandwidth. You can play media from your machine, in full resolution, at the correct speed, with no dropped frames or artifacts because all media is downloaded and played locally cineSync offers other great features including:

• ftrack, Shotgun, NIM, and Aspera integrations
• Stereo/3D and 360 latlong support
• Synchronized color tools
• Zoom, masking, and aspect ratio tools
• 3D LUT support

And much more

Version Management with Comment History

Versioning is an important asset management tool that allows teams to give progressive feedback on projects as they add new versions for an asset.

By creating new versions within a single asset, versioning allows for a more efficient feedback process that can help improve the overall quality of a project. The comments are preserved for each version, so teams can find every bit of feedback given for a version.

The versioning feature in iconik allows you to:

• Upload files as new versions
• Choose an existing asset to become a new version
• Merge an asset to become a new version
• Add versions automatically through the iconik Storage Gateway (ISG)
• Switch between versions to compare or review
• Promote an older version
• Delete a version or all older versions

This clear record of revisions and feedback will help keep media moving forward as teams edit in other applications.

Sharing and Editing Adobe Projects

The iconik Adobe panel allows fast access to all media in iconik directly from within Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition. 

When you're ready for others to review your work or to continue working on your projects, you can export media from Adobe products into iconik or upload entire projects for others to access. Every asset added via the iconik panel can be relinked with one click.

Remember how we mentioned comments earlier?

Each comment on an iconik asset follows over to Adobe Premiere Pro as a marker, making the editor's job more intuitive. Because proxy versions of media are always in the iconik cloud, editors use proxy-edit workflows to edit faster without having to download hi-res versions of their media.

With the iconik panel for Adobe, every iconik asset can be found and added to your project without ever leaving your workspace—which will save you a lot of time.

Ready for frictionless collaboration?

This is a toolbox made for powerful creative collaborations. 

The unique thing about iconik though is that it delivers all of these solutions while also managing your media, and it doesn't even require users to buy expensive in-app storage like other video collaboration solutions do—you can bring your own storage.

Iconik makes it easy for everyone to find what they need to contribute and provides a single platform for all stakeholders to review, comment on, and approve media. 

At the end of the day, our goal is to empower creative people to create more, with less time spent fighting collaboration killers like missing media or messy communication. 

If you'd like to try this media collaboration toolbox for yourself, schedule a short demo and start your free iconik trial.