Problem: Stale files are eating up my quota!

Jay Brooks, our CTO, frequently addresses ways in which Simian can help solve problems that our users face on a daily basis. Here’s one of his regular blog columns, which we like to call ‘The Problem-solver.’

Production and post production moves fast. When in the heat of a project, the posting of rough cuts, edits and approvals can quickly fill up your storage quote. After a while these files lose their relevance and are not so readily needed. Often times, these files become overlooked and can linger in our system for weeks, months or even years.

Given these inevitabilities, we’ve developed a few tools in Simian Projects to make dealing with a project’s life cycle more manageable. Here they are:

1. Project Quotas: This allows you to set up individual project quotas that limit the amount of storage space allocated for a specific project. Establishing a project quota helps team members be mindful of what they upload and what they leave in the project folder, enforcing some clean-up discipline.
2. Project Auto-Delete: With large projects and a large team, lots of files get posted and many can get overlooked long after they’ve become inactive. The Auto-delete feature allows you to set an individual delete date per file (in weeks), or a project-wide delete date. Implementing a project-wide delete policy insures that files will only live on the system for a prescribed amount of time — ensuring that files don’t get left on the system and forgotten.
3. Project Archiving: Once a project is wrapped and there is no need for it online anymore, you can easily archive all the assets into one zip file. This is great way to retain your assets and clear the way for your next project.

Problem solved!