Grand Shooting Help Center

You can set up exchanges by FTP with external agencies for the post-production of your content.

Post-production is materialized in the workflows through the “Phase 1" or “Phase 2" steps after the Live. You can set up FTP transfers, to send your content and associated instructions to a remote FTP server.

In return, Grand Shooting is notified when the external agency uploads files to the remote FTP server: these files are automatically loaded to be visible in the application.

FTP transfers have multiple benefits:

Everything is centralized in your Grand Shooting account to simplify monitoring the progress of the workflow.
You do not need to change the interface to send the content to be processed. You use standard features for annotation and for viewing the history of content versions.
You don't need to train external agencies to use Grand Shooting.

Sending and receiving files

Before we get into the details of FTP settings, let's see how sending and receiving works. The principle is the same for sending from a Phase 1 or a Phase 2.

The succession of the steps presented below can be carried out as many times as you want for 1 or for several files:

Select the files you want to send.
In the “For selection” actions menu click on the FTP account.
If you have multiple benefit codes (see below), select the code.
Click on the “Transfer” button to start sending files.

There is no limitation on the number of files to be transmitted or on the weight of the files. Depending on the quantities, the time required for the transfer may be more or less long (count 1 to 2 seconds per file). You can be notified by email when the transfer is complete.

When the external agency uploads files to the FTP server, they are automatically uploaded to Grand Shooting. Sending and receiving are indicated by arrows:

The service codes

An external agency may ask to separate files into separate folders depending on the nature of the work requested. In Grand Shooting, these folder names correspond to service codes that you can set up: before starting a transfer, a popup window will ask you to specify a code to load the files into the correct FTP folder.

Request corrections

The files made available by the external agency are loaded automatically. You use the standard Grand Shooting features to request corrections to these files:

either file by file from the zoom: annotate or add comments then click on the “Reject” button at the bottom of the screen,
or in batch: select your images then in the “For selection” actions menu, click on “Reject retouching”. A popup window will invite you to specify the reason for the refusal (it will be associated with all selected files).

Version Management

The history of file versions is provided by the application in the same way as for the classic loading of files: the version number is incremented with each update.

ATTENTION : the version number is incremented only when the file changes. If the external agency pushes the same file back to the FTP folder, then the update is simply ignored.

Grand Shooting links the different versions of a file through the file name. If the file name changes or if the location in a subdirectory of the FTP folder changes, then Grand Shooting will not link and load a new image into the production. You will see it as a duplicate as in the example below:

Namely:

There is no limitation on the number of versions, you (or the external agency) can load as many as you want.
In the event that an old version is re-loaded, Grand Shooting detects it and considers it to be a restoration (the old version is restored, later versions are retained but ignored).

Monitoring progress

As soon as FTP transfers are used, an additional filter appears: “Pending FTP”. Use this filter to list files sent to the FTP server waiting to be returned by the external agency.

Namely:

Files sent by FTP transfer come out of the “To be retouched” filter. They are visible with the “Pending FTP” filter.

Frequency of exchanges

Sending files from the Grand Shooting platform is immediate. To retrieve files submitted by external agencies, a robot reviews the files every 20 minutes.

As users upload them to the FTP server over time, the robot will also slow down the frequency of its visits. As a result, if you have new images uploaded to an old production, they may not appear until the next day in Grand Shooting.

If this is a problem, you can force the robot to connect to the FTP server: in the left column of Phase 1 (or Phase 2 depending on your worklow), click on “View transfers” then on the “Retrieve photos” button at the top of the screen.

Setting up FTP transfers

You can set up as many FTP transfers as you want. When sending images, you will choose which FTP to send the images to. Having several external partners is not a problem.

To know : the configuration of FTP transfers is reserved for account administrators.

To create an FTP connection, from the home page, go to the application settings using the nut at the top of your screen > FTP Transfer > Set up a new connection.

Complete the fields in the form:

Connection name	To find your FTP account more easily when sending files.
URL	FTP server connection address
Login / Password	FTP server credentials
SFTP Connection	Check this box to activate the SFTP protocol
Server to receive the filess	By default, the same server is used for sending and receiving files
Types of services	(Optional) Service types are used to store files in separate folders according to the nature of the work to be carried out

Then to send the files:

Filter	(Optional) Regex filter on all file names to be sent. For example “.jpg” will only send files with the “.jpg” extension
Folder	Naming convention used to create folders into which files will be transferred to the external agency. You can insert variables to make folders dynamic (see below)
Export comments in a .pdf file	Check to add PDF files with annotations to complement the transmitted files (see below)
Export catalog information in a .csv file	Check to add a CSV file with catalog information to complement the transmitted files
Folder of refused retouches	Using the same principle as for the main directory, specify the naming convention for folders to be created in the case of correction requests
Export catalog information in a .csv file	Check to add PDF files with annotations to supplement correction requests
People to notify when sending or refusing photos	Comma-separated list of email addresses. Recipients receive an email notification at the end of an FTP transfer. To limit spam when transfers are chained, recipients receive a maximum of 1 notification per production and per hour
Include folders in filename	The files to be transmitted are sometimes organized in sub-folders. Technically, it may be possible to send 2 files with the same name from 2 different sub-folders. In such cases, we recommend that you check this box. The file names will then be prefixed with the folder tree

Finally to recover the files from the FTP server

Filter	(Optional) Regex rule over all file names to filter reception. For example “.jpg” will only retrieve files with the extension “.jpg”
Folder	Naming convention used to scan the folders in which the files transmitted by the external agency will be retrieved
Emails to notify	(Optional) Comma-separated list of email addresses. Recipients receive an email notification at the end of an FTP transfer. To limit spam when transfers are chained, recipients receive a maximum of 1 notification per production and per hour

Here is an example of configuration:

This example shows a transfer with 3 entry points:

/Upload/Todo/Alfanco - GS transfer of files to be processed

/upload/done/Alfanco - The external agency saves the files to be recovered in GS

/upload/redo/Alfanco - GS transfers correction requests

The settings also apply variables to directory names:

{date} - Date of creation of the production

{set} - Name of the production

{code} - Code of service

With this setting, the FTP server will for example have folders of this type:

/upload/todo/alfanco/aplat/2018_12_21_lot_19 with images from the session LOT_19 created in GS on 21/12/2018 sent to the FTP server with the service code FLAT.

In this case, GS will await the images delivered by the external agency in the file /upload/done/alfanco/aplat/2018_12_21_lot_19

And if there are requests for correction, GS will forward them to the external agency in the file /upload/redo/alfanco/aplat/2018_12_21_lot_19

Variables for FTP folders

To create a dynamic folder tree on the FTP server, the 4 most commonly used variables are:

`{date}`	Creation date of the production
`{set}`	Production name
`{code}`	Code types
`{account}`	GS account name

‍

You can also apply variables related to the catalog data of the references associated with the images: {ref}, {productref}, {ean}, {SKU}, {color}, {size}, {label}, {brand}, {universe}, {range}, {family}, {gender}, {online}, {collection}, {comment}, {tags}

ATTENTION : in the case where an image does not have an associated reference or when a value is not entered in the catalog, a folder with the name of the variable will be created automatically and will contain the photos concerned.