So, to help keep that organized, we’ve updated the change instance drop down (screenshot below) to only include your product instances for the current account. For those of you that have access to more than one account, we’ve provided a link right next to the account name that allows you to switch accounts. And finally, for account administrators, we’ve moved the account administration link into this switch instance drop down (it was previously in the drop down that shows when you click on your user name in the right-hand corner.)

Switch repositories (click to enlarge)

We’re hoping these changes help keep you organized as the number of your Nextpoint product instances grows.

The “batch list” page has a simplified look, allowing 2x the previous quantity to be conveniently displayed at a time, along with quick visual cues to make statuses obvious at a glance.  The status-bar provides a visual diagnostic of processing results for each batch.  Click on a section of the bar to view the corresponding portion of the processing logs.

Marking a batch as “Resolved” will update it’s status and gray out the status bar to make it a little less eye catching.

Remembering that “Batch 9″ is the zip of files you found on Terry’s PC is a bit of a pain.  Providing a name for the batch gives you a handy moniker to be used throughout the interface.

Batch Status Reporting

Available when your batch has completed:  Download a full report of actions or the specific actions you are interested in (i.e. only the documents/issues that recommend follow-up action to be taken).

The link for “Normal” actions only is pictured above – To download only the “Warnings” for example, a similar link may be found on the “Warnings” tab.

The download is a csv listing the actions taken and (where available) links to the related document in the interface, providing you with a convenient starting point for resolving any issues encountered.

We’re excited about what these changes immediately bring to the table for Batch-status reporting and error resolution, as well as the future enhancements these underlying changes will enable in the future.

The numbers shown for each repository are the averages of all the records for the time period you are viewing. We run our storage calculations twice daily – once in the morning and once in the evening. You can view a repository’s daily usage by clicking on the repository name. The daily usage records shown are the maximum of the two storage numbers for that day in gigabytes.

The Cloud Preservation dashboard includes feed counts as well as storage numbers and presents these in the same fashion.

A note on document deletion: We wait a full day after a document has been deleted to fully purge it from the system. This gives us the ability to restore the document quickly if it was incorrectly deleted. This may cause some lag in the reduction of gigabytes used per day, but have no fear the reduction will be recorded.

Managing storage can be a daunting task and we strive to be transparent about the amount of data you are storing in any of our products.

In terms of website feeds, Cloud Preservation determines if a link is external by comparing the address of the link to the addresses defined in your feed. In the context of Cloud Preservation social media feeds (such as Twitter or Facebook) an external link is a link that was found in a post from the social media feed.

Cloud Preservation provides you four configurable options for how it will manage external links. These options allow you to tailor your feeds to meet your collection needs and also provide a level of control over your feed’s storage use.

Option 1: Never collect external links

This option allows you to ignore offsite links entirely. When the Cloud Preservation crawler encounters a link that it determines to be external, it will record that link, but will not collect the web page at that link’s address. Since this option leaves these external pages out of your repository completely, these external links have no impact on your feed’s storage use.

When to use this option: There is no requirement to collect external pages, and/or there isn’t enough storage capacity for external pages in the Cloud Preservation repository for the selected plan.

Option 2: Never collect modified versions of external links

With this option selected, Cloud Preservation will look to see if it has ever collected this external link before, by comparing the address to all of the addresses of pages it has collected in the past. If it finds another page in the repository that bears this same address, then Cloud Preservation will simply link the existing page to the currently running crawl. Of all the options to collect external links, this has the lowest impact on storage for the repository.

When to use this option: There is a requirement to collect external pages, however the latest version isn’t important or of consequence. Often times for social media feeds like Twitter, the external page modifications aren’t relevant.  For example, the external link could be an article or blog post with constantly changing advertisements and user comments that aren’t important or relevant for your collection.

Option 3: Collect modified versions of external links for new or modified pages

If Cloud Preservation crawls an internal page that has not changed since the last collection, then it will not attempt to fetch the latest version of any external links. However, if the page has changed since the last collection, or is a page that has not been collected previously, then Cloud Preservation will check for new versions of all external links on that page. This option is slightly less efficient in terms of repository storage, but does offer savings over the final option.

Note: This is the default setting for new Cloud Preservation feeds, as we’ve found it to be the best choice for enhancing your collection with external links while keeping storage use in check.

When to use this option: There is a requirement to collect a “point in time” snapshot of both the internal pages and the external pages.

Option 4: Always collect the latest external link

Finally, this option will always attempt to fetch the latest version of the external link. If the link is found on a new internal page, modified internal page, or unmodified internal page, Cloud Preservation will crawl the external link to see if there is a new version. This option will have the largest impact on storage, as external pages frequently change due to rotating advertisements or images and changed content.

When to use this option: Useful when the latest version of offsite pages must be collected, always, and there is a surplus in storage capacity for the Cloud Preservation plan chosen. This option is also necessary for some advanced crawling techniques, such as using a single internal web page whose purpose is to provide an index of several external links.

The crawling process of Cloud Preservation can get complicated, just like the web, and we hope this sheds a bit of light on the subject of external links.

Shortcuts have been made available for the most common coding operations, as well as page & document navigation options.

Coding

Persistance

Navigation

General

“Alt + Ctrl”?  Why the game of keyboard-Twister?  The catch here is that your browser is also “listening” for the keys you’re pressing and reacting to certain special combinations.  Some browsers like to react more to “Control”, others “Command”, and others “Alt”.  This combination of keys gets us into our own space while using keys that are (on many/most keyboards) located near enough to each other to make the combination practical… with a little practice.

These new options allow you to quickly update a document’s status and move on to the next in the stack.

Another big part of the value of Cloudpreservation.com is that we deal with these changes for you. We’re in touch with the api development teams at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and LinkedIn, listening for changes, and making sure we support the latest and greatest.

So, let us roll with the changes, and you can rest assured that Cloudpreservation.com is securely archiving and indexing the data from your social media profiles.

When you add a new YouTube feed, you’ll notice a fourth option to enter the address of the YouTube video you would like to capture.

Add YouTube Feed

After you’ve setup your feed, that video and all of the comments and meta-data associated with it will be collected and stored in CloudPreservation, and will continually be updated at the interval you specify.

Enjoy!

Now, documents uploaded to Discovery Cloud and Trial Cloud can be DeNISTed at import. This can be done in one of two ways: tagging or filtering. When configured to tag DeNISTed files, the special “NIST” tag will be applied to all matching files automatically. When configured to filter, those files will be removed completely from imported batches, making it easy to skip past useless files.

On the import page, your current DeNIST setting is now visible.

This setting can be changed in the new DeNIST section of your General Settings page, where there is a full explanation of the feature.

With this feature you can save time and effort skipping right past junk files and straight into more useful, relevant data. We hope you find it helpful.

Advanced users may add, remove, rename, and sort Redaction Reasons in the Settings section.

Redaction Reasons are immediately available for selection in the normal redaction interface.

Processing completes a few seconds later, leaving a redacted box containing the desired text.

The ability to customize redaction text puts the power to provide clarity (or ambiguity) in your hands, allowing you to craft the solution to fit your specific situation.

When reviewing documents, apply any applicable codes to mark and automatically stamp them.  It’s quick and easy and won’t interfere with any bates stamping on the documents.