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Featured Content Thumbnails - Inconsistent behavior


Todd Goldstein (76119) | asked Aug 24 '10, 10:10 a.m.
I am running RAM 7.2.0.2 and I've noticed some very inconsistent behavior with the featured content thumbnail preview for files.

Under Repository Administration > Configuration > Performance Options I do have a checkmark in the box labeled "Automatically create featured content on asset submission. If you disable this option, performance will improve when submitting assets." My assumption for this option is that when assets are created the thumbnail is created automatically. Is this correct?

There are a few scenarios of behavior that I have seen which is baffling me:

Scenario 1 - Some existing assets that have a single file attached show the thumbnail while others do not. A portion of these assets were submitted in a prior version of RAM so I don't know if that is a factor. Is there any way to make a repository wide change to display thumbnails for all assets with files? How big of a performance hit is it if possible?

Scenario 2 - I submitted a new test asset yesterday with 2 file attachments. Only 1 file had the thumbnail preview. When I edit the Featured Content area, I saw that only 1 checkbox was selected and I was able to pick the 2nd file. After saving, the other thumbnail appeared. I'm curious why both were not displayed from the start.

Bottom line here is that I need to know the intended behavior for the checkbox in the Configuration and whether submitters are supposed to manually set the thumbnail or not. I also want to understand why I am seeing inconsistent behavior.

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Rich Kulp (3.6k38) | answered Aug 24 '10, 4:46 p.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER
Hi,

There is a performance hit in creating a thumbnail. Once created there
is no performance hit accessing it. When an asset is submitted and the
checkbox is set to do thumbnail processing the asset is examined for
files that end with a predefined set of extensions. For any file in that
set of extensions a thumbnail is created and stored in the asset.
Therefor accessing it later is a simple grab the cached file. We don't
create the thumbnail every time a request is made.

That is what the checkbox was for. If the checkbox is turned off then
automatic thumbnail processing on asset submission/update is not
performed. No new thumbnails will be created and old ones will not be
updated. Existing thumbnails will not disappear but they won't be kept
in sync with the contents of the real file.

The predefined set of file extension types are The file extensions that
currently are predefined are ".ppt", ".pdf",".odt",".odp",".otp".

Rich

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