Web Client Branding & Configuration

Zoom 7.0 introduced Evolphin Web Client application that can be branded for customer portals. This application lets users perform basic asset operations like searching, browsing, and metadata lookup. But, in addition, it is also a collaboration tool, that can be used for sharing collections of assets among a group of users and also exchange comments and annotations on the shared assets. Collections can be used to collaborate not just among your standard Zoom users within the organization, but also with outsiders using just their email addresses. It is also possible to publicly share links to chosen collections safely without requiring any user account or email address too!

After you upgrade to Zoom 7.0, the Web Client is ready to use. However, it may be further configured, branded and personalized for use. The global configuration options are:

  1. Personalizing Web Client:
    1. Your organization’s name and tagline
    2. Your logo and a new welcome image
  2. File upload settings:
    1. Default upload location
    2. Zip file upload setting
    3. Duplicate file upload setting
    4. Default metadata for uploads
  3. Customizing asset list display:
    1. Number of assets to show
    2. Faceted filters in asset display
    3. Customized names for filters in asset display (deprecated from Zoom 7.3 onwards)
  4. Setting in the Web Management Console:
    1. Email domains for invited collection sharing
    2. Web Client Settings

These settings are only available to Zoom’s admin users. Once these are configured, their effects are visible to all users of Web Client in your Zoom setup. Besides these global options, each Zoom user may also set a custom profile picture in the Web Client.

Many of these configuration settings are done through zoom.properties files. From Zoom 7.3 onwards, you can update these properties through the Web Management Console.

Follow the sections below to see how to configure Web Client for the above options:

This post talks about the steps required to configure and customize your Web Client. To know more about using Web Client, go to The Web Client .
Restart all Zoom services after changing configurations on any of your servers. The order to restart services is Zoom HADR, Zoom, Zoom Preview, and Zoom Curator Service.

Company name and tagline

To set your company’s name and tagline on the Home page, follow these steps:

  1. On the Zoom Server, navigate to the conf folder in the Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/).
  2. Open server.xml for editing.
  3. Under<repospec>set <companyName> tag as {Your Company Name}
  4. Set <companyTagLine> tag as {Your Company Tag Line}
    For example, to set the company name as ABC and tagline as ‘For all of ABC’, set these tags as:  

    <companyName>Evolphin Software</companyName><companyTagLine>Stay Awesome</companyTagLine>

  5. Save and close the file.
  6. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

Your chosen values are now set. These will be displayed in the Web Client after the browser cache is cleared. The default values are shown in Image 1.

Change Login Background Image

On visiting the Web Client sign-in, users can see their company’s login background image using these steps:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf>server-settings>settings>webclient folder in Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\server-settings\settings\webclient\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/server-settings/settings/webclient/).
  2. Locate login_background.jpg .
  3. Replace with your company’s login image keeping the same file name.
  4. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

Note: Supported image format is JPG/JPEG only.
Note: The preferred image size is 1920 x 1080 pixels.

Your chosen image is now set. This will be displayed in the Web Client after the browser cache is cleared. The default images in use are as shown below:

Change Company Logo and Welcome Image

Configure the Web Client to display your Company’s logo using these steps:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf>server-settings>settings>webclient folder in Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\server-settings\settings\webclient\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/server-settings/settings/webclient/).
  2. Locate logo.png .
  3. Replace with your company’s logo image keeping the same file name.
  4. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

Note: Supported image format is JPG/PNG only.
Note: The preferred image size is 40×40 pixels.

Now, to modify the welcome image on the Homepage (shown after login), follow these steps in the same folder.

  1. Locate home_header.jpg.
  2. Replace with the Welcome image of your choice keeping the same file name.
  3. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

Note: Supported image format is JPG/PNG only.
Note: The preferred image size is 1550×380 pixels.

Your chosen images are now set. These will be displayed in the Web Client after the browser cache is cleared. The default images in use are as shown below in Image 1.

Image 1: Homepage

Change Default Upload Location

By default, the assets uploaded using the Web Client are saved in the default Zoom project, defproj. You could change this to another project or a folder inside a project using a tag in preview-server.xml. Use the value of the disk path for the Zoom project or the folder inside the project. For example, if you want to change the upload location to the folder ‘Seasons’ inside the project ‘New Show’, then you need to use the path to the folder ‘Seasons’ on the disk. To get this path, right-click the desired folder in Asset Browser’s Browse tab and select Copy Path from the context menu.

Image 2: Copy path in Zoom

Follow these steps to update the default upload location:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf folder in the Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/).
  2. Open preview-server.xml for editing.
  3. Under <previewserverspec>set <defaultZoomUploadLocation> tag as {project path relative to Zoom root directory}
    If <defaultZoomUploadLocation> tag is not found then add it under <previewserverspec>.
  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

Your chosen upload location (project) is now set. New uploads from the Web Client will now be saved to the new location after the browser cache is cleared.

Zip File Handling

By default, uploaded zip files are automatically unzipped and each extracted file is added as a separate asset in the Zoom repository. Follow these steps to have Zoom add an uploaded zip file as an individual asset:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf>server-settings>settings folder in Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\server-settings\settings\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/server-settings/settings/).
  2. Locate preview-server.propertiesCreate this file, if it does not exist.
  3. Open this file for editing.
  4. Set EXTRACT_ZIP_ON_UPLOAD=false
  5. Save and close the file.
  6. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

An uploaded zip file will now be added as-it-is to the Zoom repository when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared.

Duplicate File Handling

When a file is imported that has the same name as an existing asset, as default behavior, Zoom will create a new version of the existing file instead of uploading the file as a new asset. This behavior may be changed to let Zoom delete the existing asset and upload the new file as another asset. Follow these steps to change the handling of duplicate files:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf folder in the Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/).
  2. Open preview-server.xml for editing.
  3. Set <onDuplicateDetect> tag to either MERGE or REPLACE.

    When the value is set to REPLACE, Zoom will delete the existing asset and upload the new file as a new asset. 

    When the value is set to MERGE, Zoom will upload the new file as a new revision of the existing asset. This is the default setting.
  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

The chosen duplicate file handling option is saved and is enforced after the browser cache is cleared.

Default Metadata

While uploading files through the Web Client, default metadata values may be automatically attached to each added asset. To achieve this, firstly, mandatory metadata should be enforced from the Web Management Console. The values for mandatory metadata (to be attached to an uploaded asset) are fetched from a Blanket metadata file on the Preview Server.

Follow these steps to enforce mandatory metadata:

  1. In your Web Management Console, log in as an admin.
  2. Open Server Control Panel under System node in the Admin Menu sidebar.
  3. Click Repository Settings on the Server Control Panel page.
  4. Select Enforce Mandatory Metadata on every Check-In checkbox and click Save.
  5. Click Yes to restart the Zoom Server.

Mandatory metadata is now enforced.

Next, follow these steps to create and configure a blanket metadata file:

  1. Create a text file that has one or more metadata value pairs in the following format: MetadataGroupCode_MetadataFieldName=MetadataValue

    A sample metadata file would have such entries:

    IPTC_Country=India

    IPTC_City=Gurugram

    The metadata file may be created anywhere. It is a text file that specifies all metadata value pairs that would be attached to assets uploaded from the Web Client.

  2. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf folder in the Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/).
  3. Open preview-server.xml for editing.
  4. Under <previewserverspec>, update <defaultBlanketMDFile> tag to {Metadata filename with absolute path}
  5. Save and close the file.
  6. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

The default metadata values are now configured, these are enforced when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared. Every time an asset is uploaded from the Web Client, these metadata values will be attached to it.

Number of Assets on a Page

By default, 60 assets are shown at a time in the Web Client Assets page. If you continue scrolling down, more assets are displayed. Image 3 shows that 60 assets are loaded of the 273 filtered assets.

To change the number of assets loaded at a time on the Assets page, update zoom.properties for the Preview Server. Follow these steps:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, make sure that hidden files are visible.
  2. Navigate to the .zm folder in System Home folder for user Evolphin on Linux or in the System folder for Windows.
    For the user John on Windows, the path would typically be C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\.zmFor the user evolphin on Linux, the path would typically be $home/evolphin/.zm
  3. Locate zoom.propertiesCreate this file, if it does not exist.
  4. Open this file for editing.
  5. Set VAB_PER_PAGE_ENTRIES={number of files per page}.
    The default value for VAB_PER_PAGE_ENTRIES = 60.
  6. Save and close the file. 
  7. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

The chosen number of assets is now configured to be displayed on the Assets page when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared.

Assets in Web Client
Image 3: Browsing Assets

Faceted Filters for Viewing Assets

Assets may be filtered while viewing in the Web Client. Image 3 shows filters ‘Project Vault’, ‘Keywords’ and ‘File Types’ in effect.

These filters may be picked from the Faceted Search Categories listed in the Asset Browser. The search categories are:

  1. Project Vault – filtering assets on the basis of the project that these belong to.
  2. Metadata Properties – filtering assets on the basis of the chosen metadata field(s).
  3. Keywords – filtering assets on the basis of keywords assigned to them.
  4. File Types – filtering assets on the basis of file type filters set in the Asset Browser. Click here to know more about adding or removing these file types filters. All file-type filters present in the Asset Browser are visible under the File Types filter when it is used in the Web Client.
  5. Path Status – filtering assets on the basis of their archived/deleted/expired status in Zoom.

To use these faceted filters as described below, use the following code to refer to each filter:

FilterCodeRemarks
Project Vaultproject_name 
Metadata Propertiesmetadata_key|[GroupCode_FieldName]

For example, to add metadata Video Codec from the Video Properties metadata group use the code:

metadata_key|VDEO_VideoCodec

Keywordskeyword 
File Typesfile_type_filter 
Path Statuspath_status 

These asset filters are configured in preview-server.xml. Follow these steps to change filters:

  1. On the Zoom Preview Server, navigate to the conf folder in the Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/).
  2. Open preview-server.xml for editing.
  3. Under <previewserverspec>update <webClientFilters> tag to {semicolon-separated Desired Filters code list}.

    The default value of the <webClientFilters> tag is:<webClientFilters>project_name;metadata_key|IPTC_City;keyword;file_type_filter</webClientFilters>

    This gives us four default filters named ‘Project Vault’, ‘City’, ‘Keywords’ and ‘File Types’.

    To add another metadata field IPTC Country in the end of these filters, update the tag as below:<webClientFilters>project_name;metadata_key|IPTC_City;keyword;file_type_filter;metadata_key|IPTC_Country</webClientFilters>

  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

The new faceted filters are now set when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared.

Custom faceted filter labels

This feature is not available from Zoom 7.3 onwards.

Faceted categories are shown as filters while viewing assets. These category filter names may be changed as per your convenience. Image 3 shows the names ‘Project Vault’, ‘Keywords’ and ‘File Types’.

To change the names displayed for the filters, modify the following property:

  1. On the Zoom Server, navigate to the conf/client-settings folder in Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\client-settings\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/client-settings/).
  2. Locate zoom.properties . Create this file, if it does not exist.
  3. Open this file for editing.
  4. Set FACETED_CATEGORY={Semi-colon separated list of CategoryName->Label pairs}

    If we wish to change the category names ‘project_name’ to ‘Brand Vault’ and ‘keyword’ to ‘tag’ then sample entry would be:

    FACETED_CATEGORY=project_name->Brand Vault;keyword->tag

    Metadata fields cannot be renamed this way.
  5. Save and close the file.
  6. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

The faceted filter labels are now updated when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared.

Email Domains for Invited Collection Sharing

You can set email domains to be allowed or blocked while sharing a collection using an email invite. A few things to remember here are:

  • Allowed domains list takes precedence over the blocked domains list. This means that if any domains are listed in the allowed list, then all other domains are blocked. To only block a few domains and allow the rest, you should only specify those few domains in the blocked list and keep the allowed list empty.
  • While sharing a collection using email, the email address’s domain is checked against these lists. Any domain not meeting the allowed criteria is not allowed to be specified in the collection-sharing window.
  • Adding or removing any domains from the domain lists does not affect any email invites already sent out to email domains that now meet the blocked criteria.
  • Whenever any new account is created on the Web Client, using an email invite sent for collection sharing, the email domain is again checked against the current email domain allowed and blocked criteria.
  • If an email domain is blocked after an external user has created an account using a sharing invite sent to that domain, then the user is still allowed to log in and access the shared collection.

Follow these steps to update the email domains for collection-sharing:

  1. Log in as an Admin user in your Web Management Console.
  2. Open Email Domains under System node in the Admin Menu sidebar.

  3. Update Allowed Domains and Blocked Domains lists on the Email Configuration page as needed and click Save.

Email domain allowed/blocked criteria are now updated.

Settings in Server Control Panel

A few settings for Web Client are also configurable from the Server Control Panel. Although the Web Client is configured for use right after Zoom installation or upgrade, you can still make changes to these settings when needed. Follow these steps:

  1. Log in as an Admin user in your Web Management Console.
  2. Open Server Control Panel under System node in the Admin Menu sidebar.
  3. In the Server Control Panel, click on WebClient Settings.

  4. In the Edit WebClient Settings window, the default settings are usually good to work with. If you need to change any setting, this is a brief description of each of them:
    1. Default Collection Type: this setting specifies the type of collections that will be created in the Web Client. The user can choose to specify either EXTERNAL or INTERNAL. Before Zoom 7.2, all collections were internal. After upgrading to Zoom 7.2 or later versions, choose to enable EXTERNAL collections explicitly from here to start using external collections. To know more about external and internal collections, go to Collection types and permissions.
      Any external or internal collections existing prior to changing this value will remain as they are. The value only affects the creation of new collections.
    2. Token expiration time: specify the time duration till which a user’s idle session will remain active. The value is in milliseconds and the default value is 300000 milliseconds (5 minutes).
    3. Sender’s name in collection email: specify the sender name that will be shown for emails sent from Web Client.
    4. Notify on asset approve/reject: choose whether to receive email notifications whenever an asset is approved or rejected in a collection. The default value is true.
    5. Notifiers for asset approve/reject: choose which users will receive asset approval/rejection notifications from the drop-down list. The default value is ALL which includes super admins, owners, and admins of the collection.
    6. Notify on any change on assets: choose whether to receive email notifications whenever an asset in a collection is modified in the Web Client or the Asset Browser. The default value is false.
  5. Update the desired values and click Save.
  6. A confirmation message informs that the values are updated successfully.

Profile Pictures for Users

From Zoom 7.1 onwards, users can update their profile picture from the user menu. The user menu is displayed by clicking the user profile icon that is shown in the top right of a page after a successful login. Here’s how to change your profile picture:

  1. Click on the user profile picture in the top right and select Edit User Profile from the user menu.
Image 4: User menu
  • On the Edit User Account window, click the profile picture and select Upload Image.
  • Image 5: Edit profile
  • Select an image file in the Open dialog and click Open to upload that image as your profile picture.
  • Your chosen profile picture is now set in the Web Client.

    For Zoom 7.0, users’ profile pictures should be added/updated on the Zoom Preview Server. Follow these steps:

    1. Navigate to the conf>server-settings>settings>userSettings folder in Zoom Install directory (For Windows – [ZoomInstallDir]\conf\server-settings\settings\userSettings\ and for Linux – [ZoomInstallDir]/conf/server-settings/settings/userSettings/). Create the userSettings directory inside settings directory, if it does not already exist.
    2. Save a user’s profile picture as {username}.jpg (eg. for Admin save the file as admin.jpg).
    3. If needed, save profile pictures for other users according to their usernames.
    4. Restart all Zoom Services on your Zoom Server in the order described above.

    Your chosen profile picture is now set. It will be displayed when the Web Client is launched after the browser cache is cleared. For any Zoom version, if no profile picture is set then a generic icon with the user’s initials is displayed. Image 1 shows the profile picture for the logged-in user on the top right of the screen.

    Supported image formats are JPG and PNG.
    The preferred image size is 40 x 40 pixels.