Files extended metadata

đŸ± Features & apps App ideas
14

Hi,

Did someone every done this? It’s still extremly useful (especialy for pictures) to be able to search for exif meta-data. it’s somehow a bit of a shame that a simple exif search is not available in Nextcloud (gallery).

15

I believe welldone metadata is tough


You’d love exif metadata, I’d need bibliographic metadata (which is a world of its own
), she requires metadata for music, 


I do understand the utility of metadata, yet I think it is not easy at all to tackle


16

I think it’s a great idea and definitely a useful feature for many use cases. I would actually consider this a killer feature.

Would be great if some standards would be taken into consideration as well in such implementation, i.e. Dublin core.

I think some good conceptual ideas could be derived from the approaches that ECM tools such as Alfresco are taking when handling metadata by applying document types / content models and aspects.

Custom metadata is also a good way to store workflow related information.

4 Likes
17

I would propose the following conceptual ideas:

  • The user should be able to define “document types” or “aspects”, such as invoice, purchase order, CV, etc.
  • For such document types, a set of custom meta data fields can be defined.
  • Each meta data field can be of a specific type, i.e. string, date, timestamp, integer, decimal, etc.
  • Advanced: meta data fields can be singular or plural
  • The custom meta data fields should appear in the UI (document detail view) and should be editable with appropriate UI widgets (where the user has permissions)
  • document types can be added and dropped for a document
  • multiple document types can be applied to a document
  • if a document type is removed from a document, then the meta data fields should be removed from the document as well
  • technically: each document type (internally) uses a specific prefix, similar to a namespace, for its meta data fields, so that there are no conflicts. A meta data field has a unique name (for example: invoice:customer_no, cv:candidate_no) and a (localizable) label.
  • meta data fields should be accessible via REST API as well
  • meta data fields / document types can be assigned to files as well as folders

Use cases:

  1. Accounting: for invoice document, you would be able to store invoice date, amount, customer id, etc. Maybe even automatically extracted via OCR. (For a similar usecase, see fileee.com application)
  2. Headhunting firms: for CV documents, you would be able to store candidate ID, notes, availability date, etc.
  3. any custom workflow or even external workflow engines (Camunda, Flowable, IFTTT, Zapier, etc.) would be able to store information in these fields, if not in their own.

And as mentioned in my previous comment:

Would be great if some standards would be taken into consideration as well in such implementation, i.e. Dublin core.

I think some good conceptual ideas could be derived from the approaches that ECM tools such as Alfresco or Nuxeo are taking when handling metadata by applying document types / content models and aspects.

3 Likes
18

Anybody working on this?
Why would you work out something from scratch? There is plenty of free/shareware metadata editors around. Why not integrate one which is as generic as possible? Running from web browser, producing XML files and eating XML schemes.

19

Anybody?
For research data management proper metadata management is not option or nice to have. It is MUST to have.

20

Yes absolutely! That would be fantastic!!! Creating custom metadata fields for files would be very useful. I would love to replace fileee, which Next cloud + this functionality!

1 Like
21

To setup a DMS this absolutely a must have

Give it +1
Any ideas on the way for that?

22

I would start with this:https://www.dataone.org/software-tools/tags/metadata_editor

23

For research data management, there is a Zotero, perhaps an option to collaborate with them and provide an app for this in Nextcloud (which also connects to their desktop/mobile clients). Problem is that they want to earn money with server subscriptions

ref:

24

Maybe this kind of approach would be nice and light (though example is specific)
https://www.dataone.org/software-tools/matt-metadata-authoring-tool

25

Has there been any progress made on this?

mathiasconradt‘s functional spec (Oct’17) is exactly what I’m looking for in order to be able to use next cloud as a dynamic information model for all my files. I want to get away from static / inflexible folder structures, which I view as the only thing holding me back from using next cloud.

There is a proprietary solution called M-Files which has a really nice implementation of this, which goes on to leverage external services for content analysis. E.g Auto-suggestion of metadata based on file content.

It would be great, say, if the next cloud files module were to be renamed “folders”, and a new module could be added called “objects”. The former essentially presenting the existing static folder-structure view, the latter presenting a dynamic view which would be user-malleable to fit their use-case / queries.

1 Like
26

I was thinking all that might be required for this would be to create a meta-data directory based on an appropriate existing adaptive object model pattern / framework, which would be leveraged as an index to the files stored in next cloud (I assume each has some form of referencable primary key?).

In terms of GUI, M-Files tries to look like a folder structure, which I don’t think is necessary. I think having a single data table displaying everything (limits / pagination notwithstanding), where you can add / remove the metadata columns you’re interested in, and then sort / filter them with excel/access style quick filters, would result in a very simple yet powerful querying mechanism that MS Office users should already be pretty familiar with.

Further bells & whistles could be incorporated to give some high-level homing in on relevant object sets in the initial view. E.g. You might have a small number of high-level / common metadata types such as bucket/project and documentType. So you could quickly round down to, say, “all the invoices under project 1”. Then once you’re looking at that dataset, you might do further rounding down by more specific metadata.

They key thing would be in being able to create pretty extensive sets of metadata profiles (type & property sets).

27

Working for years with ELO, M-Files and Alfresco, this is exacatly what i’m looking for 
 like a DMS/ECM extension. Many Apps have been developed, but this one would be really great extension!

2 Likes
28

Hi,

such an app would be fantastic and would simplify a lot! I was already surprised that this doesn’t already exist!

Thanks!

29

+1 for havin’ such an app.

30

+1 for me!
It is an absolute must, if you want to use NExtcloud as a document archivin service!

31

+1 this would leverage nextcloud to an whole new level

32

+1

It would be indeed very useful to be able to „centralise” all metadata in Nextcloud! The tagging system now in place is, I think, pretty good, certainly a step in the right direction, way better then what a normal OS environment has. Are there any news in this regard?

33

+10 just want to point out the importance of such functionality.

2 Likes