JAlbum / Collaborative

Collaborative albums

It is easy to manage albums where several people contribute with images. You can invite anyone to collaborate with you. Collaborators do not need a jAlbum account, just the ability to send an email. We provide you with an email address in the format username@jalbum.net (usable only for collaborative albums, not for regular email). This email address can be attached to one or many collaborative projects. (Projects that are collaborative are indicated in the 'recent projects' list by a small icon representing two heads.) When jAlbum is running and the collaborative project is in the recent projects list, images mailed to such addresses will appear automatically in the respective project. You will then be notified via your ordinary email address that new images have been submitted. The subject line tells what project to add images to.

Captions can be added by simply writing a line of text below each attached image. (This unfortunately only works with jpegs.) Captions embedded in the image files are also respected. Once you no longer wish to allow images to be mailed to a project, you simply detach the email address from it. jAlbum keeps track on who contributed which images, indicated by a small “head” status icon next to each thumbnail image. Once you upload or update a collaborative album using jAlbum, contributors are notified via email that there has been an update to an album where they have contributed images.

Here’s our first collaborative album that YOU are invited to contribute to.


Usage

Attach inbox userName@jalbum.net

Collaborative Albums.png

To collaborate you attach your jAlbum email address to a project. There are options for this under Settings/General and, from explore mode, you can right click the current project and select the "Collaborate" menu. Now select'Attach inbox userName@jalbum.net'. A few seconds later and the 'Invite' and 'Fetch new objects' options will become active and the 'attach' option will change to 'Detach'. Detach is for if/when you decide to stop collaborating on that project.

Note, the jAlbum email address is only for use with collaborative albums and is already configured with your account. There is nothing you need to do to activate it. You cannot send or receive emails from this mail address.

Invite

Clicking the 'Invite' option, or scanning the QR code, will open your default email client and create a new email with the following fields already populated:

From
Your default/last used email address will be the one used to send the invitation.
To
The cursor will be in the to field, ready for you to add email addresses.
Reply To
This field is populated with your jAlbum user name, if your email client doesn't respect reply-to in mailto links, Microsoft Mail for instance, ensure that an instruction on where your collaborators should send mail to is in the body of the email.
Subject
The subject field will be filled with the name of your project, replies to this will be added at the root level of your project. If you want to request images for a specific subfolder then you can append the path to the subfolder. To illustrate this take the example of a project called MyAlbum, changing the subject from MyAlbum to MyAlbum/subfolderA/subfolderB will result in images being added to the second level subfolderB within subfolderA.

Warning! If a collaborator sends images to a folder that does not exist then that folder, and any others needed to complete the path, will be created. Also the subject field is case sensitive, in the example above using 'myAlbum' would fail and the sender will get an email saying the image(s) were not successfully sent.

Content
The text of the message will have a default entered for you but you can edit/add to this as required. The default text is 'Please add images to my "Project Name" album by replying to this email with your images attached.' You may want to tell your collaborators that they can include a caption/comment for each (only with jpg) image by writing it immediately below the attached image.

Send your email when you are happy that everything is how you want it.

Note If the invitee sends images that are below one mega pixels they will receive a reply suggesting they resend a larger version, if they do it will replace the original one.

Fetch new objects

jAlbum monitors your jAlbum email inbox on a minutely basis. Use this option to trigger an immediate check for new objects.

Collaborative files that support embedded metadata, such as jpg images, are indicated by a small icon representing two heads, hovering over the icon will reveal the email address of the person who sent that file. Warnng, if files are received that have the same filename as an existing file, in the same project/subfolder, the existing file will be replaced by the new one.

Note For emailed files there is a limit of 25MB per email.

Review new objects

Once you have received objects from a collaborator you can check it in jAlbum's explore mode. You can tell which objects are collaborative as their thumbnails have an associated small “head” status icon, hovering your cursor over the icon will reveal iPhone submitted the object. You can change the object's title or comment and add keywords just like any other object.

Make album and upload

When you are ready to update your album to include any new collaborative objects you just need to press 'Make album' and then 'Upload/Manage' as normal to update the remote album. Contributors will be notified via email that there has been an update to an album where they have contributed images.