1. General #
Laidback Solutions recommend the user of Corbit to read this guide thouroughly in purpose to fully understand the complex features and possibilities of Corbit.
Images shown in this manual are from the Mac OSX version of Corbit. All images may be clicked to be viewed in a bigger size. For more information, updated FAQ, version updates, plug-ins etcetera, please visit www.laidbacksolutions.se
1.1 What is Corbit Here is #
Corbit is a powerful tool created to simplify and automate static workflow handling of digital material. Corbit comes with a set of advanced routing options and the default features will cover most workflows. Through plugins it is possible to extend the functionality for very advanced customization such as complex database connections and third party system integrations.
The standard Corbit can read both local and mounted network drives as well as FTP folders and email servers. The filtering of the existing objects on these locations enables more sophisticated handling depending on for example file name or content such as IPTC or XMP content. The detected files and folders may be handled in many different ways including moving, copying, sending email and put to external FTP servers.
Corbit has many dynamic features such as changing file names dynamically (e.g. handling advanced math or date conversions to produce a new file or folder name). The advanced features also include conditions and file content parsing.
Corbit is able to handle connections to FTP servers with regular FTP, SFTP and FTPS.
1.2 Requirements #
Corbit runs on Macintosh OSX, Linux and Windows. A java runtime, minimum version Java 8, is required for Corbit to run. For windows platform there is a special version of Corbit with a built-in Java runtime version 8 which will work only with Corbit.
This special version does not require any pre-installed java runtime. Corbit requires a minimum of 8 GB RAM, 16 GB is recommended. In large, or very complex setups, you may need to add more RAM since Corbit can be configured to do a lot of demanding tasks. NOTE! Many of the integration tools can be memory consuming depending on your setup. Image editing and video editing is by nature demanding lots of RAM-memory.
 | Windows Most Windows systems have no default Java runtime installed. Make sure that; (i) a Java runtime installed and (ii) the version of the Java runtime is at least 1.8.To get help about your Java version, download your free Java and more, please visit http://www.java.com |
 | Macintosh A Java runtime is installed in the operating system on Macintosh OSX.To get help about your Java version, upgrade your free Java and more, please visit http://www.java.com |
1.3 Plugins #
The default set of features in Corbit will cover most regular and advanced workflows. To enable special features such as searching databases etc. it is possible to implement plugins.
There are three different kinds of plug-ins in Corbit, sources, filters and actions.
Sources are the modules which handle the searching of files or other objects. The default set of sources includes;
- Files and folders located on a local or remote network drive
- Files located on a FTP server
- Emails.
- Timers (with no need for actual objects to invoke handling in Corbit)
Other sources that can be used via extended plug-ins may be databases or advanced folder handling where a file is dependent on another.
The filters will select which objects to handle. The default set of filters will cover most situations however it is possible to implement special filters. The action sets are the actual handling of an object. In a basic workflow this is merely moving or copying a file or folder but the default set of actions in Corbit also includes handling such as sending emails, uploading the files to various FTP sites and also expanding files. Special handling may involve IPTC-routing etc.
The sources and actions may fail in different ways while they are working and for this reason a special kind of action was introduced in Corbit version 5. These error handling actions will be invoked when an error occur and this action may involve sending an email to an administrator or move the file that caused the problem to a certain error folder for example.
Even though Corbit is shipped with a large set of components enabling very advance workflows the extended feature to create plugins separately makes Corbit a complete tool for any possible digital workflow.
Failure loading plugin #
If a plugin is failing to load at startup this plugin will be removed and not loaded the next time Corbit starts.
