Navigate the global navigation menu

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The global navigation bar is the menu at the very top of Flow Production Tracking.

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The global menu allows you easy access to your home page, Inbox, projects, and more.

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Flow Production Tracking is highly customizable

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and the global navigation menu may have

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been customized to suit your studio's needs.

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We will cover all the options that appear in

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the global navigation menu by default, but be mindful that

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the options available on your own site may look different

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and may have been configured by a site administrator.

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Your access may also be restricted in that you may

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not see some of the available menu options or the

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menu options may not display any data when selected because

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the permission level assigned to you restricts your access.

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If you're following along this training from a trial site that you created,

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you will have admin permissions by default, giving you full access.

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Let's take a look at each of the default global menu options one by one.

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The very first button on the top left of the

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global navigation menu is the Flow Production Tracking logo.

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When selected, the logo acts as a shortcut to your home page.

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If no home page is set for your user,

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then the Flow Production Tracking icon will default to the Projects Page, which is

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a page showing all of the projects in your Flow Production Tracking site.

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Your home page can be set from either your account settings or from your

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user profile by typing the name of the page into the homepage field.

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You can verify if your shortcut is working by clicking over

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the Flow Production Tracking icon in the global navigation menu.

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Beside the Flow Production Tracking icon, you have the Inbox.

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The Inbox allows you to see activity on all

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things that are important to you in your work.

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Through the concept of following,

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you can receive notifications when new

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notes, versions, publishes, or other important changes

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are made on things that are related to your work. From your Inbox,

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you can quickly set the kind of notifications you will receive by selecting

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the gear in the top right hand corner and choosing Following Settings.

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This will bring you to the My Follow Settings tab of your account settings, from

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which you can set up the information

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you will be subscribed to receive notifications about,

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directly into your Flow Production Tracking Inbox.

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When there are notifications waiting in your Inbox,

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a red icon will appear over top of the Inbox. This is the Inbox notification badge.

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The badge will display the number of new notifications that are waiting for you.

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The next menu item is My Tasks.

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This page is intended to help artists keep track of what they're working on.

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The page displays all the tasks assigned to you.

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Clicking on a task on the left hand side will load up

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the tasks' linked entity in the detail pane on the right.

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If I am assigned to a task on a shot,

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I can click on the task on the left and the shot will open on the right.

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I can quickly get an overview

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of that shot,

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see any other tasks that are being worked on,

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see any versions that have been submitted, and any notes that I need to read so

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that I know what to do and can move forward with my work. From my tasks,

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artists can launch directly into their creative apps,

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making it easy to jump from assignment to action.

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The media page in Flow Production Tracking is where you

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can quickly browse and review media across all your projects.

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When you upload a movie or image file into the media app,

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Flow Production Tracking will transcode the file into the proper format

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so that it can play back in our supported browsers.

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Transcoding is done to make files compatible with different

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devices and to compress files to smaller sizes while

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maintaining that quality. By converting high resolution video and

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audio files to smaller low resolution proxy files,

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Flow Production Tracking can provide faster and smoother playback on

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web-based interfaces even with limited bandwidth or processing power.

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When media is below 2K, then its current resolution is maintained.

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If one or all of the dimensions of a media file is above 2K,

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the larger dimension is snapped to 2048 and the other dimension

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is adjusted according to the ratio of the original media.

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For example, a 3648 by 2736 JPEG is transcoded into a 2048 by 1536.

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Using the menu options in the left pane,

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we can narrow down which project we want to view

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media for, or view all media from projects at once.

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We can browse through projects from their

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specific entities like assets or shots to find

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any media that has been uploaded to

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Flow Production Tracking related to those entities.

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We can find media based on playlists

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we've already put together from all projects or from specific projects.

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We can also find media based on cut sequences from all or from specific projects.

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Once you've found the media you're looking for,

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you can use the detailed pane on the right to play the media and add notes

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within the media page, or you can send media to the app of your choice.

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For example,

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a supervisor who needs to see media in a resolution

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higher than 2K can send media to RV,

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from which high resolution media such as 4K

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plates and image sequences can be reviewed.

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A lead who needs to be provided detailed annotated

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notes on media may choose to send media to Create,

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from where they can overlay media on top of

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a past version and do a more thorough comparison.

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A coordinator who will be taking feedback notes

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may choose to send media to the Review Notes

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app, from where they can take notes on media

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and update tasking due dates and assignments simultaneously.

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Media from all projects that you have permission to see can

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be accessed from the Media tab of the global navigation menu.

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The next tab is Projects.

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The Projects page shows you all the projects you are assigned to or allowed to

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see that exist on a Flow Production Tracking site. From the drop down menu,

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you can quickly search through any projects you've been

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in recently and quickly jump into looking at any

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entities you want to access on those projects, like

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assets or shots. To view all the projects

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you have permission to see, select View All Projects to

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go to the main projects page for your site.

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Otherwise, you can go into each project from the project link.

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The All Pages tab will show you all pages on a site.

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Global and project pages can be accessed from the All Pages tab,

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as well as any personal pages you have created for yourself.

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You can quickly create a new page from this menu by selecting the

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gear on the bottom of the drop down menu and choosing New Page.

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Depending on your permission level, you may be able to manage pages.

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Here, you can

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see the full list of available pages on your site,

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select which ones are shared and available to all

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users, and delete pages that are no longer needed.

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The People page shows all users in Flow Production Tracking.

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See information about a user's email, assigned permission group,

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assigned projects, assigned groups, and more.

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Clicking into a user's name will open up their Detail Page,

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from which you can see even more information about that user.

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Just like most of Flow Production Tracking,

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these pages can be customized to show any information that's required.

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For example, we can add

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a History tab to see what actions a user has been taking in their site.

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The Apps tab gives you quick access to project planning tools,

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review apps, and artist tools like Create, RV, review notes,

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crew planning, and more. The apps users have

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access to can be customized by site administrators,

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so that you can hide what you don't plan on using or enable what you do.

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Some apps are listed in the app's drop down menu by default,

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while others, like Project Timeline, need to be enabled.

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The next menu item in the global navigation menu is Resource Planning.

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Resource Planning is a tool designed to effectively visualize

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and optimize the utilization of people on your team,

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so you can confidently complete creative work on time and on budget.

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The tool will only be visible if you have permission to

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see it. As this tool is a more advanced topic,

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it will not be covered as a part of this basic course.

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Let's move on to the right hand side of the global navigation menu.

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The Global Search allows you to search all of Flow Production Tracking.

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Use the drop down arrows to filter your search to a specific entity to

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speed up the time it takes Flow Production Tracking to provide you with results.

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If your site is hosted on the cloud,

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the next icon you will be able to see is the Gift

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icon, which will link you to the What's New page. From here,

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you can quickly learn about any newly released Flow Production Tracking features.

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A blue notification badge will appear over the gift box icon

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to notify you whenever a new feature has been released.

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The plus sign is used to create a new entity record.

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Entity records are usually created from within projects,

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but you could choose to create them globally using this icon.

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Simply choose the type of entity record you want to create,

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then fill the form to create it.

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Some entities may not be listed on this menu.

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The visibility of entities in the global menu

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can be controlled by admins via site preferences.

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Use the sun and moon icons to change the theme of

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the Flow Production Tracking interface between dark and light themes.

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Last but not least,

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selecting your user thumbnail in the top right corner will

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allow you to easily navigate to your account settings,

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and, if you're an administrator, allow you to access site-wide settings.

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Administrators can also use this icon to access the

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trash from where deleted information can be revived.

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Now that you've been introduced to the global navigation menu,

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in the next video, we will apply what we've learned step by step.