Widen Collective Reviews

It is very easy for me to onboard people, I don't really have to do much training since the program is so intuitive. I am able to permission out who sees what. Widen's customer service is also second to none with any software company I've ever worked with.

There are a few minor things, but nothing major that would make me start looking into other solutions. One example being that I wish we could organize global collections better

Assets are served up quickly around the world and it is a very stable platform. When technical issues do arise, they are very communicative about their progress of solving the issue. I like the dedicated customer rep as well as access to new features and feedback through their Trello boards. I also like the ability to extract metadata from image IPTC metadata and map it to our custom fields.

I like the ability to create portals in order to highlight and add info to curated groups of assets, but there are some weaknesses in portal functionality and portal creation capabilities. It would be ideal to be able to create custom dashboards/homepage without extensive use of html. The current wysiwyg is extremely limited in design/layout capability. We'd like a better way for our users to be able to search for portals.

Nothing

I could not get any support at all. I was on a deadline and there was no one home to help fix a simple sign-in problem.

It's the one place for all content to live and get shared out across multiple platforms. Support for project management (through Workflow) and creative implementation (through Adobe CC Connector) enhances our productivity and helps us get our jobs done faster.

The software seems sluggish and lags when you want it to go fast. File processing and scrolling through assets is where I've noticed this the most. The uploading process also needs to be cleaned up and more inviting to users.

Easy to use. Secure. Excellent support and development teams. Flexibility of features

I could really use the ability to link raw assets with compound documents. This is currently a manual process and time consuming.

It's so easy and intuitive to use. The metadata search boxes on the side help narrow and refine the search. And the customer service can't be beat!

I don't like how the collections can't be edited between users. We have had to figure out a workaround to be able to share and edit the same collections.

The user interface is so simply we can add new users quickly and easily and they can find assets with a minimal amount of training.

Some of the role permissions arent explained ver well. There were a few settings we needed to have turned on in order for users to be able to use the system effectively.

The tag and search functionality. We no longer have the chief marketing officer instant-messaging our team to find awards, accolades, images, and illustrations. Other departments can self-serve as their needs dictate, and we can track usage of key assets with Insights.

The Insites analytics are not intuitive to use. I would like deep practice, usability, and best practice webinars and or forums to better understand the power this feature.

Customer Support, website functionality, ease of uploading new assets and then finding them later, user control, sharing capabilities including the file type selection. Love the zoom feature!

Honestly, it's not with Widen itself. My biggest complaint is with my own team because I keep having to reset people's passwords for the site because they forget them. Luckily, it's really easy to do in the Admin functions!

I like being able to search for multuiple product skus

I would like WIDEN to tell which product MID's are not showing results in a group search

The DAM interface is quick and easy to use, the reporting capabilities are robust, and the security allows a lot of flexibility. In addition - we love the Portals - which allows us to provide assets to our non users.

Knowing that a DAM is customized to your company’s needs, I'm not going to lie – implementing a DAM system can be grueling and a lot of work. But that’s the beauty of a DAM – as your company grows, your DAM can also grow and be customized to reflect changes and future needs.

It makes keeping things organized (which is a complicated job) super easy.

It works really, really well, but as with any asset management tool, there is ongoing maintenance and auditing that has to take place. That can get tedious at times, but we realize that it has to be done to keep things current, delete outdated/redundant assets, or just to check things that might have been uploaded with incorrect metadata, for instance.

I like the ability and flexibility Widen offers to integrate the digital media content with our applications and websites. It also offers nice tools and functionality to add, maintain, organize, and secure content.

Speed.
Since the beginning we've upload thousands of images and added hundreds of users across our company and partners. It has not slowed down with all of the added weight and burden. It's still as snappy and responsive searching for assets in the beginning. Narrowing the search results and downloading images is very quick.

Support.
The support could be better. There has been times, not in a while, when it goes down, just like any cloud service. But it seems the first line of support are the on-site admins. It's a problem when they are not in the office. There's not an easy way to contact support when needed. There should be a chat feature to let them know when we are experiencing outages and get the issues solved.

What I like most about this software is that I can easily see the newest items that have been added to the collective. The search tool also works really well for finding specific items.

The most challenging part of using this software is that apparently the administrator that adds items to the collective is not required to add all the meta tags that would help users find what they need easily. I don't think it's a fail on the part of the software but maybe if adding all meta tags were required it would make searching easier.

What I like most about Widen is that they are very open to receiving feedback and improving the software based off of user comments. They host annual events to bring other clients together to share ideas and knowledge of how their users work in the software. All of the Widen staff is available for comments.

What I like least about Widen is that all of the connectors and API's that help integrate our DAM into other business platforms, such as Salesforce, Sharepoint, CreativeCloud come with an additional annual fee.

Intuitive, strong on basics, interesting road map for upcoming releases.

It would be nice for non-users to be able to approve digital assets for use when they are sent a collection. However, the road map for Widen Workflow shows promise as a solution for this.

I like that Widen is an easy way to find assets. It is helpful for a large company--because everyone knows where to find the assets that they need. It is easy for all employees to get to--IT does not have to come and install it--it is just an internet login.

I do not like how sometimes it is hard to find things with searches. I know that this has to do with the upload metadata and probably is related to user error. Perhaps if there was a more automated way to add search criteria when uploading, this wouldn't be an issue.

This software is incredibly helpful for storing our vast collection of assets. It allows for easy organization and I'm able to find anything I need easily through name or metadata searches. It also has a relatively quick download speed for when you need something off the cloud in a hurry. Their Portals have simplified the way that we can show clients current campaigns and it's given us the ability to send individual commercials to clients with ease, and as a bonus, it's all available on mobile.

Widen just updated with a new upload mode, which would be fine, however, they completely removed the drag and drop option on the Widen homepage.

Very user-friendly UI, free functionality upgrades, wider range of customizability than other DAM systems.

Minor cosmetic issues.

Our organization has been using Widen for a year and it has transformed the way we share information both internally and with our external business partners. The system makes it easy to load and maintain content. Unlike our former proprietary system which was prone to system errors, Widen makes uploading, sharing, and downloading content easy. Widen has truly been one of the most impactful changes to our internal communication over the past year and I am looking forward to continue increasing our use as a company. Thanks for everything Widen!

One area for improvement would be increasing the variety of image types that can be downloaded from our image collection.

Widen Collective is being used greatly by many individuals in similar roles in our company due to its many features that allow each of us to achieve our tasks with ease. I use this product for the sake of its archiving purposes, project and workflow management accessibility. The possibility to manage minor tasks, access controls and track employee milestones are important jobs I have to do which is made easy by Widen Collective.

Widen Collective is a broad software with multiple available features, with this is the difficulty to maneuver around this program at a first glance. It may take a few tutoring sessions and practice to be able to perform tasks with this software, especially if you are not that inclined with technology.

Widen has been a great partner to work with on our new Digital Asset Management. The implementation process is very smooth and straightforwards.

There are restrictions on how much we can customize the dashboard.

Being able to choose multiple files to download and to see the files you've selected.

Occasionally not being able to download an alternate file type from the original version of the file. For example, sometimes it won't download a 1000x1000 jpg of a file that was originally uploaded as a PSD.