Dashboard

The Dashboard is your landing page after creating an account or logging in to ZenTransfer. It provides an overview of your account, lets you manage your subscription, and provides access to all tools and settings.

The Dashboard is designed for use on both mobile, tablet, and laptops, and looks more or less the same across the devices.

The Dashboard consists of a series of section that let you use and configure different parts of ZenTransfer. Your browser will remember which sections are open and closed so that you can see only what matters to you.

This article is extensive, but will give you a thorough overview of all the functionality in ZenTransfer.

Account Statistics¶

The first section gives overall statistics on your account and usage of ZenTransfer. It will show time and quota left if you are on a free trial, and help you manage your subscription if you are on a paid plan.

Connection Info¶

The Connection Info section shows you how to connect your Camera and FTP clients to ZenTransfer. It shows server names and port numbers for the various protocols, and most importantly the username and password you must use to send files to your account.

The username and password will be valid for some months at a time. This is a security measure to protect your account. Hit the Refresh button to ensure the account stays valid for longer.

If you need to replace the username and password, go to the FTP Users section and delete the user, then create a new one.

Retention period¶

ZenTransfer will keep your files for 24 hours by default. This will be sufficient time to deliver to all your destinations (provided all servers are available), and give email recipients a chance to download the high-resolution files.

You can choose to keep files by setting a longer retention period. ZenTransfer will automatically delete files when their retention period expires.

Files in ZenTransfer can have different retention periods. You can change the retention period for a single file in the Browser. When you change the global setting in the Dashboard, you will be asked if you want to change the setting for all existing files. If you do, their new expiration date will be calculated from the time of the change (e.g. 1 month from current time).

Storing files for more than 24 hours incurs billing for storage. If you are on the pay-as-you-go plan, each month of storage is billed at the same cost as a file transfer. Storage is billed per started month of storage. If you are on a prepaid plan, storage counts towards your storage and bandwidth quota, with overage billed per gigabyte of overage.

Upload¶

Upload lets you easily relay files via ZenTransfer from your browser. You can drop files from Finder on MacOS or Explorer on Windows, or hit the Click to Upload to select from your photo gallery or file browser on your phone.

Any file uploaded with this tool will be relayed to all enable destinations, and stored until the set retention period expires.

Guest invites¶

You can let guests upload to your account by scanning the presented QR Code. Anyone who scans the QR code (or who gets a copy of the link) can upload files to your account for 24 hours. The QR code is refreshed regularly.

Any file uploaded by a guest will be relayed to all enable destinations, and stored until the set retention period expires.

If you access your ZenTransfer Dashboard from a mobile device, you can let anyone scan the QR code straight from your screen.

Hit "Revoke all links" to remove access from anyone who has scanned your code (or been forwarded a copy of the link). They must now scan the QR code from your dashboard again to be able to upload new files.

Additional users¶

Click the Manage Users button to create additional accounts for uploading to your account via FTP. You can use this when working with other photographers, e.g. a second shooter at an event.

You can control how long these accounts are valid, and refresh them when they expire. We recommend that you set an expiry time, and review your account regularly to ensure only authorized people have access to your account. All usage from additional users is billed to your account.

Additional users do not have access to your dashboard or any content in your account.

Metadata¶

The Metadata section lets you apply, clear, and manage metadata for all files uploaded to ZenTransfer.

Click Manage Templates to create, edit, and enable/disable metadata templates. Read Applying metadata guide to understand the full power of the metadata templates.

Enable Rename files to ensure consistent naming of all files sent through ZenTransfer. The rename operation is applied at ingestion, and when relayed to multiple destinations the filename will stay the same for each destination. Read Renaming files for all the details on file renaming.

Sequence counters let you maintain a set of counters that ensure continous numbering across renaming and metadata operations. See the reference article for an in-depth look at sequence counters.

Custom variables lets you define variables to use in renaming and metadata operations. You can for instance define a variable that represents your full address. If it ever changes, you only need to change it in one place instead of every metadata template.

Code replacements makes it easier to type metadata interactively - in the Browser or when creating new metadata templates. A code replacement file is a text file that contains a short code and a longer line of text, for instance /m7 can expand to David Becham (7) of Manchester United. See the reference article on Code replacement for the full details.

Auto complete lets you predine values for each field. While Code replacements are available across all fields, the auto complete lists are field specific. When typing metadata in a field that has values in the auto complete list you will see suggestions for all matching strings without the use of a control character. Typical fields to define lists for are Byline, Copyright, City, State, and Country.

You can set up your preferred colors and labels for Color classes. You can assign a class to an image by using Shift+1 to Shift+8 in the Browser. ZenTransfer lets you easily apply the colors and labels known from Lightroom, Photo Mechanic, Capture One, and FotoStation for familiarity. The value stored in the metadata is always the same (an integer between 0 and 8), so make sure you and any team members have a shared understanding of what each class represents.