Product Updates [August 2023]

Improved Performance and Onboarding

Focused on getting you up and running as quickly as possible, a simplified home page points out the essentials.  When navigating through annotation tasks, we are now loading image annotation tasks ahead of time to get one step closer to a native application experience. All the convenience of the cloud and the responsiveness of a desktop application showing that you can have your Encord cake and eat it too.

A crucial early step, before you examine, annotate, or otherwise review your data, is connecting your cloud storage solution to Encord. Between multi-cloud, permissions and CORS it can be an arduous process. So — we’ve revamped the integration process into a guided step-by-step process in the app, and added the ability to confirm against storage resource URLs immediately after to give you complete and immediate feedback that your setup is in working order. Once you’ve onboarded your data integration, we’ve also made getting started with the SDK a one-step process. Simply generate your API key on the platform, and supply the file path of the downloaded private key when initiating your Encord SDK client. No copy-pasting and no fuss. 

Require Annotations in Labeling Tasks

Annotation tasks can be numerous and complex. In order to remove some of the burden of annotation and review, it can often be helpful to enforce that at least one of a particular annotation is present in a task. In addition to ongoing support for required specific nested attributes on objects and classifications, Encord has added support for ontology objects and classes to be required as well — enforcing that at least one of the indicated instance labels is present in a labeling task. We’ve paired this strict requirement enforcement with an improved issues drawer so annotators can quickly resolve outstanding issues and submit high quality annotation work. 

Enhanced Workflow Collaboration with Collaborator Router and Simplified Queues

We’ve simplified and separated the workflows task queue interface from the data inspection features. For team members — move through your annotate and review tasks with greater clarity. For admins, cleaner separation between data review and task control interfaces will keep you focused on the goal. We’re also adding a collaborator router so that you can route annotation tasks based on who made the most recent annotation submission or review judgement. Perfect for training newer annotation or review team members, or setting up partnerships and collaborations within wider projects and annotation workflows. 

DICOM Updates

Improvements in the label editor functionality are often especially relevant for DICOM annotation workloads. For example, the polygon tool’s new ability to show measurement vertex angles in the label editor with DICOM annotations can add value to your labelling workloads. Head over to the DICOM Update Blog to see the details, and other DICOM updates for this month.

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Encord is here to keep you up-to-date on the rapidly evolving world of AI. Check out these explainers for a deep-dive into the inner-workings of the latest in AI.

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• Meta AI’s Photorealistic Unreal Graphics (PUG)

Thanks for reading — as always, the inbox at product@encord.com is always open — we’d love to hear your thoughts on the feedback on the above! Talk to you soon,