You can upload content to the GN4 system in many ways: manually, by drag and drop or by selecting a source folder, by dropping a file in a hot-folder, or by FTP-ing one or more files to the FTP server, or by sending an e-mail with attachments to the specified mail address, or by subscribing to a RSS feed, etc.

In all the cases, this is what happens:

1.The selected content is uploaded to the server.

2.The server validates the content, performing system-configured checks, for example, if the content contains viruses, if the content has required metadata, if the content corresponds to the quality requirements etc. All those checks are custom, and by default none of them is defined nor turned on. When the checks are turned on, and the content fails to comply, the sender is warned that the upload is aborted.

3.The server parses the content and converts it in the specified format. This depends of the content type. Typically, pictures are stored in the original format, while videos are automatically converted in the MP4 format (versions 2.0 and newer), or in Flash FLV format (version 1.6 and older). Text can be converted from the original format into a pre-formatted text. This depends on the import workflows.

4.The server generates a thumbnail (small preview), and preview (larger preview) and stores them in database. The quality, size and number of such previews depend on the import workflow and it is configurable.

5.The server extracts metadata from the content, and stores it in the database.

6.Additional operations may be performed on content, typically during bulk-import.