Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) is the company's version control and peer code review solution. Perforce offers add-on products for code review for free, and Git support products.
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WoodWing Assets
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Elvis DAM is a scalable digital asset management (DAM) solution, offering Filtered Search, Collaboration features, Image Editing, Metadata management, Approval Process control, Version control and Asset Sharing.
In my opinion, Perforce Helix Core is on a top level of irritation and anti-user experience. In my experience, I can't do simple things like 1 word file edits, while I have never been confused when using something based on Git.
Git is great, I love Git. But it's not great for dealing with binary assets, even when using git LFS. Locking is not as simple as on perforce. Git presents some problems on using for non-tech people it can get overwhelming and tech people have to come by and help.
New users of Perforce Helix can be up and running in less than thirty minutes. It is easy to use, but also very powerful. Bitbucket is slow, prone to outages, and (for large teams) requires a team of dedicated administrators. I've had request for information from Bitbucket that …
My last two jobs used SmartSVN but it required a paid license to use regardless of the number of users. The initial setup for Perforce was much more difficult than SmartSVN. There is a lot of parity between the two software packages even though the terminology can be different. …
Perforce has a better built native visual client that is much simpler to use than Git's. It has a lot of optimizations in the workflow that can execute common patterns during a usual workday. Perforce also has an easier to understand method of presenting merge conflicts and …
Perforce is internally hosted, which makes it quite a bit faster. I found it easier to use that GitHub and Bitbucket, at least in terms of checking out files and creating changelists. GitHub and Bitbucket are much better for smaller teams, as they are cloud hosted, making …
Today's web based software makes them easier to integrate into a development process. Jira with integrated BitBucket as the versioning tool, is ahead of the competition. However for large organizations, Perforce is still a very good choice. GitHub can be used as free tool, but …
Perforce has more features than SVN. However even the simpler tasks in SVN require a degree more technical aptitude with Perforce. Git offers most of the same features, however most of these are only really supported via the command-line in Git, where as most tasks can be …
Perforce is similar to SVN but the SVN has better command line support. Git surpasses both SVN and Perforce because of its flexibility with multiple branches and code review.
Overall Elvis DAM is a great product although when you compare the solution to other providers of similiar asset CDNs such as Amazon's AWS, Rackspace CDN or Cloudinary it can get quite expensive. This is especially true if you have a team that is at the larger enterprise level …
For large-scale codebases with fixed and regular releases that do not follow a continuous delivery paradigm, Perforce is certainly well suited. In projects that are small and distinctly separated from other discrete (though potentially dependent) units, the benefits of the Perforce tool may not be as clear of a victor over other systems.
WoodWing Assets work exceptionally well in companies where they have a large number of digital files, that they need to manage and search. Media, advertising and marketing companies benefit significantly when using Assets to manage their digital images, video and content as the most approved as well as latest versions are automatically kept of every digital file. Companies that have a small number of digital files, with probably less than 10 staff, probably don't need a system to manage their actual digital files, provided they are in a structured folder base, that everyone can access.
We have a need to consolidate into a single package, and have such a large variety of technical proficiency among our users that Perforce seems less suitable. Many would like to remain using it, however, even those who use Perforce are the minority, and are often limited to our development teams.
With Perforce Helix, you can use it via the command line, via P4V, or any of the other APIs included with the product. It is extremely easy for new users to get up and running. Users of Perforce Helix only have to pull in the files of interest to them. Also, Perforce is very easy to script and integrate into your CI/CD pipeline. Streams allows you to have pinpoint control of your workflow, and P4Search is the absolute best--I wish Perforce (the company) would talk more about this. It is absolutely fabulous!
It is incredibly easy. For an idea on the onboarding or training of a basic user, this is the only system we know of that training takes literally 1 hour, and the basic user is fully up to speed. Very intuitive user experience. Easy ability to share files (simply right click). Easy ability to search for all digital files, and even content within the digital files, if you cant remember what the file name was - just this feature alone saved us hours everyday
In our large environment, Perforce is rarely "down". We have regular maintenance windows and from time to time Perforce can feel a little slow, but its always available. Tech support has always worked with our engineers and IT department to make sure that any real performance or stability issues are addressed quickly.
I had two representatives from Perforce contact me after downloading it but never responded when I had questions. I also had a difficult time finding good training material for getting started. There is a lot of available support material when running into issues, though, because of how many large companies use it.
WoodWing support has been good, they do feedback quickly when reporting an issue and do keep you up to date with where they are in the process of resolving the support issue. The support team is knowledgeable and take the time to fully understand the issue. I do feel they should have an online support ability to assist with basic user issues, as opposed to having to log a ticket every time, but that would be the only reason I have not given them a 10.
This rating is related to setting up an environment from an existing Perforce repository. Initial setup of Perforce as the repository for the company was done by a separate team long prior to my inception.
New users of Perforce Helix can be up and running in less than thirty minutes. It is easy to use, but also very powerful. Bitbucket is slow, prone to outages, and (for large teams) requires a team of dedicated administrators. I've had request for information from Bitbucket that requires hours to pull together that would take me less than 30 seconds in Perforce Helix. Large file storage in Bitbucket is clunky and requires you to jump through too many hoops. It's not even something you have to think about with Perforce Helix, as you are only limited by your OS. Perforce Helix is very easy to use even for non-developers. I wouldn't dare ask a non-developer to store their documentation in Bitbucket.
Overall Elvis DAM is a great product although when you compare the solution to other providers of similiar asset CDNs such as Amazon's AWS, Rackspace CDN or Cloudinary it can get quite expensive. This is especially true if you have a team that is at the larger enterprise level in which case you are charged by the user.
