What is CloudFactory?
Welcome to CloudFactory, where digital work is completed using assembly lines staffed by people around the world 24/7. The factory is staffed by over 500,000 human workers and is divided into different departments such as Transcription, Web Research and Data Processing. It is an open factory so anyone can come in and be a digital manufacturer by using public assembly lines or creating their own. Assembly lines are made up of a series of task stations. At each station you assign a human or robot worker and give them a form to fill out to complete a task. When you are ready to use an assembly line, you start a production run by providing raw materials as input and then receive finished products as output.
How Do I Use It?
A large number of web and mobile applications can benefit from tying into CloudFactory, so all you developers and startups out there are our focus right now. We have released a RESTful API and a Ruby Gem or powerful cli tool to add crowd-powered features into your app. More helper libraries will be coming soon…
What are Resources?
CloudFactory Resources are components of your factory on the clouds. The different components that makes up the cloudfactory are listed below.
For a single page of quick definitions on all of the objects, please refer to the Glossary
Account
You need to have an account to use the powerful features of the cloudfactory. An account can have multiple users and multiple applications that are referred to as apps within the system.See more
Assembly Lines
An assembly line chains together multiple task stations to accomplish a specific type of digital work. You design it to take some initial input and then after all stations are completed you get the final output. An assembly line can be used over and over again to do production runs once it is designed. The assembly lines are often just referred to as lines. A line can either be private or public. Private lines are accessible only through the account which creates the line where as public lines are accessible through any account irrespective of its creator. A line consists of input formats, stations, workers and forms the workers fill out. The lines must belong to a department. see more
Goldstandards
A goldstandard defines the standard of the output provided by the cloud worker.It consist of input and expected_output.
Badges
When a worker gets qualified to do certain task, then he’s assigned a badge. Badges are of two types in CF, Stat badge and Skill badge, stat badge are system defined badges (by CF) which are mapped to the qualification requirements of the worker pool being used. Skill badge is acquired by a worker by giving a test which is attached to the badge. see more
Departments
Departments are used to organize the lines. There are pre-existing departments in the system. For instance, if the line is related to digitization, the user has to categorize the line as digitization. see more
Input Formats
The input formats help know what fields and data they need to provide as input for the line. Both lines and stations have input formats. See more
Output Formats
Output format help you to create your custom final output for the given line.See more
Sub Units
When multiple outputs of a similar type are generated from a station. The next station can then process each of these outputs separately as individual sub units. See more
Task Stations
Task Stations are the units for a line often referred as only stations. A task station is where a cloud worker or a robot is assigned to perform one simple operation within an assembly line. A line may consist of multiple stations, each performing a specific task and pipelined together to yield the final result. Stations exists within a line. See the details.
Workers
Workers are assigned to the stations to get certain work done. For every station there is only one type of worker. Workers exist within a station. You may assign a human worker of a pre-existing robot worker. Worker exists within station hence should only be created after creating the station. see more
Blocking a Worker
Any account user can block a worker if his/her result is inappropriate or irrelevant. After the worker has been blocked, he/she won’t be allowed to work on any HITs related to that particular account.
If the same worker is blocked in two or more accounts then he/she will be blocked through-out the whole CloudFactory system i.e. the worker won’t see and work on any CloudFactory HITs.
Task Form
The cloudfactory task form allows you to easily create a form which can contain different types of fields(e.g. text-field, radio-button etc.) along with display and validation options. See more
Unit
Each unit of data that is passed as input to an assembly line is moved from station to station until finally the final unit of output is produced.
Input Data
You can supply the input data while creating run upon any existing assembly line, You can either supply the input as a csv file or directly while using the api.
Production runs
A production run is done by providing units of input to an assembly line to actually get digital work done. You need to have sufficient balance in your account or the production run will be paused until you top up your account and resume production.
Results
Results are only created after the worker submits the assigned work. If the line has multiple stations, results exists only for the last station. However, if the line contains only a single work station, the result is created as soon as the user submits the work for that station. Results exists within a unit.
The result can be rejected, accepted or auto-approved. When the result is rejected, the worker does not get paid and another HIT for the same unit gets created. If the result is accepted the worker gets paid. Similarly, in case of auto-approve the result gets approved on 7th day after submitting the result and the worker gets paid on that day. The user cannot accept or reject any result that is already accepted, rejected or auto-approved.
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