Glossary

Digital mass production can seem pretty complex at first but once you understand the basics below a whole new world will be opened to you. So go ahead, spend a few minutes learning the lingo of CloudFactory:

Assembly Line (line)

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.

Production Run (run)

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.

Task Station (station)

A task station is where a cloud worker or a robot is assigned to perform one simple operation within an assembly line.

Cloud Worker

Our cloud workers are real people who staff assembly lines by completing tasks from anywhere in the world. They simply log on and complete tasks to earn money and grow their skills. CloudFactory is staffed by cloud workers from different worker pools and you are able to narrow down who staffs each task station by requiring badges that require certain work history stats or those passing a skills test.

Form

Each station with a cloud worker has a form, which is what the real person doing the work sees and needs to fill up. So, a form for the station should provide(i.e. display) the information the worker needs to do your work and should contain fields for the worker to fill in the answers. You can either choose to use the Task Form we provide or a Custom Task Form.

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. This comes along with its default CSS and Javascript to provide a sleek, attractive and a user-friendly HTML form.

Custom Task form

While the Task Form is concerned with the ease in creating a form, the Custom Task Form provides you with the flexibility to create the html form you envision to show to the worker. You can even provide your own CSS and Javascript. So, creating a custom task form is the same as creating any HTML form but these guidelines can help to make your form more practical and robust.

Robot

A growing list of robots are available at CloudFactory so you can assign them to your task stations. These robots are powered by some of the top software and web services available today. This is the cloud computing part of CloudFactory that we are committed to keep growing.read 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

An assembly line just sits there looking pretty until you do a production run and actually give some initial input data to the line. Each and every task station also has its own input to operate on. All input must be of the correct input format which is specified when designing an assembly line.

Output

Output is what everything at CloudFactory is working hard towards. Each production run has final output at the end but at the task station level there is also intermediate output produced. Output can be viewed and drilled down into when viewing your production run and it can also be downloaded as spreadsheet (CSV) file.

Input Format

When designing an assembly line you need to specify what input formats your line will accept. You name all the input formats and specify if it should be a url, date, number or just general text. Each task station only accepts certain input formats that are directly determined by the output formats of the previous station. If an assembly line or task station doesn’t receive the right input formats it won’t be able to perform!

Output Format

Output format are determined by the fields of a task form that a worker submits or the output settings of a robot.

Department

CloudFactory is divided up into 10 departments (categories of digital work) and you need to decide where to best build your assembly line.

Badge

A badge may be required in order for a cloud worker to work at a task station. This is to ensure that they are qualified and will do a good job.

Stat Badge

A stat badge is a type of badge related to the work history, performance or qualifications of a cloud worker.

Skill Badge

A skill badge is a type of badge that can only be earned by passing a skill test specifically designed for a single task station. Only cloud workers that have passed the test will be able to do work at that task station.

Worker Pool

CloudFactory is staffed from different worker pools. These are groups of Cloud Workers that come from our partners such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

Command Line Interface (CLI)

For all you terminal-loving geeks out there CloudFactory provides an interactive command line interface via our RubyGem. Type “gem install cloudfactory” and then “cf help” to see all the fun hacks you can do.see more