iTAG FAQ

Q: Is iTAG free and how is it billed?

• The iTAG platform is free for manual annotation by your team.

• iTAG requires Object Storage Service (OSS) to operate. Therefore, you are charged separately for OSS storage and data I/O traffic based on the OSS billing overview.

• Intelligent annotation service: The intelligent annotation service provided for some templates, such as image-to-text and image-text description, is currently free of charge. You will be notified if this service becomes a paid feature in the future.

• To delegate data annotation to Alibaba Cloud's professional team, submit a ticket to the PAI team to purchase this service.

Q: How to grant iTAG permissions if the console shows they are missing?

You must first add a role in the workspace and then grant permissions in People Management in iTAG. For more information, see Assign roles to members.

Q: How to add a RAM user as an annotator?

Log on to the PAI console by using your Alibaba Cloud account and add the RAM user as a member in Workspace Management. Then, go to People Management in iTAG and select Add Workspace Account to find and add the RAM user as an annotator or administrator. For more information, see Assign roles to members.

Q: Why can't I find a RAM user when adding a workspace account?

You must first add the RAM user as a member of the current PAI workspace. You can then find the user in the list. For more information, see the "Configure member roles" section of Configure a workspace.

Q: How to add external users as annotators?

To add team members, users from other companies, or individuals as annotators, follow the steps in the Add a role for another Alibaba Cloud account section of Add a role.

Q: Can annotators download raw data?

To ensure data security, iTAG does not offer a direct download option for annotators. Data access permissions depend on the access control policy of the storage location, such as OSS, which you can configure.

Q: How to find the tenant ID for iTAG APIs?

You can find your tenant ID by calling the ListTenants API operation. For more information, see ListTenants.

Q: How to resolve content loading failures in iTAG?

If resources fail to load during the annotation process in iTAG, you must enable cross-origin access for the OSS data source. Follow these steps to enable cross-origin access for OSS.

1. Go to the details page of a bucket.

   1. Log on to the OSS console.

   2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Buckets.

   3. On the Buckets page, find the OSS bucket that you want to manage and click the bucket name.

2. On the bucket details page, click Data Security and configure settings in the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) section.

3. Click Create Rule. In the Create CORS Rule panel, configure the cross-origin access parameters.

   OSS cross-origin access parameters

   Parameter	Required	Description
   Origins	Yes	The origins from which cross-origin requests are allowed. Set this parameter to the following value: https://*.console.aliyun.com
   Allowed Methods	Yes	The allowed methods for cross-origin requests. Set this parameter to the following values: GET POST PUT HEAD
   Allowed Headers	Yes	The allowed headers for cross-origin requests. Set this parameter to the following value: *
   Exposed Headers	Yes	The response headers that users can access from applications. Set this parameter to the following values: etag x-oss-request-id
   Cache Time	No	Specifies how long, in seconds, the browser caches preflight (OPTIONS) request results. To resolve loading issues, set this value to 0.
   Vary: Origin	Yes	You must select the check box next to Vary: Origin to return the Vary: Origin header. If your application handles both CORS and non-CORS requests, or if the Origin header has multiple possible values, select Vary: Origin to prevent local cache issues.

4. Click OK.

Q: How to fix dataset format parsing failures?

If you receive the error message Failed to parse the dataset format. Please select a dataset in the correct format. when creating an annotation task on the iTAG page and selecting a registered dataset, follow these steps to resolve the issue:

• Only datasets in the iTAG data annotation format are supported. You must create a dataset by following the method described in Create a dataset for data annotation.

• Verify that the format of the created dataset is correct. For more information, see Annotation file formats.

Q: Why is my OSS bucket unavailable or path empty during dataset creation?

Check the following two points:

1. Region consistency: Ensure your PAI-iTAG workspace and OSS bucket are in the same region. You can switch the region in the upper-left corner of the PAI console.

   To check the current region of PAI-iTAG:

   In the top navigation bar of the PAI console, view the current region displayed in the region selector, for example, China (Hangzhou).

   To check the region of your OSS bucket:

   On the Buckets page of the OSS console, view the Region column to identify the region where each bucket is located, for example, US (Silicon Valley), Singapore, or China (Beijing).

2. Path and file requirements: iTAG does not support reading data directly from the root directory of an OSS bucket. You must store your data files in a subdirectory of the bucket and enter the subdirectory name in the OSS File Path field. In addition, dataset import relies on an index file, such as a .csv or .manifest file, instead of a direct path to a folder of raw images or videos.

Q: Can iTAG use local data for annotation?

No. iTAG requires input data to be stored in Alibaba Cloud OSS. You must first upload your local data, including data from a NAS, to OSS. Then, you can create a dataset in iTAG that points to the OSS data to perform annotation tasks.

Q: Why do I get a cross-domain error when annotating images?

When you annotate a dataset in iTAG, this error may occur when you switch to the second image of a sub-task.

Solution: Configure a cross-origin rule for the OSS bucket that you are using. Add the PAI domain name https://*.console.aliyun.com to the allowed origins.

In the OSS console, go to the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) page for the target bucket and click Create CORS Rule. In the dialog box, select GET, POST, PUT, and HEAD for Allowed Methods. For Allowed Headers, enter *. For Exposed Headers, enter etag, x-oss-request-id. Set Cache Time to 0. Select the Vary: Origin check box, and then click OK.