asset bank: key features an admin should know

Get-together 2014

Key Admin Features

• Communicating with users

• Helping users find things

• Download options revisited

• Housekeeping

Key Admin Features

• Communicating with users

• Helping users find things

• Download options revisited

• Housekeeping

Logging into an Asset Bank (note, you can have various background images in rotation here, your own URL, HTTPS, etc).

This is a typical Asset Bank with our default skin. This can be changed to match your own branding.

create your own menu items

I’ve created both “Getting Started” and “Brand Guidelines” menu items via the admin area: Admin > Content > Menu Items These are content managed pages.

This has allowed me to create a guide for new users to the system that is tailored for my particular Asset Bank.

As well as content managed pages, you can create links to other areas of Asset Bank (assuming users have permissions to see those areas) and links to external sites that can open in a new tab/window.

I embedded images that I had previously uploaded via the Asset Bank embed feature. Allowing me to get HTML that I could paste into this content managed page.

I created a Brand Guidelines summary in much the same way. I wanted to quickly get across key brand info such as RGB values, etc. But also have a link to the full brand guidelines asset. You can see the links to this at the top and bottom of the (next) page.

I click on the Brand Guidelines link to get through to the asset page.

I can now download the full guidelines.

I’ll now add a link to an external site, in this case our YouTube channel.

If linking to external sites then we usually tick this box.

You can drag and drop re-order the new menu item.

You can also decide who can see the new menu item.

I now click on the link.

And the site opens in a new window.

promote collections onto the homepage

Infographics

Admins can save a search and promote it so that it appears on the homepage.

If you save it as a Featured Search then a panel with the first selection of matching results will appear.

We can now see the new panel appear in the central column. Users will see this if they have permission to see those assets, otherwise the panel will be hidden from them.

You can now also drag and drop re-order your Featured Searches.

Featured Searches are a great way for admins to quickly promote collections. They can even start from the advanced search page, e.g. in order to select/promote the contents of a specific category only.

Key Admin Features

• Communicating with users

• Helping users find things

• Download options revisited

• Housekeeping

stemming

This is on by default and takes care of stems of words (so “swim” would equate to “swimming” and vice versa – as shown here) and also deals with plurals.

auto-complete

Auto-complete starts to suggest matches based on actual metadata already held in the system. This helps users find things more easily. It can also be activated for specific attributes – e.g. the keyword picker. This way a user can just type into that field to see possible keywords – in this occasion it only shows matches held against that specific attribute.

keyword search links

Tick this when creating a new dropdown, checklist or keyword field (even a text keyword field with a delimiter). Now values shown on the asset page will be hot links instead of just static text.

So for the Country drop down below I can see the value and also click on it to see all other matching assets. This helps present an interconnected web of content to the user.

browse by keywords

If you use a keyword picker then you can configure this handy browse tab. The setting for this is: keyword-browse-page-id= The id value can be found by clicking edit on the [edit keywords] link next to the attribute in the admin area. The number you need to use is the “TypeId” in the URL of that page.

Now users can browse by keywords, another layer of discoverability.

homepage search elements

You can now also choose certain attributes to appear on the homepage, helping raise awareness of a particular search option. E.g. if you have a Product ID attribute, then promoting this to the homepage may help users realise that they can search on it.

I’ve browsed to: Admin > Attributes > Display attributes > Searching > Home page Here I have chosen Product ID to be promoted.

Now it is obvious that the user can search on this. (The general keyword search will also match against the Product ID attribute, the difference here is ‘affordance’. Making it clear that a user can interact in such a way.)

search filters

When you browse into a category, or review a set of search results, you can search from there. In addition to this, you can now also configure a mini advanced search panel to appear to help the user get even more specific with their result set.

For this Asset Bank I’ve configured Title, Description, Country and Date Added to appear in this additional search filter dropdown.

Key Admin Features

• Communicating with users

• Helping users find things

• Download options revisited

• Housekeeping

link to appropriate media types

Please check that the download options you have created are linked to the right media types, this ensures only relevant options appear for the user during download.

show dimensions

As well as having descriptive names, it is also worth adding re-size pixel dimensions in brackets (where applicable). This gives the more technical users an extra level of information.

time to add new pre-sets?

Is it time for you to check that you have all the pre-sets your users need? Have these changed over time? What about CMS or Social Media sizes?

Here I have created a 800 x 300 crop to fit option for a commonly used web banner (for our website CMS). This can now be used by the web team as they often need images of this exact size.

It shows me the image and asks me to crop the area I need.

When I create the crop area Asset Bank constrains it to the right dimensions, in this case a rectangle with 8:3 proportions.

I complete the crop selection.

300

800

The result is exactly what I need.

Key Admin Features

• Communicating with users

• Helping users find things

• Download options revisited

• Housekeeping

duplicate detection (perceptual hashing)

153.jpg 0.5 MB Mike.tif 1.5 MB

Perceptual hashing allows images that look the same (but which may have different filenames, sizes and file formats) to be compared and for a duplicate to be detected, as shown here.

Configuration setting to set this up are shown here: duplicate-file-check-on-upload=true duplicate-asset-check-type=perceptual duplicate-asset-similarity-tolerance=5 Tolerance can be increased as per the instructions in the settings file. If you already have assets in the system then a perceptual hash has to be constructed for these. You would do this via: Admin > System > Developer > Regenerate all asset perceptual…

So here I’m uploading the duplicate.

It has been detected and I have the option to continue or cancel. This also works during bulk upload, flagging all potential duplicates for the uploader to deal with.

archiving

As you may know, an expiry date when reached will auto-hide assets form all users except admin.

In addition, you can create email rules to work with expiry dates. In this example an email will be sent out 10 days before the expiry date is reached. You would set this up via: Admin > Attributes > Date Attribute [edit rules]

I’ve set this up so that all users who have previously downloaded the asset receive the notification, as well as the admin users.

Now, as an admin yourself, you may only want to see active assets by default. You can set up a filter for this via: Admin > Attributes > Filters (tab)

Then just switch it to ‘Expired’ to search and browse through expired assets in the system.

Finally, you can hide these filter options from normal users via: Admin > Groups > [filter exclusions]

search reports

Admin > Reports > Search Reports Here you can see what users have been searching on. Failed searches should be especially of interest. This helps you find out if people are searching for materials not yet uploaded – prompting you to add these. Alternatively you may see users search on terms you have not thought to use as keywords – promoting you to add these as synonyms to existing key words in a picker attribute, or bulk updating a set of assets and appending a keyword.

deleting assets

Here you can find really large assets (that you may want to cull, or really small assets that are possibly of low resolution).

Admin > Reports > Asset Reports also has a duplicate detection report to help you clear out duplicates.

You can now search on items by popularity over a specified date range. Here I’ll see which items are least popular.

The results show you the files, states the date uploaded, number of downloads - and allows you to delete them if required.

delegation

If configured, you can now delegate some admin functions to different user groups. The setting to enable this in the first instance is: use-group-roles=true Once activated you will be able to set this via: Admin > Groups [permissions]

Users with such permissions granted will be able to login in and see a few admin menu items.

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