Getting started for new administrators

The purpose of this article is to provide some quick information around some of the key areas to focus your efforts when setting up a new Asset Bank or reviewing your existing setup. Where relevant, we'll point you in the direction of the more detailed articles.

1) Customising the homepage & login page

The homepage is very important as it allows you to present your assets in the most helpful way for your users. There are a variety of different ways you can customise your homepage:

Changing the welcome text and other items
To make changes to any of the text you see in Asset Bank, log in as an admin user go to Admin > Content and click the 'Turn on edit mode' button.

Once this is enabled, you will see small 'edit' icons appear next to different text areas of the system. By browsing back to the homepage you can easily change the welcome text as well as different areas of text, such as renaming 'Promoted Items' to 'Editors Picks' or similar. When you are finished you can close edit mode using the link in the bar along the top of the screen.

Featured image
This is the main image at the top of the homepage that serves as a background/hero image. To change this simply find an asset, click on the "... More" link on the right of the preview and choose "Feature on homepage". Here you will be able to preview and re-size the chosen file. Note, you can feature as many images as you like and Asset Bank will display a different one from this set each time a user visits the homepage. You can see all of the images you have set as 'featured' by accessing the following page: Admin > Content > Featured

Promoted items
Promoting your assets is a good way to bring specific files to the homepage to highlight to your users. You can promote an asset in the same way as for 'featured' assets: simply edit the file and check the 'Promoted Item' box. You can have as many as you'd like, and users can click through from the homepage to see them all.

Recently added
As files are added to the system a strip of recently added images will automatically appear, showing users your latest content. As with other areas each user will only see assets that they have permission to see. You can create additional collections using saved search.

News
By adding articles you can add relevant information to communicate with your user base. You can add or edit these articles in the following section: Admin > Content > News

Login screen backgrounds
It is possible to change the background image used for your login/registration pages on the following page: Admin > Content > Featured

It is possible to add multiple images which will rotate each time a user arrives at either the login or registration page. You can also move the location of the login box so that it fits best with each image you have chosen. It is worth bearing in mind that the first background image in this list will be used for Published Lightboxes.

2) Folders

We recommend using Folders to store your assets as this means you can control the permissions each user has on a folder-by-folder basis. In some cases it is more suitable to use descriptive Categories alongside Access Levels which you can use to control your permissions on an asset-by-asset basis.

The folder structure provides a natural home for assets and also allows users to discover content by browsing rather than searching. Assets can be placed in multiple folders without duplication so that various themes or reasons for assets to be exposed can bring relevant content to the user.

This is all controlled in the Admin > Folders section. On this page it is possible to add/edit/remove folders and sub-folders, as well as doing other tasks such as assigning images to each folder (as shown in the image above), adding a short description/intro, and changing the display order of your folders.

Read more about folders here

3) Search

Whilst Search is fundamental to all users, it is important that admin users have a good overview of the various types of searches that can be performed. It is also possible to tailor the search experience for users by adding in attributes to appear on the homepage.

4) Attributes & Keywords / tagging your assets

The system for organising your metadata in Asset Bank is via attributes. By having a well planned set of attributes you will make it much easier for your users to find the assets they are looking for. Depending on the complexity of the collection of your assets, you can add as little or as much information to each asset to give your users multiple ways to find what they are looking for. In addition to creating a variety of different types of attribute you can also choose whether each field is mandatory, and you can set up embedded metadata mapping. We recommend trying to avoid duplication so that it is quicker and easier for your users to upload new files. For example, if you are using meaningful titles, you wouldn't need to add the same words as keywords.

Depending on how well structured the information about your assets is you may need to key keywords as a more flexible way of capturing information. To make your keywords easier to navigate we recommend the use of hierarchical keywords and synonyms.

Getting your attributes right is a fundamental part of configuring your Asset Bank. If you need assistance, we recommend our consultancy services. There are lots of articles about the various options you have around attributes in our user guide.

5) Groups

In Asset Bank there are two default user groups that always exist which serve as baseline permissions for your users. These are:

*Public - permissions given to this group apply to all visitors to your Asset Bank - even those that have not logged in. This means that users would be able to interact with your assets without needs a specific set of credentials to log in. 

*Logged in users - every registered user is a member of this group. This means that you can use this group to manage a baseline level of permissions that all of your users will receive once they have logged in.

Depending on the structure of your groups, it is possible you have no permissions granted to either of these default groups as this means you can very selectively control your permissions on a group-by-group basis.

To get started, you could just upload some assets, set permissions for the '*Logged in users' group, and then add some users. You may also want to create other groups (e.g. one for people who you want to upload assets).

Detailed information about setting up groups can be found here.

6) Users

There are a few ways to create new users. The easiest is to email your user group with a link to your Asset Bank registration page. They can then complete the registration process and then one of the site administrators will only need to approve or reject them the registration (Admin > Approve Users). If approved, Asset Bank will send them an email with details of how to log in.

To do this, first log out of Asset Bank and click on the 'register' link on the login page. Now that you are here, you can copy the URL and send this to your test user group saying 'Please register for the Asset Bank here: <insert link>'.

You can modify the fields used on the registration page in the following section: Admin > Users > User Fields

The other way to create users is to just add them manually yourself. You can do this via: Admin > Users > 'Add a new user'

If you have an Enterprise licence, you may also need to liaise with your consultant to enable Single Sign On (SSO). Options for SSO are covered in detail here. It is also possible to add SSO to your Standard licence, so if this would be beneficial for your organisation, please get in touch.

7) Usage types

Asset Bank is best used to only hold the highest quality version of a single asset without saving multiple versions of the same asset in different sizes and file formats. Whenever a user wants to use an asset for any given campaign or piece of work, they should only need to download a version that is relevant to their use, which is created from the original, master that is held in Asset Bank.

Part of the admin job is to predict all the various 'usage types' that will be needed by the different types of user within your organisation. For example, website users may have very different requirements than print marketing teams. You can offer 'download templates' for the most common usage types, and set the size, file format and compression to reduce the need for the user to open the asset in an image editor (like Photoshop). For images, if you just set a max height and width, the aspect ratio of the image will be preserved, and the 'best fit' within those parameters will be applied. If you need to produce an exact size of image, please select the 'crop to fit' option and this will make sure the image is resized accurately.

Full details about downloading assets can be found here.

Popular image download types include Social Media (for Facebook, Twitter profile, cover images etc). You can also manage which options a user sees (to avoid unnecessary complication) with Usage exclusions in the Groups menu. Advanced download options can also be used for bespoke resizing or conversion for less common uses.

A useful article on creating download types for published lightboxes is here.

8) Reports

Whilst much of the information an admin user will need can be obtained from advanced searches and the various areas of the admin menu, there are certain reports that can be useful. These are divided into:

Usage, Scheduled, Search, Asset, Audit and emails. You can find a broader overview and further information here.

One of the most useful reports is the 'failed search report' which will highlight any searches that users have made that have not given results. Go to the Admin > Reports > Search and choose to run a report of all search terms with dates, and select 'only failed searches' from the drop-down menu. This information could be used to source missing assets, and to improve attribute content - especially for keyword synonyms.

For more help for admin users please visit our admin guide.