When planning the set-up of your Asset Bank, consider:

• Your key user groups
• The assets they use most often
• The search terms they’ll rely on

This will give you an idea of a design that’s going to be intuitive and easy for your teams to navigate. 

We’ll be working with you to configure your Asset Bank so it best serves your key user groups. We’ll make it easy for admins to manage users, groups and permissions, while optimising the experience for your end users so they can quickly find the file they need, and download it in the format they require. 

Structuring your Asset Bank with Folders, Attributes and User Groups

The main structure of your Asset Bank consists of folders, attributes that contain your metadata (e.g., title, description, keywords), and user groups. Let’s look at each to familiarise you with the concepts to make our consultancy sessions more effective.



 

Folders

These are used to organise and present your content to users. Folders allow them to browse into topics of interest to see what assets might be available.

For example, a university might have a folder structure that has different faculties at the top level, with various sub-folders underneath each, including photos, video, etc. Users can then browse to review the content available.


 

As well as being the primary way to organise assets and to provide a way for users to browse content, folders in Asset Bank also relate to the default permission model linked to user groups. So, for example, a Marketing User Group might be able to see all folders, download from them and even upload new content to them. A Staff User Group might have permission to see fewer folders. They may only have download permission for these. Though admins might give them upload permission to an internally facing staff socials folder structure.
 

Planning your folder structure

There are often many ways to structure your content, so the best guidance we can give is to bear in mind that the folder structure will be linked to the permission model – giving some users access to some structures and not others. Beyond that, consider what would be intuitive to users, and think about what they might be most keen to access quickly – and perhaps place those folders at the top level (e.g., logos).

Concepts to consider

Folder depth: We’ve found that it’s best to keep folder depth to a minimum, unless you have a good reason not to. This is to avoid users having to browse through multiple sub-folders before they find any assets (which can be a frustrating user journey). So we typically advise a maximum folder depth of about 5 levels.

Folder names are also searchable: Imagine you have pictures of various apples in a folder structure like “fruits > apples”. Then searching on either ‘fruit’, or ‘apples’ will return all of the assets in that sub-folder. I.e., The folder names are also searchable metadata for those assets.

Assets in multiple folders: If you have a need for assets to appear in multiple folders, then that’s fine. The asset itself will be a single record, but can appear in more than one place. In Asset Bank, folders work as metadata tags where you assign folder tags to assets without copying assets.

Attributes

Attributes refer to the information you want to store for each asset. Like ‘title’, ‘description’, etc. This also forms the basis for the search function, as this is what it will be looking at when trying to find matches to things users search for.

Asset Bank has a default set of attributes – some of which you’ll keep and some of which you may want to delete. 

Concepts to consider

Bespoke metadata: You’ll most likely want to add bespoke attributes – those that are relevant to your organisation (and are not in our default set). For example: ‘Photographer’, ‘Region’, ‘Product Name’, ‘SKU Code’, or the like.

Attribute types: Attributes can be text fields, numeric fields, dropdowns, keyword pickers, date times, etc. So we’ll work with you to choose which is best for any new fields you need.

Controlled vocabulary: This is a fixed list of keywords that uploaders can pick from for a given field. So if, for example, you had a ‘Product Name’ attribute, instead of making it a text field and relying on every uploader to type in each name correctly, you could set it up so the uploader has to pick the right product name from a list. 

This prevents typos or adding incorrect product name variations. 

The list of terms itself is typically managed by admin users who can add or delete items from this ‘controlled’ set of words.

Hierarchical keywords: This is basically a type of controlled vocabulary that itself can have different levels. Read more about keyword hierarchy.

Mandatory attributes: You can specify which attributes must be filled to allow users to progress and submit assets. These will often include ‘Title’ and ‘Folder’, for example. You need to strike a balance so that uploaders are motivated to add the right content, but are not put off by high volumes of mandatory fields.

A blend of folders, sub-folders, attributes, and an effective keyword hierarchy will help to ensure your system is easy to use during both upload and download processes. 

Plus, your assets will be much easier to find via browsing or search. 

User Groups

Users are members of one or more user groups. These groups determine which folders a user can see and what actions they can take (upload, download, edit, etc.). 

Admins are special users and are not present in any user group. They can see and do everything. They will be able to see all folders, will be able to upload, download, edit metadata and more.

Marketing staff will typically be a member of a marketing user group, and this will dictate which folders they can see, if they can upload (and which folders they can upload to), which folders they can download from, etc.

General staff users would be in a staff user group and would typically have fewer permissions than marketing. For example, they may not be able to upload at all, only search and download. There may be assets they do not have permission to see – e.g., those marked as expired.

Read more in Groups Overview. 

Concepts to consider

User group number: You can create as many user groups as you need. Think of the different sets of users you will be serving, and if they should have different levels of permission to folders or actions like upload or download.

Upload options: You can decide which folders different groups can upload to (and if they can upload at all). You can also decide whether to add an extra approval step before those assets go live for others to see. Those approvers can be admins, or you can delegate this approval step to another user group entirely.

Download options: For each group, you can decide which folders they can see, if they have view only permission on assets in those folders or if they can download. If users in this group can download, you can even add another approval step. So, say you have sensitive assets in a particular folder – you might want to give some users access, but you may want an approver to review what the person intends to use it for, before they are granted download access.

Edit options: As per upload and download above, you can give different user groups edit access. This can just be for some folders of assets and can optionally have an approval step before the changes go live.

Hiding individual assets: As well as deciding which folders of assets a group can see, you can also decide if assets should be hidden for a group based on the value of an attribute. 

For example, by default, users will see the assets in folders you give them permission to, unless an asset has the attribute ‘Active status’ set as ‘Expired’. You can add other rules like this if there is a use case that this would satisfy.

And there’s more

The three items discussed above are central to the setup of your DAM and should be considered first. Beyond that, there are multiple other configuration options that we’ll discuss with you. These are all linked to fine-tuning the experience for various user groups and include items like:

• Filter options - after a user runs a search, what attribute can they use to filter the results?
• Attribute visibility - should we hide some attribute fields for certain groups?
• Download options - which conversion options should we make available at download? E.g., 800 x 800 JPG. Should some of these be available to different user groups? (E.g., website hero image sizes – these might need only visible to the web team).  

Core configuration example

Example for a university, with sample folder structure options, attribute listings and user groups is here:

Folders, Attributes, Groups

This might help you visualise the type of setup that we’ll be discussing, though we’ll tailor it to your needs.

Designing the system around your users is key to a successful DAM. Regular consultation during onboarding and after go-live helps ensure the system remains useful and effective for all users.

If you’re not within our onboarding process, but would like advice or support, our experienced team is happy to help – just get in touch to arrange a chat.