Penn State University Libraries - Managing Digital Assets

You manage digital assets in the Digital Asset Manager, which is accessible by clicking the digital assets icon on the CQ Welcome page:

Or when working in CQ you can click the camera icon to open the Digital Asset Manager (DAM) console:

After you upload assets, you can perform the following functions:

• Create folders to organize assets better.
• Edit assets, including asset metadata.
• Upload thumbnails.
• Replace an existing asset.
• See what pages reference an asset.
• Create a version that you can restore your asset to at a later time.
• View sub assets

All digital assets, metadata and content of Microsoft Office and PDF documents are extracted and made searchable. Search allows sophisticated filtering on assets and fully respects the proper permissions. Metadata is covered in detail in Editing Asset Metadata in Managing Digital Assets.

CQ5 DAM supports multiple ways of organizing content. You can organize them in a hierarchical manner using folders or you can organize them in an unordered, adhoc manner, using for example tags. Users can edit tags in the DAM Asset Editor where sub-assets, renditions, and metadata are displayed.

When organizing a collection of assets, for example, all Nature images, you can create folders to keep them together. This is purely organizational.

To create a new folder:

1. Navigate to the place in your digital assets folder that you want to create a new folder.
2. In the menu, click the arrow by New... then select New Folder...
3. In the Title field, type the name of the folder. By default, CQ DAM uses the title you type as the name. You can specify another name (The name is what appears in the Websites tab list).
   
4. Click Create. Your folder appears in the digital assets folder.
   
   

Assets can be uploaded from the Digital Assets console, where the asset dialog is provided to manage certain properties of the assets.

To use the asset dialog:

1. Navigate to the folder in your digital assets area into which you want to upload files.
2. In the menu toolbar, click the arrow by New... then select New File... The Upload Assets dialog appears.
3. Use the Browse… button to locate the files you wish to upload. You may select several files at a time.
4. Click OK to save your changes.

You edit assets (or sub-assets) in a window called the Asset Editor, which you access by doing one of the following:

• Right-clicking an asset and clicking Open.
• Double-clicking an asset.

In addition to all of the commands you can perform on an asset, the Asset Editor provides access to the following:

• any sub-assets, such as pages in a PDF
• all renditions of the selected asset
• reference information on what web pages an asset is used

It also provides a quick way to return to the DAM admin. Click Digital Assets in the top left corner to return to the admin page. Any other assets you have opened are also available by clicking the appropriate tab.

Note: All of the actions that you perform on assets, you can perform on sub-assets as well. To select a sub-asset, click the appropriate sub-asset in the right pane of the Asset Editor to open it.

Metadata is additional information about the asset that can be searched. It is automatically extracted when you upload an image. You can edit the existing metadata or add new metadata properties to existing fields (for example, when a metadata field is blank).

Because companies need controlled and reliable metadata vocabularies, CQ DAM does not allow for adhoc adding of new metadata properties. Although authors cannot add new metadata fields for assets, developers can.

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click an asset to open it. The Asset Editor opens displaying all of the asset's metadata. This metadata was automatically extracted when it was uploaded (ingested) into CQ DAM.
2. Make edits to the metadata, as needed:
   1. Contributor (optional): person/group (if more than one person/group is responsible for the creation of this asset) who has made additional contributions. Credit contributor if it is important and not immediately apparent from context, e.g. if the asset is in a committee's CMS space.
   2. Creator (optional): person/group who is primarily responsible for creation of document. Credit creator if it is important and not immediately apparent from context, e.g. if the asset is in a committee's CMS space.
   3. Title (required): title of the document, image, etc. in Digital Asset Manager is essential for findability of content
   4. Description (required): unlike with Pages, a description of items in the Digital Asset Manager is essential for findability of content, as there will likely not be full-text for CQ5 to index. This is especially important for PDFs, Word documents, and audiovisual content that is difficult to appraise quickly in the Digital Asset Manager.
   5. Language (recommended): if the digital asset is predominantly text as in a PDF, Word document, etc.
   6. Tags (may be required, as applicable): provide subject headings to the page, and may be used to include your page in dynamic pages elsewhere on the Libraries website. Consult with the CMS implementation team to determine if a particular tag is required for dynamic content.
3. Click Save at the bottom of the screen to save your changes. You can also click Reset to reset them to the original values.

Note: If a text field is empty, there is no existing metadata set. You can enter a value into the field and save it to add that metadata property.

You can use folders or tags or both to organize assets. Adding tags to assets makes them more easy to retrieve during a search. See Tagging for more information on tagging.

To add tags to an asset:

1. In the Digital Asset Manager, double-click the asset to open it.
2. In the Tags area, click the drop-down button to reveal the available tags. Select tags as appropriate to add a tag. To delete a tag, hover the mouse over the tag and click the x to delete it.
3. Click Save to save any tags you added.

Images uploaded to the repository can be resized, scaled, cropped, rotated, watermarked, thumbnailed or processed in any other form, because of the integrated graphics engine.

There are two types of editing in CQ DAM:

• Interactive editing includes everything in the image editor, such as scaling, and cropping.
• Non-interactive editing uses a workflow process of images to generate new renditions. For example, you could create a watermark by using this kind of workflow.

This section covers interactive editing in the Image editor.

Note: Best practice is to perform most of your image editing outside of the CMS using a graphics program prior to uploading them to the DAM.

To edit images:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.
2. If the asset supports interactive editing, Edit appears at the bottom of the window. Click Edit. The Edit menu opens.
3. You can perform any of the following functions:
   
   1. Crop: Click Crop to display the crop marks. Move the crop marks in or out to crop the image as desired.
   2. Rotate: Click Rotate to move the image clockwise. Click Rotate again to rotate it again, and so on.
   3. Resize: Move the Zoom lever to the right to make the image larger. Move the lever to the left to make the image smaller. (This affects only viewing of the image in the DAM. The actual image size will not be changed after clicking OK. True resizing can be done when editing page content using the Text and Image Component.)
      
   4. Reset: Click Reset to reset the image to the previous rendition if you have performed any editing. This functionality is only available if you have made changes to the rendition.
4. After you make changes, click OK. A rendition of the change appears in the Renditions tab. Scroll to see all the renditions.

Note: After making edits, you can select Reset to restore to the previous rendition. CQ DAM's versioning capability is a cleaner way to restore to the original version after new binaries have been uploaded or edits have been made.

Most file formats support automatic thumbnail extraction. However, for some file formats, for example Flash animations (SWF files), you need to create a thumbnail manually and upload it. CQ DAM lets you upload a thumbnail. You can also use this functionality to overwrite existing thumbnails.

To upload a thumbnail:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.
2. On the right side of the screen, be sure the Renditions tab is selected.
3. Click Thumbnail. The Upload Thumbnail window opens.
4. Browse to the file and click OK to upload the thumbnail.

To view what pages include reference to a particular asset:

1. Right-click an asset and select Open or double-click the asset to open the Asset Editor.
2. On the right side of the screen, click the References tab to see a list of references for the asset.
   
   

To replace an asset:

Tip: If you do not want to lose the original asset, you can create a version beforehand, which will allow you to restore the old asset, if necessary.

1. Upload the new version of the asset using the same name and same Digital Asset Manager location as the original.
2. When prompted, "An asset of the same name already exists in this location," click Yes to replace the original.
   

To delete existing assets:

1. Select an asset or multiple assets by pressing SHIFT+click or CTRL+click.
2. Select Delete. CQ DAM asks you to confirm the action.
3. Click Yes to actually delete the asset, or No to abort the action.

You copy and paste assets as you would pages in CQ. To copy an asset and then paste it into another location:

1. Select an asset, then select Copy to copy it to the internal clipboard.
2. Select the location, then select Paste from the menu to paste the asset.

Note: If the original (or another file with the same name) exists in this target folder, then 1 is appended to the file suffix, for example IMG_0001.gif becomes IMG_0001.gif1.

The procedure for renaming and moving an asset are the same. You can perform both at the same time or perform these tasks independently.

To move and/or rename an asset:

1. Select an asset.
   
2. In the menu, select Move. The Move dialog opens.  The list shows references to the asset.
3. In the to field, navigate to or enter the target location. Click the magnifying glass icon to open the drop-down menu and navigate to the correct location.
4. If you want to rename an asset, in the Rename to field, enter a new name for the asset.
5. If you want CQ DAM to adjust references, so that the original assets points to the new name and/or location, make sure the checkboxes are selected.
6. Click Move to move or rename the asset.

CQ does not allow you to use assets on publish that are not activated. You need to activate assets to make them available on publish.

To activate or deactivate an asset:

1. Select an asset or multiple assets.
2. Select Activate or Activate later to activate an asset. Select Deactivate or Deactivate Later to deactivate an asset. Activating or deactivating an asset later lets you schedule the action for a specific date and time.
3. Click OK. CQ DAM indicates that the asset has been activated or deactivated.