Create and configure Asset Editor pages

This document describes the following:

• Why you would create customized Asset Editor pages.
• How to create and customize Asset Editor pages, which are WCM pages that let you view and edit metadata as well as perform actions on the asset.
• How to edit multiple assets simultaneously.

Why create and configure Asset Editor pages?

Digital Asset Management is being used in more and more scenarios. When moving from a small-scale solution for a small user group of professionally trained users - for example photographers or taxonomists - to larger and more diverse user groups - for example business users, WCM authors, journalists, and so on - the powerful user interface of Adobe Experience Manager Assets for professional users can provide too much information and stakeholders start to request specific user interfaces or applications to access the digital assets that are of relevance to them.

These asset-centric applications can be simple photo galleries in an intranet where employees can upload photos from trade show visits or a press center in a public-facing website. Asset-centric applications can also extend to complete solutions including shopping carts, checkout, and verification processes.

Creating an asset-centric application becomes to a large extent a configuration process that does not require coding, only knowledge of user groups and their needs as well as knowledge of the metadata being used. Asset-centric applications created with Assets are extensible: with moderate coding effort reusable components for searching, viewing, and modifying assets can be created.

An asset-centric application in Experience Manager consists of an Asset Editor page, which can be used to get a detailed view of a specific asset. An Asset Editor page also allows for the editing of metadata, provided the user accessing the asset has the necessary permissions.

Create and configure an Asset Editor page

You customize the asset editor to determine how users can view and edit the digital assets. To do this, you create a new Asset Editor page and then customize the views and the actions users can perform on that page.

Create an Asset Editor page

When creating the Asset Editor page, a good practice is to create the page directly below the Asset Share page.

To create an Asset Editor page:

1. In the Websites tab, navigate to the place where you want to create an asset editor page and click New.
2. Select Geometrixx Asset Editor and click Create. The new page is created and the page is listed in the Websites tab.

The basic page created using the Geometrixx Asset Editor template looks as follows:

To customize your Asset Editor page, use elements from the sidekick. The Asset Editor page that is accessed from the Geometrixx Press Center is a customized version of a page based on this template:

Set an Asset Editor to open from an Asset Share page

After you have created the customized Asset Editor page, you need to ensure that when you double-click assets that the customized Asset Share you created opens the assets in the customized Editor page.

To set the Asset Editor page:

1. In the Asset Share page, click Edit next to the Query Builder.

1. Click the General tab if it is not already selected.

2. In the Path of Asset Editor field, enter the path to the asset editor you want the Asset Share page to open assets in and click OK.

Add Asset Editor components

You determine what functionality an asset editor has by adding components to the page.

To add asset editor components:

1. In the Asset Editor page that you want to customize, select Asset Editor in the sidekick. All available asset editor components are displayed.

1. Drag the components from the sidekick to the asset editor and make any modifications in the component dialogs. The components are described in the following table and described in the detailed instructions that follow.

Metadata Form and Text Field - Configuring the View Metadata Component

The Metadata Form is a form that includes a start and end action. In between, you enter Text fields. See Forms for more information on working with forms.

1. Create a start action by clicking Edit in the Start area of the form. You can enter a Box title, if desired. By default, the Box title is Metadata. Select the Client Validation check box if you want the java-script client code for validation generated.

1. Create an End action by clicking Edit in the End area of the form. For example, you may want to create a Submit option to allow users to submit their metadata changes. Optionally, you can add a Reset option that resets the metadata to its original state.

1. In between the Form Start and the Form End, drag Metadata Text Fields to the form. Users populate metadata into these text fields, which they can submit or complete another action on.

2. Double-click the field name, for example, Title to open the metadata field and make changes. In the General tab of the Edit Component window, you define the namespace and the field label as well as type, for example, dc:title.

See Customizing and Extending Assets for information on modifying the namespaces available in the metadata form.

1. Click the Constraints tab. Here you can select whether a field is required and if necessary, add any constraints.

1. Click the Display tab. Here, you can enter a new width and number of rows for the metadata field. Select the Field is read only checkbox to allow users to edit the metadata.

The following is an example of a Metadata form with various fields:

On the Asset Editor page, users can then enter values into the metadata fields (if they are editable) and perform the end action (for example, submitting the changes).

Sub-assets

The Sub Assets component is where you can view and select sub-assets. You can determine what names appear under the main asset and sub-assets.

Double-click the Sub Assets component to open the sub assets dialog where you can change the titles for the main asset and any sub assets. The default values appear below the corresponding field.

The following is an example of a populated Sub Assets component:

For example, if you select a sub asset, note how the component displays the appropriate page and the Box title changes from Sub Assets to Siblings.

Tags

The Tags component is a component where users can assign existing tags to an asset, which helps later in organization and retrieval. You can make this component read-only, so users cannot add tags, but only view them.

Double-click the Tags component to open the tags dialog where you can change the title from Tags, if desired, and where you can select the allocated namespaces. To make this field editable, clear the Hide Edit check box. By default, tags are editable.

If users can edit tags, then they can click the pencil to add tags by selecting them from the Tags drop-down menu.

The following is a populated Tags component:

Thumbnail

The Thumbnail component is where the asset displays the selected thumbnail (for many of the formats the thumbnail is extracted automatically). In addition, the component displays the filename, and actions that you can modify.

Double-click the thumbnail component to open the thumbnail dialog where you can change the alt text. By default, the thumbnail alt text defaults to Click to download asset.

The following is an example of a populated Thumbnail component:

Title

The Title component displays the title of the asset and a description.

By default, it is in read-only mode so users cannot edit it. To make it editable, double-click the component and clear the Hide edit button checkbox. In addition, enter a title for multiple assets.

If the Title can be edited, you can add a title and description by clicking the Pencil to open the Asset Properties window. In addition, you can turn the asset on and off by selecting the date and time.

When editing the Title, users can change the Title, Description, and enter On and Off Times to turn the asset on and off.

The following is an example of a populated Title component:

Add Asset Editor actions

You can determine what actions users can perform on selected digital assets from a selection of predefined actions.

To add actions to the Asset Editor page:

1. In the Asset Editor page that you want to customize, click Asset Editor in the sidekick.

The following actions are available:

1. Drag the appropriate action to the Actions area on the page. It creates a option that is used to execute the action that is dragged on the page.

Multi-edit assets with the Asset Editor page

With Experience Manager Assets you can make changes to several assets at once. After having selected assets, you can simultaneously change their:

• Tags
• Meta data

To multi-edit assets with the Asset Editor page:

1. Open the Geometrixx Press Center page:
   https://localhost:4502/content/geometrixx/en/company/press.html

2. Select the assets:

   • on Windows: Ctrl + click each asset.
   • on Mac: Cmd + click each asset.

   To select a range of assets: click the first asset then Shift + click the last asset.

3. Click Edit Metadata in the Actions field (left part of the page).

4. The Geometrixx Press Center Asset Editor page opens in a new tab. The metadata of the assets are displayed as follows:

   • A tag, that does not apply to all the assets but only to a few ones, is displayed in italics.
   • A tag that applies to all the assets is displayed with a normal font.
   • Metadata other than tags: the value of the field is only displayed if it is the same for all the selected assets.

5. Click Download to download a ZIP file containing the assets original renditions.

6. Click edit the tags option that is next to the Tags field.

   • A tag that does not apply to all the assets, but only to a few ones has a grey background.
   • A tag that applies to all the assets has a white background.

   You can:

   • Click x to remove the tag for all the assets.
   • Click + to add the tag to all the assets.
   • Click the arrow and select a tag to add a new tag to all the assets.

   Click OK to write the changes to the form. The box beside the Tags field is automatically checked.

7. Edit the Description field. For example set it to:

   This is a common description

   When a field is edited, its value overwrites the existing values of the selected assets when the form is submitted.

   Note: the box beside the field is automatically checked when the field is edited.

8. Click Update Metadata to submit the form and save the changes for all the assets.

   Note: only the checked metadata are modified.