Adobe Experience Manager enriches the binary content of the uploaded digital files with rich metadata, smart tags, renditions, and other Digital Asset Management (DAM) services. You can upload various types of files, such as images, documents, and raw image files, from your local folder or a network drive to Experience Manager Assets.
A number of upload methods are provided. In addition to the most commonly used browser upload, other methods of adding assets to the Experience Manager repository exist, including desktop clients, like Adobe Asset Link or Experience Manager desktop app, upload and ingestion scripts that customers would create, and automated ingestion integrations added as Experience Manager extensions.
We will focus on upload methods for end users here, and provide links to articles describing technical aspects of asset upload and ingestion using Experience Manager APIs and SDKs.
While you can upload and manage any binary file in Experience Manager, most commonly used file formats have support for additional services, like metadata extraction or preview/rendition generation. Refer to supported file formats for details.
You can also choose to have additional processing done on the uploaded assets. A number of asset processing profiles can be configured on the folder, into which assets are uploaded, to add specific metadata, renditions or image processing services. See process assets when uploaded.
Experience Manager as a Cloud Service leverages a new way of uploading assets - direct binary upload. It is supported by default by the out of the box product capabilities and clients, like Experience Manager user interface, Adobe Asset Link, Experience Manager desktop app, and thus transparent to the end users.
Upload code that is customized or extended by customers technical teams needs to use the new upload APIs and protocols.
Assets as a Cloud Service provides the following upload methods. Adobe recommends that you understand your use case and applicability of an upload option before using it.
Upload method | When to use? | Primary Persona |
---|---|---|
Assets Console user interface | Occasional upload, ease of press and drag, finder upload. Do not use to upload a large number of assets. | All users |
Upload API | For dynamic decisions during upload. | Developer |
Experience Manager desktop app | Low volume asset ingestion, but for migration. | Administrator, Marketer |
Adobe Asset Link | Useful when creatives and marketers work on assets from within the supported Creative Cloud desktop apps. | Creative, Marketer |
Asset bulk ingestor | Recommended for large-scale migrations and occasional bulk ingestions. Only for supported datastores. | Administrator, Developer |
To upload a file (or multiple files), you can either select them on your desktop and drag on the user interface (web browser) to the destination folder. Alternatively, you can initiate upload from from the user interface.
In the Assets user interface, navigate to the location where you want to add digital assets.
To upload the assets, do one of the following:
To select multiple files, select the Ctrl
or the Command
key and select the assets in the file picker dialog. When using an iPad, you can select only one file at a time.
To cancel an ongoing upload, click close (X
) next to the progress bar. When you cancel the upload operation, Assets deletes the partially uploaded portion of the asset.
If you cancel an upload operation before the files are uploaded, Assets stops uploading the current file and refreshes the content. However, files that are already uploaded are not deleted.
The upload progress dialog in Assets displays the count of successfully uploaded files and the files that failed to upload.
In addition, the Assets user interface displays the most recent asset that you upload or the folder that you created first.
To upload nested folder hierarchies, see bulk upload assets.
You can upload an asset with the same path (same name and same location) as that of an existing asset. However, a warning dialog is displayed with the following options:
1
appended to its name.When you select Replace in the Name Conflict dialog, the asset ID is regenerated for the new asset. This ID is different from the ID of the previous asset.
If Asset Insights is enabled to track impressions or clicks with Adobe Analytics, the regenerated asset ID invalidates the data-captured for the asset on Analytics.
To retain the duplicate asset in Assets, click Keep. To delete the duplicate asset you uploaded, tap/click Delete.
Experience Manager Assets tries to prevent you from uploading assets with the forbidden characters in their filenames. If you try to upload an asset with file name containing a disallowed character or more, Assets displays a warning message and stops the upload until you remove these characters or upload with an allowed name. Some upload methods do not stop you from uploading assets with forbidden characters in the filenames but replaces the characters with -
.
To suit specific file naming conventions for your organization, the Upload Assets dialog lets you specify long names for the files that you upload. The following (space-separated list of) characters are not supported:
* / : [ \\ ] | # % { } ? &
* / : [ \\ ] | # % { } ? \" . ^ ; + & \t
The bulk asset ingestor can handle very large number of assets efficiently. However, a large-scale ingestion is not just a broad file dump or a casual migration. For a large-scale ingestion to be a meaningful project that serves your business purpose and is efficient, plan the migration and curate the assets organization. All ingestions are different so instead of generalizing, factor in the nuanced repository composition and business needs. The following are some overarching suggestions to plan and execute a bulk ingestion:
To upload larger number of files, use one of the following approaches. Also, see the use cases and methods
The tool is provided only to the administrators group to use for large-scale ingestion of assets from Azure or S3 datastores. See a video walk-through of the configuration and ingestion.
To configure the tool, follow these steps:
On bulk import configuration page, provide the required values.
image/jpeg, image/.*, video/mp4
./content/dam/imported_assets
You can delete, modify, execute and do more with your created ingestor configurations. When you select a bulk import ingestor configuration, the follow option are available in the toolbar.
In addition to web browser user interface, Experience Manager supports other clients on desktop. They also provide upload experience without the need to go to the web browser.
In order to do additional processing on the uploaded assets, you can apply processing profiles on the upload folders. The profiles are available in the Properties page of a folder in Assets. A digital asset without an extension or with an incorrect extension is not processed as desired. For example, when uploading such assets, either nothing happens or an incorrect processing profile may apply to the asset. Users can still store the binary files in the DAM.
The following tabs are available:
Additionally, if Dynamic Media is enabled on your deployment, the following tabs are available:
Dynamic Media cropping and other operations on assets are non-destructive, that is, the operations do not change the uploaded original. Instead, it provides parameters to crop or transform when delivering the assets.
For folders that have a processing profile assigned, the profile name appears on the thumbnail in the card view. In the list view, the profile name appears in the Processing Profile column.
Technical details of the upload APIs and protocol, and links to open-source SDK and sample clients is provided in asset upload section of the developer reference.