Share and distribute assets managed in Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager Assets lets you share assets, folders, and collections with members of your organization and external entities, including partners and vendors. Use the following methods to share assets from Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service:

Sharing assets through a link is a convenient way of making the resources available to external parties, marketers, and other Experience Manager users. The functionality allows anonymous users to access and download the assets shared with them. When downloading assets from a shared link, Experience Manager Assets uses an asynchronous service that offers faster and uninterrupted download. The assets to be downloaded are queued in the background into ZIP archives of manageable file size. For large downloads, the download is bundled into multiple files of 100 GB per file size.

NOTE
  • You need Edit ACL permission on the folder or the asset that you want to share as a link.
  • Enable outbound emails before sharing a link with the users.

There are two ways of sharing the assets using the link sharing functionality:

  1. Generate a shared link, copy, and share the asset link with other users. The default expiration time of the link is one day. You cannot change the expiration time when sharing the copied link with other users.

  2. Generate a shared link and share the asset link through email. In this case, you can modify the default values such as expiration date and time, and allow downloading the original assets and its renditions. You can send email to multiple users by adding their email addresses.

Link Sharing dialog

To share assets as a public URL:

  1. Log in to Experience Manager Assets and navigate to Files.
  2. Select the assets or folder containing assets. From the toolbar, click Share Link.
  3. The Link Sharing dialog appears which contains an auto-generated asset link in the Share Link field.
  4. Copy the asset link and share it with the users.

To share assets through email:

  1. Select the assets or folder containing assets. From the toolbar, click Share Link.

  2. The Link Sharing dialog appears which contains an auto-generated asset link in the Share Link field.

    • In the email address box, type the email ID of the user with whom you want to share the link. You can share the link with multiple users. If the user is a member of your organization, select their email ID from the suggestions that appear in the drop-down list. If the user is external, type the complete email ID and press Enter; the email ID is added to the list of users.

    • In the Subject box, type a subject to specify the purpose of the assets that are shared.

    • In the Message box, type a message if necessary.

    • In the Expiration field, use the date picker to specify an expiration date and time for the link.

    • Enable the Allow download of original file check box to allow the recipients to download the original rendition.

  3. Click Share. A message confirms that the link is shared with the users. The users receive an email containing the shared link.

Link Sharing email

Any user having access to the shared asset link can download the assets bundled in a zip folder. The download process is same, whether a user is accessing the copied asset link, or using the asset link shared through the email.

  • Click on the asset link or paste the URL in your browser. The Link Share interface opens wherein you can switch to the Card View or List View.

  • In the Card View, you can hover the mouse over the shared asset or shared assets folder to either select the assets or queue them for download.

  • By default, the user interface shows the Download Inbox option. It reflects the list of all the shared assets or folders that are queued for download along with their status.

  • On selecting the assets or folder, a Queue Download option appears on the screen. Click the Queue Download option to initiate the download process.

    Queue download

  • While the download file is prepared, click on the Download Inbox option to view the status of your download. For large downloads, click on the Refresh button to update the status.

    Download inbox

  • Once the processing is complete, click on the Download button to download the zip file.

    NOTE

    If a shared asset is moved to a different location, its link stops working. Re-create the link and reshare with the users.

Download assets and share separately

Users can download the required assets and share these outside of Experience Manager. For more information, see how to search assets, how to download assets, and how to download collections

Share assets with creative professionals

Marketers and line-of-business users can easily share approved assets with their creative professionals using,

  • Experience Manager desktop app: The app works on Windows and Mac. See desktop app overview. To know how any authorized desktop user can easily access the shared assets, see browse, search, and preview assets. The desktop users can create assets and share it back with their counterparts who are Experience Manager users, for example, by uploading new images. See upload assets using desktop app.

  • Adobe Asset Link: The creative professionals can search and use assets directly from within Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop.

Configure asset sharing

The different options to share the assets require specific configuration and have specific prerequisites.

To generate the URL for assets you want to share with users, use the Link Sharing dialog. Users with administrator privileges or with read permissions at /var/dam/share location are able to view the links shared with them. Sharing assets through a link is a convenient way of making resources available to external parties without them having to first log in to Assets.

NOTE

If you want to share links from your Author instance to external entities, ensure that you expose only the following URLs for GET requests. Block other URLs to ensure that your Author instance is secure.

  • [aem_server]:[port]/linkshare.html
  • [aem_server]:[port]/linksharepreview.html
  • [aem_server]:[port]/linkexpired.html

Enable desktop actions to use with desktop app

From within the Assets user interface in a browser, you can explore the asset locations or check-out and open the asset for editing in your desktop application. These options are called desktop actions and to enable it, see enable desktop actions in Assets web interface.

Enable desktop actions to use as shortcut when working with desktop app

Adobe Asset Link streamlines collaboration between creatives and marketers in the content creation process. It connects Adobe Experience Manager Assets with Creative Cloud desktop apps Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. The Adobe Asset Link panel allows creatives to access and modify content stored in Assets without leaving the creative apps they are most familiar with.

See how to configure Assets to use it with Adobe Asset Link.

Best practices and troubleshooting

  • Asset folders or collections that contain a whitespace in their name may not get shared.
  • If users cannot download the shared assets, check with your Experience Manager administrator what the download limits are. The default value is 100 MB.
  • For a user to preview a video that is shared using link sharing, the video must have a static video rendition available at /jcr:content/renditions location in the video’s node in the repository. The preview is not dependent on the availability of a Dynamic Media rendition.
  • When downloading a video asset via link share, the Dynamic Media renditions are not included in the downloaded archive.

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