Set up the metadata keywords

In this video, you will:

  • Understand how keywords are used in Workfront DAM
  • Set up a keyword list
  • Create and import a list of keywords
Transcript
Okay, now my favorite part, keywords. Okay, so remember, keywords are those descriptive words, and they are searchable, okay? This is probably going to be one of the main things that your users are searching on. And having consistent keywords, consistent metadata in general, make assets easier to find.
So, when we were taking a look at that asset earlier, let’s go ahead and jump back in there.
Okay, when we look at the asset, like I said, they’re descriptive. You can type them in one by one, okay? But typing in keywords manually leads to some problems, okay? First of all, typos, okay? If somebody spells France wrong, switches around the N and the C, it’s not going to show up in searches unless you intentionally misspell it in your search criteria, okay? So, there’s the inconsistency, so inconsistency you get with misspellings. There’s the inconsistency with what gets entered on a photo. You know, maybe we need to always put country, city, state, or province if it applies, okay? And people are going to forget, part of that is they type things in, okay? Somebody’s going to type in tourism, somebody’s going to type in tourist, somebody’s going to type in landmarks, somebody else is going to type in monument. Okay? So you’re, it’s all about that consistency. So that’s why I recommend, and your Workfront consultant’s going to recommend, a keyword taxonomy or this pick list, okay? Give them a list of keywords to choose from. You’re not going to get those random wild card entries. You’re not going to get the misspelled entries. You’re going to get the consistency, okay? I’m going to show you how to make one of these lists. You’re going to be able to change this list whenever you need to and make sure that you’re searching in your system is as accurate as it can be.
So, let’s go ahead and head back into our metadata schema area. Pop over to our keywords tab here and let me show you how to set up a taxonomy manually here in Workfront DAM. And then I’ll show you the easy way how to do it. Okay, hard way first, then the easy way.
So, right here you can see we’ve got a taxonomy started, okay? And if you pop any of these open you’ve just got a nice parent child tree going.
Now, if I need to add another main keyword I can do that right here.
And you know what? My coworker Kendall put in Star Wars so I am going to put in Sherlock, okay? So there is my main keyword. Now, what are your main keywords going to look like? Well, it’s going to depend on your organization, your assets. Are you a photography company? Well, maybe you’ll have, you know different countries of the world. Maybe you’ll have different themes, different topics. Maybe your keywords could even be divided up by the different departments. You know, maybe event marketing gets one set of keywords and product marketing gets another. And content marketing has their own set of keywords, okay? Just going to depend on what you need, how your organization’s set up.
Now, once I get a main keyword in to create sub keywords I actually need to right click on the main keyword and hit add, and I can start putting them in. Okay? And I’m going to have to do that for each keyword that I want to put in.
Okay, kind of time consuming. I’m going to show you a shorter way to do it here in just a second but then I’ll let you control what’s underneath, okay? Now we can even add sub keywords under sub keywords. So under John Watson, maybe I want to put Doctor, maybe I want to put Army, maybe I’m going to put Mary Watson.
Okay? So I can stack these as many deep as I need to.
I haven’t run into a limit yet, but just keep in mind, the deeper you make those branches it’s going to get a little bit more confusing for the users. They’re not going to understand exactly what they’re picking and it just kind of makes it harder to reach too.
Okay? So under France, I could put Paris.
I forgot how to spell that name, Ron.
Okay, you guys get the idea, right? Okay, so, this would be your keyword taxonomy, your pick list for people to choose from.
Now, when I right click on one of these you’ll notice that I can also rename it. I can also delete one of my keywords. Just keep in mind if you delete a keyword you’re deleting all of the child keywords also or everything under it. So if I deleted France, I’m going to delete Mt St Michel, Paris and Rouen also. If I delete John Watson, I’m also going to delete Army, Doctor and Mary Watson.
Now, I don’t know about you guys but just putting in those couple sub keywords doing the right clicking on each of the keywords I already got a little cramp in my finger, my mouse finger. So let me show you how you can import a keyword taxonomy. Okay, what you’re going to do is you’re going to set up your taxonomy in Excel, okay? And you can kind of see here how we’ve got it staggered, okay? You’re going to do each level of keywords in its own column and then you’re going to step over a column and down a row and put your next level of keyword, over and down for your next level.
Okay? So you can see here we’ve got North America and our next level is United States. Then all at the same level we have a couple of our states here and then under Colorado we have Denver, okay? We’ve done the same thing with Canada under Nova Scotia, we have Halifax.
So we could continue set up our keywords like that. I’ve just got some different, you know countries in here, you know, maybe under Norway. Let’s go ahead and insert another line here. Scotland, wrong place, hate that, hate it when that happens.
There we go. So under Oslo or under Norway, we’ll put Oslo.
I know that’s not how you spell Edinburgh but we’re going to go with that for now. Okay? Under United Kingdom, okay, we can put London which really should probably be England. But anyway, you guys get the idea, okay? So what you’re going to do after you get that set up in Excel is you’re going to export it as a plain text file. So I’m not able to import the Excel spreadsheet the system just doesn’t support that. So what I need to do is I actually need to come up here under file in Excel and do a Save As.
And with that Save As I am going to choose one of my options that says .txt, okay? Now, what I have discovered here even though I’m on a Mac today, this Windows formatted text that’s the .txt option, works the best. Okay? So I’m going to do that. I’m going to name it number three 'cause I’ve got a couple other ones in there already and I’m going to save that out, okay? Okay, so let me go find that file real quick. Sorry about that. Should have had that set up. Let’s see, documents, training, damn, metadata. Here we go.
Okay, and this is what you should end up with, its just a plain text file. This file happens to be in text edit on a Mac, maybe in Notepad on your Windows machine but you can see the most important thing here is that hierarchy has been maintained. We’ve got North America, step over United States, step over state, step over city. If you open up your text file and you don’t see these step overs, you don’t see these indents, everything is just in one big long list you need to export it again in a different .txt format. Okay, took me a couple tries to figure out that this is the one that I indeed wanted. Back, let me show you what it looks like. If I do a Save As and I just pick like, the tab delimited text, put that on my desktop make it easier to get to.
Okay.
Oops, that one did actually work. I’m actually kind of surprised with that. But again, it’s all about that step over and step down, those indents in there, okay? Of course my option never, my example never works the way that I want it to, okay? But if you see everything on one big list that’s not what you want.
Now that you’ve got that txt file exported, okay, then you can import it.
So the first thing we’re going to do we’re going to go in and select that file. So I need to go to documents, training, DAM, metadata.
There’s that number three file, okay? I need to decide if I want to append or replace. So if I append I’m just going to add to what’s already in this list. If I hit replace, I’m going to overwrite this list. Basically everything that’s already here will be deleted and it’ll put in only the things that are here in that taxonomy list. In fact, that’s what I’m going to do today.
And then over here on the side we’ve got our import button, okay? Gives you a warning to let me know that I am going to replace the existing taxonomy.
Okay, and there we go. It looks like we got it imported just fine.
And if I take a look here, let’s see, under North America okay, there’s Denver, there’s Halifax under Nova Scotia. See I changed in Europe, right? Put Norway, I put London, I put Edinburgh.
To me, this is a much easier way, importing, doing the taxonomy list in Excel, importing that .txt file is much faster, much easier than having to go in here, do a lot of clicking, do a lot of right clicking and typing things in, okay? Plus with the the keyword file, with Excel, you can pass it around to other people, have other people contribute. Doing it this way here and manually in Workfront DAM your only system admins are going to be able to do that.

Keyword best practices

It is important to outline best practices to guide your keyword efforts. Below are some guidelines.

  • Be consistent with acronyms and abbreviations. Don’t keyword one asset with “AZ” and another asset with “Arizona.”
  • Be consistent in plural versus singular. Choose one format or always use both. For example, either use “feet” and “hands” or “foot, feet” and “hand, hands.”
  • Be consistent in how you describe an action or activity, for instance, either use “running” and “swimming” or “run” and “swim.”
  • Don’t be too narrow. “Keokuk, IA” may be too narrow for a keyword and completely unrecognizable to users. “Southeast Iowa” would be better.
  • Don’t be too broad. “University” may not work, especially if everything in your system relates to a university. Determine what will distinguish the assets, such as a specific college name.
  • Be mindful of relevance. Just because every asset has a project code does not mean it will be useful to users relying on keywords to find assets. If this information needs to stay with the asset, consider adding it in another metadata field.
  • Don’t use too few keywords, otherwise they won’t help narrow search results.
  • Don’t rely on keywords for every piece of data. Use metadata fields for information such as photographer name or location.

Keyword strategy

A keyword strategy will help you achieve a high level of consistency and accuracy with the way your assets are tagged.

Have use cases in mind when adding keywords to keep your efforts focused. Fill in this sentence when considering a keyword: “How likely is it that [insert person/role] will search by [insert keyword] when looking for [insert asset]?

Outline what types of keywords should be added to assets. A good rule of thumb with adding keywords is to answer the following basic questions:

  • Who—Who is the asset targeted for?
  • What—What is the intended purpose of the asset?
  • Where—Where was the asset created and/or where can it be used?
  • When—When was the asset created and/or when it should be used?
  • Why—Why was it created (for an event, a brochure)?
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