Process digital assets

Last update: May 3, 2023

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CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

Adobe Experience Manager Assets allows you to work on your digital assets in many ways to allow for robust asset processing. You can use the available processing methods or extend the methods to ensure end-to-end business process completion using, audits and compliance of, discovery and distribution of, and basic sanity of your digital assets. You can do all this while achieving the required scale and customization.

Understand workflows

For asset processing, Experience Manager uses workflows. Workflows help automate the business logic or activities. Granular steps to accomplish specific tasks are provided by default and developers can create their own custom steps. These steps can be combined in a logical order to create workflows. For example, a workflow can automatically apply watermark on uploaded images based on a specific criteria such as metadata embedded in image, folder it is uploaded to, resolution of the image, and so on. Another example is a workflow configured to watermark images in such a manner and simultaneously addressing multiple asset management needs such as adding metadata, creating renditions, adding intelligent tags for asset discovery, publishing to a datastore, setting permissions for user access, and so on.

Default workflows available in Experience Manager

By default, all uploaded assets are processed using DAM Update Asset workflow. The workflow executes for each uploaded asset and accomplishes basic asset management tasks such as rendition generation, metadata writeback, page extraction, media extraction, and transcoding.

To see the various workflow models available by default, see Tools > Workflow > Models in Experience Manager.

Some of the default workflow

Figure: Some of the default workflow available in Experience Manager.

Apply workflows to assets

Applying workflows to digital assets is the same as for website pages. For a complete guide on how to create and use workflows, see start workflows.

Use workflows in digital assets to activate the asset or create watermarks. Many of the workflows for assets are automatically turned on. For example, the workflow that automatically creates a rendition after an image is edited is automatically turned on.

NOTE
If a workflow available in Classic UI is not available in Touch enabled UI, like Request to Activate and Request to Deactivate, see make workflow models.

Apply a workflow to an Experience Manager asset

To apply a workflow to an asset, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the location of the asset for which you want to start a workflow, and click the asset to open the asset page.

  2. Navigate to the location of the asset for which you want to start a workflow, and click the asset to open the asset page. Select Timeline from the menu to display the timeline.

    timeline-2

  3. Click Actions at the bottom to open the list of actions available for the asset.

  4. Click Start Workflow from the list.

  5. In the Start Workflow dialog box, select a workflow model from the list.

    chlimage_1-50

  6. (Optional) Specify a title for the workflow, which can be used to reference the workflow instance.

    chlimage_1-51

  7. Click Start, then click Proceed in the dialog box to confirm. Each step of workflow is displayed in the timeline as an event.

    chlimage_1-52

Apply a workflow to multiple assets

  1. From the Assets console, navigate to the location of the assets for which you want to start a workflow, and select the assets. Select Timeline from the menu to display the timeline.

    chlimage_1-136

  2. Click the Actions at the bottom.

  3. Click Start Workflow. In the Start Workflow dialog, select a workflow model from the list.

    chlimage_1-138

  4. (Optional) Specify a title for the workflow, which can be used to reference the workflow instance.

  5. Click Start and then click Confirm in the dialog. The workflow runs on all the assets you selected.

Apply a workflow to multiple folders

The procedure to apply a workflow to multiple folders is similar to the procedure to apply a workflow to multiple assets. Select the folders in the Assets console, and perform steps 2-7 of the procedure apply a workflow to multiple assets.

Apply a workflow to a collection

For details of applying a workflow to a collection, see apply a workflow on a collection.

Auto-start a workflow to process assets conditionally

Administrators can configure workflow to automatically execute and process assets based on pre-defined conditions. The functionality is useful for line-of-business users and marketers, for example, to create custom workflow on specific folders. Say all assets from an agency’s photoshoot can be watermarked or all assets uploaded by a freelancer can be processed to create specific renditions.

For a workflow model, users can create a workflow launcher that executes it. A workflow launcher monitors changes in the content repository and executes the workflow when the pre-defined conditions are fulfilled. Administrators can provide access to marketers to create the workflows and configure launcher. Users can modify the default DAM Update Asset workflow to add the extra steps required to process specific assets. The workflow executes on all newly uploaded assets. Use one of the following approaches to limit the execution of the extra steps on specific assets:

  • Make a copy of the DAM Update Asset workflow and modify it to execute on a specific folder hierarchy. This approach is useful for a few folders.
  • The extra processing steps can be added using an OR split as conditionally applicable to as many folders as required.

Best practices and limitations

  • Consider your needs for all types of renditions when designing workflows. If you do not foresee the need of a rendition in the future, remove its creation step from the workflow. Renditions cannot be deleted in bulk afterwards. Undesired renditions may take up a lot of storage space after prolonged use of Experience Manager. For individual assets, you can remove renditions manually from the user interface. For multiple assets, you can either customize Experience Manager to delete specific renditions or delete the assets and upload those again.
  • By default, DAM Update Asset workflow includes some steps to create thumbnails and web renditions. If any default renditions are removed from the workflow, the user interface of Assets does not render properly.
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