Set up a metadata template

Well, let’s do one more topic related to our metadata and that is a metadata template.

Now, I’ve talked about how some metadata comes with the asset. Some metadata you can type in yourself. But think about this. I just loaded in 500 pictures for various…

For travel magazines, and I’ve got pictures from Seattle and Paris and Oslo, and London and Buenos Aires and all of these other places. Then I’m going to want the same metadata and the same keywords on each of those.

But I don’t want to go in and do it manually on each individual photo. I don’t even really want to do a bulk edit and have to go through and select all the pictures and do it that way. So if I do a little bit of planning I can set up a metadata template that will have certain metadata fields filled in, get it applied to the folder that I’m going to load all of these assets into. And then as I load all of those assets in, all of this metadata’s going to get applied.

So let’s take a look at what that’s going to look like. So let’s do the setups first.

I have a ton of Paris pictures. So let’s make a Paris template. So we’re here in… Still in our system settings in our metadata templates area. We’ll just hit our plus and we will give the template a name.

And then we’re going to go through our list of, oops, metadata fields and fill out the ones that we want to fill out.

So continue on. As you fill out each metadata field, you want to apply to the incoming assets in a particular folder, you’re going to decide if you want to append or replace the information that may already exist.

So a couple of these. I’m going to go ahead and say, replace the information, delete what’s already there, put in this new information. But on a couple of these, I am going to go ahead and say append. Now, you’ll notice with my pick list, doesn’t let me, 'cause that’s only a one choice pick list.

Now, when it comes to keywords, because I have my taxonomy enforced, you’ll notice I can’t go in and type keywords but I can definitely grab them from my taxonomy.

And we’re just going to append to what’s there.

And let’s say that these are all part of the job, since this is for the travel magazine we’ll do 1234TravelMag.

And we’ll go ahead and save that template.

Now, if I need to go back in and make any changes, over here in the actions on the toolbar I can hit edit and that’ll take me back in and I can make any changes that I need.

But now I need to decide which folders this metadata template is going to apply to.

So remember, if I apply this template to a folder, anything coming into that folder will have that metadata applied. So I’m going to go ahead and pick the select folders right here.

And it’s going to show me all of the folders that are available to me. Well, since I’m the system admin, that’s all of them.

And I’m going to go ahead and here, and I’m going to pick the Paris folder to apply that metadata template to.

If you pick a parent level folder, you can see that you can apply it to the nested folders if you need to. In this case, only want it to apply to the Paris folder. So I’ll go ahead and hit save. It’s even going to tell you how many folders that metadata template’s applied to and you can click that number and it takes you into that exact same window.

So just a couple ways to do the same thing.

Now let’s go ahead and apply Star Wars also.

And you know what, we’re actually going to apply that to the same folder. So we can have two metadata templates or more applied to the same folder.

Just sometimes be careful, you may have conflicting information, with the created and that kind of thing. So just be careful when you do that that you’re not going to wipe out the information you really need.

So now that we have those created, let’s go back to our assets.

Let’s get that Paris folder open and let me grab a couple pictures here.

And we’ll drag and drop those in.

Oops, or we’ll upload them. Let’s do those. Sorry, I was working in another application earlier and I could just drag and drop them there on the main page.

So we’ve got 83 through 88 going in.

Now, you guys, when you’re loading things you can minimize this. It’ll give you… You can see down here your updates to let you know how many are loaded. It’ll let you know when all of them have gone in.

Just give that a refresh. So we can see those are processing.

And as those come in, the metadata’s going to apply. So you can see that not quite everything’s there yet. Do another refresh here.

Let’s check this one.

So there we go. Looks like I missed something on my metadata template. Let’s go take a look at that.

What did I do? I always do something wrong on these.

Keyword Europe and France.

Looks like maybe it’s just still processing.

I will admit that I have found this to be a little bit touchy and sometimes it doesn’t all get applied. So that’s interesting. But you can see here, it’s actually put in Kendall’s name from some of the other… From that Star Wars metadata template that went in.

And probably what happened is since that was the last one applied that’s the information that went in. So I’m guessing that our two metadata templates conflicted and that’s why I’m not getting any keywords.

So let’s undo that.

In fact, let’s just delete that one.

Oh, I didn’t get the Paris one saved. That’s what happened.

Select folders.

There we go.

Looks like it is just one metadata template per folder. That’s what happened. Sorry about that. I had tested that before and had totally forgotten that.

So it is one metadata template per folder, otherwise it’s the last one applied that wins.

So let’s try this again here.

Give you a better example.

And there we’ve got the new ones loading in.

Let’s see, I grabbed 89 through 93, so we’ll just give that a second.

And of course the day that I need to demonstrate this is the day that they take forever to process.

Well, while those are processing, let me show you another way to apply the metadata template to a folder.

So if I already have a folder existing, and maybe I’m not a system admin, maybe I can’t go into the system setups and apply the metadata templates that way. I can do it from right here in Workfront DAM.

I’m going to come in on one of my folders and I’m going to pick edit, here from the little dropdown menu on the right.

And then I’m going to expand the advanced options. And then right down here at the bottom, is my apply a metadata template. So you can see now that I have all those metadata templates that exist in the system, I can access and just apply it to that folder that way.

So if you’re not able to get into the system setups, there’s always a way to do that. You can also create, whoops. When you create a new folder and you go into that advanced options, you can apply a metadata template from the point that you’re actually creating the folder to. And honestly, that’s probably what you’re going to want to do or create a folder and then go apply it before you start loading things in.

Because the metadata template doesn’t apply to items that are already in the folder.

So it’s not retroactive. You actually have to load new things in for the metadata template to start applying. Looks like we just got a little bit of hangup on our system today with those processing, but you guys understand what I’m saying. So one metadata template per folder. If you do select two, for some reason, it’s the last one that you’ve applied and it will pre-fill a lot of this information for you.

So we can see there, it picked up from Kendall Star Wars one earlier.

Now what am I going to do if I didn’t get that metadata template applied to my folder when I should have and somebody has already loaded in a bunch of assets? Well, in that case, you can come through, you can do a multi-select.

And if you come to this little icon right here the little pencil and paper, that’s going to let me edit the metadata in bulk.

Now I can select the template and it will pre-fill with all of the metadata fields that have been selected.

Or I can just go in I don’t even have to pick a template I can just fill in the fields myself.

But the thing to remember and this is the thing that got me multiple times when I first started doing this, is even though I applied the metadata template or typed things in the field, I still have to pick the apply to all.

And then I can set the append or replace. If you don’t pick the apply to all, in fact, let’s go in on our keywords here.

We’ll do that.

It’s not going to apply that information. Took me probably about 15 times doing this to figure that out.

Those check boxes do not come pre-filled, so you do have to select them yourself.

Once you get all those filled in, you hit save, you’ll see your little green metadata saved button popped up. Then you can close this. And if I do a quick refresh now, select one of my assets.

You can see there are my keywords that I selected from my taxonomy and education team has filled in, that type of thing. So the metadata fields went ahead and picked up.

Any questions about the metadata templates? I highly recommend them. I think they are so handy, so nice to have. Get them applied to your folders, especially if everything coming into that folder has to have the same metadata. It could even be one metadata field. They have to apply to everything in that folder. But at least you know everything that’s coming in is going to be there.