Exporting tags and metadata for DAM assets
There have been several requests for improvements to the export tags and metadata feature, and this release addresses those requests.
Many of you wanted to be able to search and or filter assets and then export all the tags for the resulting assets. So, we added an 'export tags' button that allows you to do just that.
As with other action buttons in search, it will show once you have selected some asset(s) where the user has permission to view the tags. The resulting export will contain all the tags and metadata for the selected assets. In the case whereby the selected assets belong to more than one metaset, the user is given the option to download an export file for each metaset. Additionally, the export is in a format that can be re-imported back into the system, making it possible for admins to update metadata offline in the exported spreadsheet and then re-import the spreadsheet to bulk update the asset metadata.
As well as being able to export tags from search we have added the export button to the asset action bar in the DAM UI for all users who can view the metadata. The button works in the same way as the one in search. It will show up once some asset(s) are selected and will only export tags for the selected assets.
Note for admins: The new 'export tag' button in the action bar does not replace the existing 'export tags and metadata' button found in the bottom system admin bar, allowing sysadmins to export the tags for all folders and subfolders containing the same metaset.
MS Office Previews
Something that comes up often is the failed preview and or thumbnail generation for MS Office documents. We have now overhauled how this works, so more of your documents will get a visual preview of the first page.
There are still some limitations. Please see below.
- Previews are supported for files up to 150MB - i.e., any Office files larger than this won't have a visual preview. This is a limitation from Microsoft themselves in their online API, which we now use, so out of our control.
- Previews are supported for all main Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook file types apart from PowerPoint Template files (.potx). Again, this is a limitation of Microsoft's own API. The specific Office (and OpenOffice) file types that are supported for previewing are these: doc, docx, dot, dotx, dotm, msg, odp, ods, pps, odt, ppsx, ppt, pptx, rtf, xls, xlsx, xlsm.
For any files where the thumbnail is not generated, you can, of course, still add a custom one.
Workflow admin improvements
Following the workflow UI refresh in the last release, we have tidied up the admin area for workflows to make setting up and maintaining them more manageable.
We have made the following improvements:
- On the main Workflow Templates screen you can, at a glance, see which ones are active and if any of them have any configuration issues. You can now also see how many stages each template has.
- On both the main Workflow Templates screen and the overview for a particular Workflow Template, we now auto-check for many common configuration errors. Brandworkz will show a warning icon for the relevant issue/stage if any errors are found. This is especially useful if you are building a new workflow.
- On the Workflow Template overview, you can now easily see who the actioners are in a new “Actioners” column.
Reports
New Filter for Insights
A new widget to be able to filter by the name of a transform has been added to the Insights Dashboard. Now you can see which transforms are being used to embed assets into other applications.
New Date selection Previous Month
The quick options on the time picker are convenient, but a few of you pointed out it's missing an option, Previous Month. So, we added it!. Now you can easily quickly produce reports for everything that happened the month before.
Utility Tools
New admin page to see Supported File Types
If you as a sysadmin go to Settings -> Utility Tools, you will see an entry under Assets called “Supported file types”. Here you can see a table listing all the file types we support in terms of upload and download and which ones we support visual previews for, image/video transcoding and text extraction for search.
As per other admin tables, you can filter down and sort the columns so you can, for instance, search for “video” to see all video formats supported or search for “preview” to see which formats we create a visual preview for.
Bug Fixes
- Instability when uploading or bulk editing hundreds of files.
- Improvements to searching using AND / OR conditions in conjunction with search strings within quotes
- Reinstate the full set of buttons on the wysiwyg/textEditor input fields in the Logo Finder and under Folder Properties custom metadata.
- API: Add support for multiple languages in POST /saveMetadata
- System administrators were not able to access the supported file type page
- Security fixes