DocumentationAEM 6.5User Guide

Manage metadata of your digital assets managing-metadata-for-digital-assets

Last update: Mon Nov 06 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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Adobe Experience Manager Assets keeps metadata for every asset. It allows easier categorization and organization of assets and it helps people who are looking for a specific asset. With the ability to extract metadata from files uploaded to Experience Manager Assets, metadata management integrates with the creative workflow. With the ability to keep and manage metadata with your assets, you can automatically organize and process assets based on their metadata.

Metadata and its origin how-to-edit-or-add-metadata

Metadata is additional information about the asset that can be searched. It is added to assets and in Experience Manager it is processed when you upload an asset. You can edit the existing metadata, add new metadata properties to existing fields. Organizations need controlled and reliable metadata vocabularies. Hence Experience Manager Assets does not allow for on-demand adding of new metadata properties. Only administrators and developers can add new properties or fields that hold metadata. Users can populate the existing fields with metadata.

The following methods can be used to add metadata to digital assets:

  • To begin with, the native applications that create assets add some metadata to it. For example, Acrobat adds some metadata to PDF files or a camera adds some basic metadata to the photographs. When generating assets, you can add the metadata in native applications itself. For example, you can add IPTC metadata in Adobe Lightroom.

  • Before uploading an asset to Experience Manager, you can edit and modify metadata using either the native application used to create an asset or using some other metadata editing application. When you upload an asset to Experience Manager, the metadata is processed. For example, see how to work with metadata in Adobe Bridge and see the tags panel for Adobe Bridge in Adobe Exchange.

  • In Experience Manager Assets, you can manually add or edit metadata of assets in the Properties page.

  • You can use metadata profiles functionality of Experience Manager Assets to automatically add metadata when assets are uploaded to DAM.

Add or edit metadata in Experience Manager Assets add-edit-metadata

To edit the metadata of an asset in Assets user interface, follow these steps:

  1. Do one of the following:

    • From the Assets interface, select the asset and click View Properties from the toolbar.
    • From the asset thumbnail, select the View Properties quick action.
    • From the asset page, click View Properties Assets info icon from the toolbar.

    The asset page displays all the asset’s metadata. The metadata is extracted when the asset is uploaded (ingested) into Experience Manager.

    Select Properties of an asset to view its metadata

    Figure: Edit or add metadata on asset Properties page.

  2. Make edits to the metadata under the various tabs, as required, and when completed, click Save from the toolbar to save your changes. Click Close to return to the Assets web interface.

    note note
    NOTE
    If a text field is empty, there is no existing metadata set. You can enter a value into the field and save it to add that metadata property.

Any changes to the metadata of an asset are written back to the original binary as part of its XMP data. The metadata write-back workflow adds the metadata to the original binary. Changes made to the existing properties (such as dc:title) are overwritten and new properties (including custom properties like cq:tags) are added with the schema.

XMP write-back is supported and enabled for the platforms and file formats described in technical requirements.

Edit metadata properties of multiple assets editing-metadata-properties-of-multiple-assets

Adobe Enterprise Manager Assets lets you edit the metadata of multiple assets simultaneously so you can quickly propagate common metadata changes to assets in bulk. You can also edit the metadata for multiple collections in bulk. Use the properties page to perform metadata changes on multiple assets or collections:

  • Change metadata properties to a common value
  • Add or modify tags

To customize the metadata properties page, including adding, modifying, deleting metadata properties, use the schema editor.

NOTE
The bulk editing methods work for assets available in a folder or a collection. For the assets that are available across folders or match a common criteria, it is possible to bulk update the metadata after searching.
  1. In the Assets user interface, navigate to the location of the assets you want to edit.
  2. Select the assets for which you want to edit common properties.
  3. From the toolbar, click Properties to open the properties page for the selected assets.
  4. Modify the metadata properties for selected assets under the various tabs.
  5. To view the metadata of a specific asset, cancel the selection of the remaining assets in the list. If you cancel the selection of a few assets on the Properties page, the metadata of such assets is not updated.
  6. To select a different metadata schema for the assets, click Settings from the toolbar, and select a schema. Click Save & Close.
  7. To append the new metadata with the existing metadata in fields that contain multiple values, select Append mode. If you do not select this option, the new metadata replaces the existing metadata in the fields. Click Submit.

Metadata schema bulk apply to multiple assets

CAUTION
For single-value fields, the new metadata is not appended to the existing value in the field even if you select Append mode.

Import metadata import-metadata

Assets lets you import asset metadata in bulk using a CSV file. You can do bulk updates for the recently uploaded assets or the existing assets by importing a CSV file. You can also ingest asset metadata in bulk from third-party system in CSV format.

The metadata import is asynchronous and does not impede system performance. Simultaneous update of the metadata for multiple assets can be resource-intensive because of XMP writeback activity if workflow flag is checked. Plan such an import during lean server usage so that performance for other users is not impacted.

NOTE
To import metadata on custom namespaces, first register the namespaces.

  1. Navigate to the Assets user interface, and click Create from the toolbar.

  2. From the menu, select Metadata.

  3. In the Metadata Import page, click Select File. Select the CSV file with the metadata.

  4. Specify the following parameters. See a sample CSV file at metadata-import-sample-file.csv.

    table 0-row-2 1-row-2 2-row-2 3-row-2 4-row-2 5-row-2 1-align-left 2-align-left 4-align-left 5-align-left 7-align-left 8-align-left 10-align-left 11-align-left 13-align-left 14-align-left 16-align-left 17-align-left
    Metadata import parameters Description
    Batch Size Number of assets in a batch for which metadata is to be imported. Default value is 50. Maximum value is 100.
    Field Separator Default value is , (a comma). You can specify any other character.
    Multi Value Delimiter Separator for metadata values. Default value is `
    Launch Workflows False by default. When set to true and default settings are in effect for the DAM Metadata WriteBack workflow (that writes metadata to the binary XMP data). Enabling the workflows slows the system down.
    Asset Path Column Name Defines the column name for the CSV file with assets.

  5. Click Import from the toolbar. After the metadata is imported, a notification is displayed in Notification inbox.

  6. To verify correct import, navigate to an asset’s Properties page and verify the values in the fields.

To add date and timestamp when importing metadata, use YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fff-00:00 format for date and time. Date and time are separated by T, hh is hours in 24-hour format, fff is nanoseconds, and -00:00 is timezone offset. For example, 2020-03-26T11:26:00.000-07:00 is March 26, 2020 at 11:26:00.000 AM PST time.

CAUTION
If the date format does not match YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fff-00:00, the date values are not set. The date formats of exported metadata CSV file is in the format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss-00:00. If you want to import it, convert it to the acceptable format by adding the nanoseconds value denoted by fff.

Export metadata export-metadata

You can export metadata for multiple assets in a CSV format. The metadata is exported asynchronously and does not impact the performance of the system. To export metadata, Experience Manager traverses through the properties of the asset node jcr:content/metadata and its child nodes and exports the metadata properties in a CSV file.

A few use cases for exporting metadata in bulk are:

  • Import the metadata in a third-party system when migrating assets.
  • Share asset metadata with a wider project team.
  • Test or audit the metadata for compliance.
  • Externalize the metadata to localize it separately.

  1. Select the asset folder that contains assets for which you want to export metadata. From the toolbar, select Export metadata.

  2. In the Metadata Export dialog, specify a name for the CSV file. To export metadata for assets in subfolders, select Include assets in subfolders.

    Interface and options to export metadata of all assets in a folder

  3. Select the desired options. Provide a filename and if necessary a date.

  4. In the Properties to be exported field, specify whether you want to export all or specific properties. If you choose Selective properties to be exported, add the desired properties.

  5. From the toolbar, click Export. A message confirms that the metadata is exported. Close the message.

  6. Open the inbox notification for the export job. Select the job and click Open from the toolbar. To download the CSV file with the metadata, click CSV Download from the toolbar. Click Close.

    Dialog to download the CSV file containing metadata exported in bulk

    Figure: Dialog to download the CSV file containing metadata exported in bulk.

Edit metadata of collections collections-metadata

For details, see view and edit collection metadata and edit metadata of multiple collections in bulk.

Apply a metadata profile to folders applying-a-metadata-profile-to-folders

When you assign a metadata profile to a folder, any subfolders automatically inherit the profile from its parent folder. This means that you can assign only one metadata profile to a folder. As such, consider carefully the folder structure of where you upload, store, use, and archive assets.

If you assigned a different metadata profile to a folder, the new profile overrides the previous profile. The previously existing folder assets remain unchanged. The new profile is applied on the assets that are added to the folder later.

Folders that have a profile assigned to it are indicated in the user interface by the name of the profile appearing in the card name.

Card view displays the metadata profile applied to a folder

You can apply metadata profiles to specific folders or globally to all assets.

You can reprocess assets in a folder that already has an existing metadata profile that you later changed. See Reprocessing assets in a folder after you have edited its processing profile.

You can apply a metadata profile to a folder from within the Tools menu or if you are in the folder, from Properties. This section describes how to apply metadata profiles to folders both ways.

Folders that have a profile already assigned to it are indicated by the display of the profile’s name directly below the folder name.

You can reprocess assets in a folder that already has an existing video profile that you later changed. See Reprocessing assets in a folder after you have edited its processing profile.

Apply metadata profiles to folders from Profiles user interface applying-metadata-profiles-to-folders-from-profiles-user-interface

Follow the steps to apply metadata profile:

  1. Click the Experience Manager logo and navigate to Tools > Assets > Metadata Profiles.
  2. Select the metadata profile that you want to apply to a folder or multiple folders.
  3. Click Apply Metadata Profile to Folder(s) and select the folder or multiple folders you want use to receive the newly uploaded assets and click Done. Folders that have a profile already assigned to it are indicated by the display of the profile’s name directly below the folder name.

Apply metadata profiles to folders from Properties applying-metadata-profiles-to-folders-from-properties

  1. In the left rail, click Assets then navigate to the folder that you want to apply a metadata profile to.

  2. On the folder, click the check mark to select it and then click Properties.

  3. Select the Metadata Profiles tab and select the profile from the popup menu and click Save.

Folders that have a profile already assigned to it are indicated by the display of the profile’s name directly below the folder name.

Remove a metadata profile from folders removing-a-metadata-profile-from-folders

When you remove a metadata profile from a folder, any subfolders automatically inherit the removal of the profile from its parent folder. However, any processing of files that has occurred within the folders remains intact.

You can remove a metadata profile from a folder from within the Tools menu or from the Properties from within the folder.

Remove metadata profiles from folders via Profiles user interface removing-metadata-profiles-from-folders-via-profiles-user-interface

  1. Click the Experience Manager logo and navigate to Tools > Assets > Metadata Profiles.

  2. Select the metadata profile that you want to remove from a folder or multiple folders.

  3. Click Remove Metadata Profile from Folder(s) and select the folder or multiple folders you want use to remove a profile from and click Done.

    You can confirm that the metadata profile is no longer applied to a folder because the name no longer appears below the folder name.

Remove metadata profiles from folders via Properties removing-metadata-profiles-from-folders-via-properties

  1. Click the Experience Manager logo and navigate Assets and then to the folder that you want to remove an metadata profile from.
  2. On the folder, click the check mark to select it and then click Properties.
  3. Select the Metadata Profiles tab and select None from the drop-down menu and click Save. Folders that have a profile already assigned to it are indicated by the display of the profile’s name directly below the folder name.

Tips and limitations best-practices-limitations

  • The metadata updates via user interface changes the metadata properties in the dc namespace. Any updates made via the HTTP API changes the metadata properties in the jcr namespace. See how to update metadata using HTTP API.

  • The CSV file for importing assets metadata is in a very specific format. To save effort and time and to avoid unintended errors, you can start creating the CSV using the format of an exported CSV file.

  • When importing metadata using a CSV file, the required date date format is YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.fff-00:00. If any other format is used, then the date values are not set. The date formats of exported metadata CSV file is in the format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss-00:00. If you want to import it, convert it to the acceptable format by adding the nanoseconds value denoted by fff.

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