What are Catalogs?
Catalogs help organizations bring structured business data into Frontify and connect it directly to their brand assets.
Products, markets, campaigns, audiences, materials, and other business information often live in separate systems such as PIMs, ERPs, spreadsheets, or planning tools. Meanwhile, the content associated with that data lives in Frontify.
Catalogs bridge that gap by creating a shared source of truth for structured business data within Frontify. With it, teams can replace manual metadata entry with controlled, catalog-driven values that make assets easier to find, filter, govern, and manage at scale.
Catalogs is currently available in Beta.
Why use Catalogs?
As organizations grow, managing metadata manually becomes increasingly difficult.
Different teams often use different naming conventions, resulting in:
Inconsistent metadata
Unreliable search results
Duplicate assets
Time-consuming maintenance
Reduced trust in asset discoverability
For example, one user may tag an asset as "Organic Cotton", another as "organic-cotton", and another as "Cotton - Organic". Although they refer to the same thing, searches and filters may return incomplete results.
Catalogs solve this challenge by introducing structured, governed data into Frontify.
Benefits
Improve metadata consistency across teams
Make asset search and filtering more reliable
Reduce manual metadata maintenance
Establish a single source of truth for business data
Scale governance across brands, regions, and teams
Who are Catalogs for?
Catalogs are valuable for any organization that manages metadata in Frontify, but it is especially useful for:
Global enterprises: Maintain consistent taxonomies across regions, brands, and business units.
Retail and ecommerce organizations: Manage large product catalogs and seasonal collections with accurate, scalable metadata.
Manufacturing and consumer goods companies: Organize assets around complex product hierarchies, materials, and components.
Highly regulated industries: Support approved terminology and reduce compliance risks through controlled metadata.
How Catalogs work
Catalogs work in three steps:
1) Bring business data into Frontify
Account admins import structured reference data into Frontify as catalogs.
Examples include:
Product catalogs
Market lists
Campaign taxonomies
Materials databases
Audience classifications
Data can be imported through:
CSV upload
Public API
Direct creation and editing within Frontify
Catalogs are shared at the account level and can be reused across brands and libraries.
Primary columns
To use a catalog in metadata properties, you must designate one column as the primary column.
The primary column acts as the unique identifier for each catalog entry and allows Frontify to connect catalog values to metadata.
Catalogs without a primary column cannot be used in metadata properties.
2) Connect catalogs to metadata
Librarians can create metadata properties powered by catalog data. Instead of entering metadata manually, users select values from predefined business data. Catalogs can also be linked to create relationships between datasets.
For example: Product → Material
When a user selects a product, they can be presented with the related materials associated with that product.
3) Assign metadata to assets
Users tag assets by selecting values from catalog-powered metadata fields. Because everyone selects from the same controlled dataset:
Metadata remains consistent
Search results become more reliable
Filters return more complete results
Assets become easier to discover
Changes made to catalog values automatically propagate to associated asset metadata, helping keep information up to date.
Note: Catalog values can be used as metadata on assets, but they cannot currently be used in filtered (faceted) search during the Beta.
Roles and permissions
Account owners and account admins can:
Create catalogs
Edit catalogs
Delete catalogs
Import and update data
Create catalog relationships
Librarians can:
Create catalog-powered metadata properties
Configure catalog-based tagging experiences within DAM libraries
Practitioners can:
Assign catalog values to metadata properties
Search and filter assets using catalog metadata
What’s included in Beta?
The Beta release includes:
Catalog creation and management
CSV import and re-upload
Public API access
In-app catalog creation and editing
Linked catalogs
Catalog-powered metadata properties
Structured asset tagging
Automatic metadata updates when catalog values change
Structured search and filtering
Current Beta limitations
The following capabilities are not included in the Beta release:
Native PIM or ERP connectors
Scheduled data synchronization
Metadata properties with more than two linked catalog levels
Multiple linked catalogs within a single metadata property
Frontend filtering using catalog values
Filtering by secondary catalog columns
Filtered (faceted) search using catalog values
Advanced catalog-driven automations
These capabilities may be considered for future releases.
Getting started
Create a catalog
Navigate to Catalogs.
Create a new catalog.
Create your catalog directly in Frontify or import your data using a CSV file or the Public API.
Designate a primary column so the catalog can be used in metadata properties.
Configure relationships between catalogs if required.
Connect a catalog to metadata
Open a DAM library.
Create a new metadata property.
Select a catalog-powered property type.
Choose the catalog you want to use.
Save your configuration.
Assign metadata to assets
Open an asset.
Edit its metadata.
Select values from the catalog-powered field.
Save your changes.
Your assets are now connected to structured business data, making them easier to discover, govern, and manage across Frontify.
Looking ahead
Catalogs are the foundation for bringing business context into Frontify.
While the Beta release focuses on metadata management in DAM, the long-term vision is to make structured business data available across Frontify, including guidelines, templates, governance workflows, and search experiences.
Additional capabilities may be introduced over time as the platform evolves.
Example CSV import files
Curious about what the CSV import file should look like? Feel free to download the examples below as a reference: