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A Collection is a feature that can be found in the Media, Icon, Logo, and Document Library, allowing you to place related assets into groups. This function is particularly helpful when you want to connect assets related to a specific project or with similar properties.

Collections help you in creating a consistent and organized set of assets. They save you time and provide your team with structure in developing projects that require specific images, videos, or documents. Collections help you share groups of assets with your internal and external teams in an uncomplicated, yet controlled and protected, manner.

Create a new Collection through the backend view of your Libraries. On the top right-hand corner, under ‘New’, select ‘Create a new collection’, a new window will give you the option to give it a name. There is also an option to choose whether you want to set the Collection to be visible in the Library. Multiple libraries of the same type may appear in the selection if they have been previously duplicated.

The new Collection will be positioned in the top section of the Library.

Once you have created a new Collection, click on it to open. Within the Collection, you are able to select assets by clicking on the ‘Choose assets’ option in the middle of the page. Once opened, you’ll find all the assets stored within your projects with the respective workflow status assigned.

You can also create a Collection by directly selecting the desired assets from the Library. After the assets have been chosen, click the ‘Collection’ tab on the top of the page. You can then create a new Collection or add them to an existing Collection.

Note that Folders and Collections are not the same.

Folders are the best way to organize assets in the backend of a Library and are not represented in the frontend.

To present related groups of assets in the frontend, you create Collections. Collections are created in the backend and they will be visible in the frontend or“consumer view” if you enable it with the "Show in Media Library" toggle.

We explain it in detail here: Getting Started with Libraries: Backend & Frontend

Curated Collections are managed in the backend of Libraries. It is there that actions and settings can be altered depending on the purpose of the Collection.

There are four actions that curators can carry out in the backend; download, pin, share and delete.

Collections can be downloaded in the Curator view by clicking on the three dots in the lower right-hand corner of your Collections card, followed by the ‘Download’ option. Upon click, the download will commence.

Pin

Collections can be pinned by opening the three dots (action ellipsis) menu next to the Collection settings cogwheel in the bottom right corner of the Collection card.

Once the Collection has been pinned, it will receive a special pushpin icon, similar to the icon that denotes Personal Collections in the Library Frontend. The appearance for consumer users will first show their private collections, then pinned curated collections, and lastly, the unpinned curated collections.

If multiple collections are pinned, they will appear before non-pinned collections in the chosen sort order of the user.

Share

The action of sharing Collections from the backend of your Library can also be found in the fly-out menu after clicking on the three dots (...) of the Collection. Each curator with access to this Library will be able to control the sharing of this Collection from this menu.

The internal and external share links are unique to each user, thus allowing each Curator to select their own protection measures for the external share links. If desired, then the links can be password protected and/or receive a validity date to restrict access to the Collection.

Once the password link is refreshed, the protection measures are no longer valid. When the external share link is toggled off, the share link will no longer work until toggled on again.

Targeted assets will not appear in the external share view, as we cannot identify the viewer to determine if they belong to a desired target group or not. A warning message will indicate this before sharing.

Assets that have download protection enabled will still be shown in the external view, but for the same reason as with targets, we cannot process a download request for external viewers as they cannot be identified. External viewers will not be able to download protected assets.

Collections are made to be shared. Within the settings (cogwheel) menu of the Collection card, you can toggle on ‘Show in Library’, in order for Consumer users of the Frontend to see the Collection you have created. For each Guideline that the Library is connected to, you will have a separate toggle.

Once you have shown a Collection in the frontend, you can then also decide whether or not Consumers should be able to share the Collection with external viewers. This can be toggled on and off in the same section of the Collection settings.

You can of course create a Collection for Curator use only. This can be done by clicking the cogwheel of a specific Collection and then turning off the ‘Show in Library’ option. This limits viewer rights for the Collection to just Curators of that Library. In the same setting, you can easily rename the Collection.

When consumers want to download assets within a Collection, they simply need to open a Collection in the frontend (Consumer view), select the image, and download it through the metadata tab on the right-hand side.

Downloading all assets of a Collection in the frontend (Consumer view) of a Library is easily done. Simply click on the download option that appears above the assets within the Collection.

In many cases when some or all of the assets in a Collection are protected there will be certain steps to follow in order to download these assets.

Find out more about asset protection download in a Collection.

After opening a Collection, you can generate a share link by opening the ‘Share’ menu in the top right. For curated Collections, the internal share link will always appear, whereas the external share link will only appear if enabled by the curator in the Library backend.

See example below:

Backend sharing disabled for Guidelines

Guidelines (Frontend) view

Backend Sharing enabled for Guidelines

Guidelines (Frontend) View

For external share links, you have the option of adding additional protection in the form of a password and/or access validity date.

Consumers can create personal Collections in the Media- and Document Library frontend. Creating a new personal Collection is easily done by first selecting the assets to include in the collection, then using the "Add to Collection" bulk action. Any Collection created in the Consumer view will not be visible to anyone but the user themselves. When created, the main icon in the middle of the Collection preview will indicate it can only be viewed by you.

Once you’ve gathered a couple of Collections in the consumer view of your Library, you have a number of layout options available to tweak their presentation. To modify the layout options, switch to the edit mode. Then, locate a button called ‘Layout Settings’ at the bottom of the page. Click on it and switch to the Collections tab.

Some of the ways you can customize your display include a gallery or slider layout, the size of the collection display, a tiled or filled preview style, the total image count, and showing borders when opting for a tiled view.

Collections can be sorted in the frontend view (Consumer view) as well as the backend by using the drop-down menu on the top right-hand corner of the window. By selecting an option you sort not only the Collections but also the whole Library.

The sorting options are currently:

In case you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team.

We hope you have found this article helpful.