Finding and Viewing Digital Assets

Finding assets is included out-of-the box in CQ WCM, but most likely your installation will have a customized version of the DAM Finder called an Asset Share page. With CQ, you can search for your digital assets in the Content Finder, available on your CQ pages, or in a customized DAM Finder. 

The CQ DAM Finder (Asset Share) is a web application that lets you search assets by using queries and predicates, browse and select assets using lenses, and lets you perform actions on any selected lenses. The Geometrixx Press Center is an example of an Asset Share page. You can have multiple Asset Share pages for particular purposes and audiences.

This section describes the various ways to search for and find digital assets. See Creating customized Asset Share and Asset Editor pages for details on creating your own application.

This section describes how to do the following:

• Find digital assets using the Content Finder.
• Browse through assets with the Asset Editor.
• Browse through assets that are embedded in another system, such as Cooliris.

Searching for assets is essentially the same whether you search for assets in the Content Finder or in an Asset Share page.

You search for assets by entering keywords into a designated field or you browse through different types of assets. You can further narrow your search by entering additional search terms.

Finding assets (or any other CQ pages) with the Content Finder is described in detail in Finding Assets with the Content Finder.

To find the asset:

1. In the Content Finder, click the Image tab. CQ displays all available images.
2. In the Finder field, type a keyword and click the magnifying glass to search. CQ searches for all files that contain the keywords.

Just as you would search for pages in the Content Finder, you search for assets using the Content Finder. You can browse different types of assets by selecting the appropriate tab (for example, if you want to browse images, you browse the image tab). To further narrow your search, enter your search terms in the Find field of the Content Finder.

To help you manage digital assets, a finder functionality is included that allows you to find a set of assets according to predicates that you define, then perform one of a range of actions on the results. This finder functionality comes in the form of an Asset Share page.

What actions you can perform depends on how an Asset Share page has been customized. The Geometrixx Press Center is an example of a customized Asset Share page.

To find assets on the asset share page:

1. Browse through the categories. 
2. To further narrow your search, enter keywords and enter information in any other fields, as desired. CQ DAM displays the search results.
3. Select tags to further narrow your search. Selecting tags filters the results to those with the selected tags.
   
4. You can collect assets in the lightbox and perform actions on them, such as downloading.

You can download assets either directly or by using the Lightbox. Depending on how a particular Asset Editor is configured, the Lightbox may not be available. The Lightbox is simply a place to collect assets.

To download assets directly:

1. Select one or more assets in the list view or mosaic view (use shift-click or control-click for multiple assets). 
2. After your selection is complete, click the download link.

CQ5 DAM generates a ZIP file that contains all selected files. Extract the ZIP file on your desktop by double-clicking it. In the extracted folder, you find the selected files.

If you want to download multiple assets simultaneously, but they are spread across multiple pages of the search results or you need to run two queries to collect all the assets, use the Lightbox download. The Lightbox lets you save selected assets together in a holding place.

To download assets using the Lightbox:

1. Start by searching for assets.
2. Select the assets that you want to download.
3. Click Add in the Lightbox link. You see the assets you selected in the Lightbox.
4. Browse to the next search result page or refine your search.
5. Select additional assets that you want to download. Click Add until you have selected all the assets you want in the Lightbox. 
6. Click the Download in the Lightbox.

CQ5 DAM again creates a ZIP file containing all the assets in the lightbox. You can empty the lightbox by clicking Remove at any time to start a new asset collection.

You can view asset details by doing one of the following:

• Opening the asset in the Asset Share or DAM Admin page. Here, you have the ability to perform the most actions on your assets.
• Opening the asset in the Websites tab, where you can edit some basic asset properties.
• Opening the asset in an embedded system such as Cooliris.

To view asset details, in the DAM admin page or the customized Asset Share page (for example the Geometrixx Press Center), double-click the asset you want to open. CQ DAM opens the asset and you can perform all necessary functions from there.

You can also access basic asset information in the Websites tab, but you do not have the ability to perform many of the functions. To access, in the Websites tab, navigate to the asset and double-click it to open an asset editor properties window. Here, you can edit the image (if applicable), change the title, description, and tags.

In addition to viewing assets directly in CQ DAM, you can also embed assets in other viewing mechanisms, for example, Cooliris.

To access assets via Cooliris:

1. Download the Cooliris plug-in from the Cooliris web site.
2. Close your browser.
3. Open your browser.
4. Navigate to the DAM Finder that contains your digital assets.
5. Click the Cooliris icon. CQ DAM displays the images in Cooliris.