Managing your DAM

Regardless of size, an unmanaged DAM can quickly get messy. Someone needs to own the DAM, look after it, and support the people who use it.

5 things to know about managing NetX

Best practices

Down with some downtime.
NetX product upgrades and some configuration changes require scheduled downtime for your site. Most SaaS sites will be automatically upgraded on a monthly schedule or you can coordinate ad-hoc upgrades with NetX Support. Be sure to notify your end-users as the downtime will interrupt any processes that are running. See our Release Policy and Scheduled Maintenance Policy for details.

Steer clear of collisions.
Institute a naming convention to avoid filename collisions. Conflicting filenames can cause issues with metadata imports and when moving or adding assets to folders. It's best to rename files prior to importing to NetX with descriptive, intuitive, consistent, and concise filenames. Avoid illegal characters and excessively long filenames (under 25 characters is good practice). Case and spelling matter: image.JPG, image.jpg, and image.jpeg are treated as distinct files in NetX. 

Cataloging counts.
Search will only be as good as your cataloging efforts. Asset metadata should be reviewed from time to time to verify data integrity and ensure values are correctly and consistently applied. Attribute Grid Editor or Exporting Attribute Data to a CSV file can help when you need to review metadata in bulk. Use "no value" or "any value" criteria in an attribute value Advanced Search to identify gaps in metadata.

Save searches, save time.
Configure saved advanced searches to help monitor assets and metadata and send notifications when assets should be reviewed, updated, archived, or deleted. Saved searches are dynamic – they update automatically as relevant assets or data changes in NetX – and can be shared with your team. Use descriptive titles for your saved searches to remind you of the criteria used in the search.

Deletions are forever.
Deleting assets or folders is permanent and cannot be undone. Instituting a trash workflow to route assets to an admin-only folder instead can avoid unintended loss of files and data. Enhanced ACL Permissions may also be employed to prevent deletions on certain folders. Deleting users will result in the loss of all statistical information tied to the user. Set the user level to No Access instead to prevent access but ensure stats are retained.

How-to articles

Tips and tricks

When batch editing assets in a Selection, remember to ALWAYS click the X to clear your selection after performing an action and before making a new selection.

Replication is the key to troubleshooting an issue. Ask end users to provide the detailed steps that led to the issue. Some problems may be resolved by clearing the browser cache (a.k.a browsing history) and making sure NetX isn't open in multiple tabs. Always try this first.

The filter box is available in many contexts throughout NetX. Start typing to quickly find the info you seek, like a subfolder name, user name, or a search facet value. 

Right-click on a folder name in the tree to access the folder actions menu. Use List all to display the assets of all subfolders in a single gallery view.

Right-click on any thumbnail in the gallery view for the asset actions menu. This is the only way to remove assets from a Collection.

Use the Reimport action when you want to replace an individual asset but retain its metadata (instead of deleting and importing the asset as new). 

Use the Resync action when you need to regenerate proxy files or update the search index for a single asset or selection.

Rebuilding the Search Index may be required if you have issues with search. Always do this in off-peak hours.

When any folder permission is created or altered, all assets in the system will be reindexed. Plan to execute configuration changes in off-peak hours since a full reindex may impact performance.

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