Import and assign digital assets in Optimizely PIM

Overview

Assets are the images and other files you need to merchandise your products and categories. You assign assets to products, then publish both the product information and assigned assets from Optimizely PIM to your Optimizely B2B Commerce website.

Use the Assets section of PIM to:

  • Import many digital assets at one time
  • Organize and manage your digital assets in a central location
  • Assign digital assets to products and categories
  • Identify digital assets with missing data or associations

B2B Commerce Storefront View

See Review How PIM Data Appears to Customers for more details.

Best Practices

One common strategy is if your documents and images match one to one, organize your asset folders based on product templates, categories, or brands to more easily find and assign assets.

Think about if you have assets with file names that match product data like the product number. If so, you can leverage this to auto-assign the assets.

When navigating the Assets section, follow these conventions:

  • Use the Assets pane on the left side of the Assets list page to quickly filter folders, locate asset folders or organize assets into folders. Also view the number of and folder for Uncategorized assets, which are assets not included in any folders.
  • Switch between viewing the Assets in gallery or list format using the gallery and list icons in the top right corner of the Assets list page.
  • Click the Filter button to select from a list of filters and narrow the list of assets.
  • Drag and drop new assets from your file explorer into the upload area at the top of the Assets list page, or click browse. If you want to use the advanced import options, you can click the Import button, select the assets you want to import and click Open.
  • PIM supports storing assets without assigning them to a product.
  • Supported file types include:
    • Excel (.xls, xlsx)
    • Word (.doc, .docx)
    • Images (.png, .jpg, .gif)
    • Zip, (.zip)
    • PDF (.pdf)
    • Text (.txt)
    • Other standard file types
  • Supported metadata by asset type include:
    • All Assets
      • Type
      • Tags
      • Location in Hierarchy/Node
    • Images
      • Name (unique)
      • Description
      • URL
      • File Format
      • Dimensions
      • Alt Text
    • Documents and other assets
      • Name (unique)
      • Description
      • File Format
      • URL
      • Language

Use Case

Carrie is ready to import and assign her digital assets related to Faucets. She clicks Assets in the task bar and clicks the Import icon. She searches her file directory for her Kitchen faucet assets first, selects them all, then clicks Open.

For the Destination Folder, Carrie selects Kitchen Faucets. She leaves Languages blank, as she only has English assets and leaves the Overwrite Files toggle off, as this is the first time she's uploading these assets. Carrie adds tags of "kitchen" and "faucet" and "ShinyFaucets" and adds a Prefix of KITCHEN. She clicks the Process button to complete the asset import, then repeats these steps for her Bathroom faucet assets.

Import Digital Assets

You can import assets one at a time or in bulk. You can also add asset tags and file name prefixes. Avoid duplicate assets by overwriting existing assets with the same file name.

PIM automatically resizes imported images for optimal site performance, so you will notice small, medium, and large URLS created for each image. The sizes can be configured in the settings, but default to 160 x 160 px for small, 300 x 300 px for medium, and 900 x 900 px for large. Your image retains its aspect ratio when resized. For example, if the original image has dimensions of 1800 x 1200 px, retaining the 3:2 ratio resizes the image to 900 x 600 px for the large size.

  1. Click Assets in the task bar. The Assets list page appears.
  2. Click Import, select the assets you want to import and click Open.  You can also drag and drop them from your file explorer into the upload area at the top of the Assets list page.
  3. Use the Asset Import page to:
    • Select a Destination Folder for these assets. This is where the system will upload the assets. If you were in a folder when you initiated the import, the system selects this folder by default.
    • Select the Language for these assets. This indicates the language version for assets that are documents.
    • Toggle the Overwrite Files option on or off. If on, the import process overwrites existing assets if new assets have the same file name. If off, the import will not process duplicates and you will get a message asking if you want to proceed with the import anyway. As part of the import, if the overwritten assets were assigned to any products or categories, the products' statuses will change and the categories are set to Need Publishing so that the new version of the assets show up on your site the next time the categories and products are published.
    • Toggle the Auto-assign to products option on or off. See the Auto-Assign Digital Assets section for more details.
    • Add Asset Tags to these assets. This helps you further categorize assets and makes retrieval easier using filters. Auto-complete helps you find existing tags or create a new tag on the fly. Hover over a tag and click the x to remove it.
    • Add Prefix to these assets. This adds a prefix to the file names for these assets.
    • View the File Types Detected. This is a list of all the file types included in this import.
  4. Click Process to start your import.
  5. View your import progress at the top of the Assets list page or click Cancel to stop it.

When you import assets into PIM, the asset file names will be hashed (for example, h92f13cj90375wp_nm.jpg). Hashing file names ensures a unique static URL for each image file. This is important for asset versioning logic and allows users to change the asset name without altering the underlying URL. Using hashed names and obfuscating the S3 location also prevents images from being crawled or browsed by external users. This may affect SEO results for the images, but it should not affect the SEO results for product detail pages. If you have SEO concerns, you can choose to host the assets externally using a cloud storage provider where you have full control over naming conventions.

You will not be able to import more assets until PIM finishes processing. If there were issues importing any assets, click the Details button to see a list of assets and their error messages.

Auto-Assign Digital Assets

Use the auto-assign by name feature when you create or import products to minimize the effort of assigning assets to products.

  • Auto Assign to Products - If enabled, this toggle shows options to allow matching assets to products by file name during import.
  • Auto assign based on - Select the product property that the asset file name should match with for auto-assignment.
  • Include prefix in matching - If you add a prefix, you can include or exclude it from matching (only enabled if you entered a prefix).
  • Match partial file name - If enabled, this toggle shows options to set the start and end position or characters:
    • Start after character - Allows selection of a certain occurrence of a character that marks the end of the portion of the beginning of the file name that is excluded from matching.
    • Start at position - Allows selection of a position in the file name that marks the start of the file name which is included in matching.
    • End before character - Allows selection of a certain occurrence of a character that marks the start of the portion of the end of the file name that is excluded from matching.
    • End at position - Allows selection of a position in the file name that marks the start of the file name which is excluded from matching.

Import External Digital Assets

You can import digital assets hosted outside of PIM and organize them and assign them to products or categories the same as any other asset within PIM. Use the provided import template to import externally hosted assets or to update existing externally hosted assets.

Note: Since externally hosted assets are not stored in PIM, automatic image resizing is not done as part of the import. The performance of your site may be affected if multiple external images are of higher resolution and size than appropriate for where they display on your site. For instance, if URLs for high resolution images are used as the small image, the product list page that displays many product images may load slowly.
  1. Click the More Options icon in the top right, and then select Import Externally Hosted Assets.
  2. If you have not already formatted your assets according to the template format, click Download Template.
    3. Note: If no asset folder is specified in your import file, the assets are placed in the Uncategorized assets folder.
  3. Once you have a formatted template file, click Choose File.
  4. Locate your external asset file and click Open.
  5. Click Continue. If you receive any validation errors, please resolve them before attempting to import again. You can download the provided file to view error messages that are specific to each row.
  6. If there are assets in the file that already exist in PIM, you must choose whether to Cancel or proceed with the Import and update the existing asset records.
  7. View your import progress at the top of the Assets list page or click Cancel to stop it.

Update Asset Data

You can update existing assets in bulk by exporting the asset data and then importing the file after making changes.

  1. On the Assets page, select or filter for the assets you want to update.
  2. Click the Export icon in the top right and choose whether to export all assets, the current filtered list, or the selected assets.
  3. Download the exported file and make the desired changes.
  4. Click the More Options icon in the top right, and then select Update Asset Data.
  5. If you are not using an export of existing asset data, and have not already formatted your asset according to the template format, click Download Template.
    6. Note: Empty cell values are ignored in the import and the corresponding asset fields are not overwritten.
  6. Once you have a formatted template file, click Choose File.
  7. Locate your external asset file and click Open.
  8. Click Continue. If you receive any validation errors, please resolve them before attempting to import again. You can download the provided file to view error messages that are specific to each row.
  9. View your import progress at the top of the Assets list page or click Cancel to stop it.

Edit Digital Assets

You can edit or enhance asset information using the Assets details page.

  1. Click Assets in the task bar. The Assets list page appears.
  2. Click an individual asset's name to view the Assets details page.
  3. Edit or enter an asset's name, description or type, if needed. Select the Language, if the asset is a document.
  4. Enter terms to help find the asset when searching in the Add Asset Tags field.
  5. To improve accessibility and SEO of your site, enter an alternative description for the asset, if it is an image, in the Alt Text field.
  6. Swap an image or export it using the Upload and Download icons under the image preview.
  7. Click Save.

Assign Digital Assets

Use the Product's Images and Documents Tabs

Use the Images or Documents tabs on a Product's details page to assign assets to products.

  1. Click Products in the task bar. The Products list page appears.
  2. Click an individual product's name to view the Product's details page.
  3. Select the Images tab or the Documents tab. You will see assigned images or documents on their respective tabs.
  4. Click the Assign icon or the Add images to this product icon to open the asset drawer.
  5. Click the Asset Folder icon. The Select Asset Folder pane slides out.
  6. Locate the asset(s) you wish to assign using any of the following options:
    • Filter folders by entering a full or partial name
    • Select a folder in the Assets tree to filter assets by location
    • Click the Filter icon to filter assets by specific metadata and/or terms
  7. The assets within a selected folder and/or that meet your filter criteria appear in the Asset Drawer.
  8. Hover your cursor over an asset and click its radio button to select it. Select assets appear at the top of the list below Newly Assigned.
  9. Click Save to complete the asset assignment. Click Cancel to close the Asset Drawer without saving your assignments.

Note:  Any asset assignments or unassignments will cause the product status to move to Incomplete.

Use the Asset Drawer on the Product List

Use the Asset Drawer to assign assets to products from a product list. The Asset Drawer slides out from the right side and displays a list of assets currently assigned to the product, if applicable. You can also find and assign additional assets as needed.

  1. Click Products in the task bar. The Products list page appears.
  2. Click an individual product's image thumbnail. The Asset Drawer appears and displays the assets currently assigned to this product.
  3. Click the Asset Folder icon. The Select Asset Folder pane slides out.
  4. Locate the asset(s) you wish to assign using any of the following options:
    • Filter folders by entering a full or partial name
    • Select a folder in the Assets tree to filter assets by location
    • Click the Filter icon to filter assets by specific metadata and/or terms
  5. The assets within a selected folder and/or that meet your filter criteria appear in the Asset Drawer.
  6. Hover your cursor over an asset and click its radio button to select it. Select assets appear at the top of the list below Newly Assigned.
  7. Click Save to complete the asset assignment. Click Cancel to close the Asset Drawer without saving your assignments.

Any asset assignments or unassignments will cause the product status to move to Incomplete.

Replace Assets

Once you have assigned an asset, you can replace the image without having to delete and re-add a new image.

  1. On the Assets page, select the asset you want to replace.
  2. In the flyout window, click the Replace arrow (facing up) next to the file name.
  3. Select the new image and click Open.

Your new image should appear in the window shortly.

Note: Alternately, you can replace assets by going through the import process with the Overwrite Files toggle enabled.

Unassign Digital Assets

Use the Product's Images and Documents Tabs

Use the Images or Documents tabs on a Product's details page to unassign assets from products.

  1. Click Products in the task bar. The Products list page appears.
  2. Click an individual product's name to view the Product's details page.
  3. Select the Images tab or the Documents tab. You will see assigned images or documents on their respective tabs.
  4. Hover over an asset tile and click the Unassign icon.
  5. Click Unassign to remove the association of this asset to the product. Click Cancel to leave it assigned.
  6. Click Save.

Any asset assignments or unassignments will cause the product status of 100% complete products to change. If the product's template requires an image and all images were unassigned, it will change to Incomplete. Otherwise, the status will update to Ready for Approval. This ensures that the changes are published to B2B Commerce.

Use the Asset's Products Tab

You can unassign a product on the Products tab for an asset.

  1. Click Assets in the task bar. The Assets list page appears.
  2. Click an individual asset's name to view the Assets details page.
  3. Select the Products tab.
  4. Hover your cursor over the product from which you wish to unassign the asset, and then click the Unassign icon.
  5. Click Save.

If you unassign an asset, it removes the association to a product. If the asset is the only image for a product, unassigning it clears this association. If the asset is the primary image for a product, unassigning it defaults to the next image in order as the primary image. Any asset assignments or unassignments will cause the product status of 100% complete products to change. If the product's template requires an image and all images were unassigned, the status will change to Incomplete. Otherwise, the status will update to Ready for Approval. This ensures that the changes are published to B2B Commerce.

Export Assets

You can export the asset information for a filtered list or selected assets.

  1. If you wish to export only selected assets, ensure you have them selected.
  2. Click Export, and then select either Filtered list or Selected assets.
  3. Click Continue. The export window appears in the lower right corner.
    4. Note:Do not close the window before the file is ready for download.
  4. Once the file is ready for download, the Download exported file link appears. Click the link to download the file.