MM5.4 Collections

General information

The assets can be organized in collections. The collection menu is located by default on the top bar. It is also possible to display the collections in the center of the home screen (in place of folder menu) by clicking on "All collections" under the Collections menu:

The user can create a new collection by clicking on "New collection" from the drop-down list under the Collections menu or on "Create new collection" in the centered view.

Collections are individual. This means that every collection created by a specific user will only be visible to this user, unless they decide to share it with another user.

The following actions related to collections are available:

• sharing,
• renaming,
• downloading,
• deleting an entire collection,
• removing a single asset from a collection.

Sharing collections

Collections shared with other users are marked with the following symbol:

When the user shares a collection, the resulting link that the recipient receives will have an access key attached to it. This key is what grants this user access to the collection, meaning that the recipient will not have to log in in order to access the collection.

In case of systems in which the login method is set to "login required", one has to set the config manager setting Allow shared collection users to bypass login required screen to "true", in order for the recipient to access the collection without having to log in.

When the user adds, removes, or updates assets in a collection that have been shared, the recipient will be able to see these changes when they access the collection again. The recipient will not be notified of changes to the collection.

If the user wants to share a collection to e.g. social media, this collection will function in exactly the same way as in case of sharing with a single person.

If the user accesses a collection shared to e.g. social media - they sometimes will have to be logged out of their own profile in order to learn what external users see. This usually means that the user might be able to access assets in a collection that external users cannot see. This, however, only happens if one has explicitly removed the access rights for external users to an asset which happens to be in the collection.

Currently, when sharing collections to external sites - one can choose to enable Server Side Rendering (SSR) which will make collections shared have better looking thumbnails when presented on social media. This, however, has the side effect, i.e. Media Manager in general will become noticeably slower, which is why this option is not enabled by default. To enable it, EnablePrerendering must be set to "true" in the Media Manager's appsettings.json file.

Sorting

It is possible to change the sorting order of the collections' list. The collections can be sorted either by name or by the order in which they were created. It can be done:

1. from the drop-down list under the Collections menu - by selecting an option from the list that opens upon hovering over Order:
   
2. in the main window view - by using the button in the upper right corner:
   

Adding assets to a collection

There are three methods of adding assets to the collection:

• by dragging and dropping them into the collection,
• by dragging the dropping the multiselect menu into the collection,
• by sharing them "To collection".

Downloading collections

In order to download a collection, the user needs to open collection menu by clicking on the three dots next to it and then select "Make available for download". The download will be prepared in the background.

Once it is ready, a notice box will appear in the lower right corner of the screen.

This will result in two new items appearing in the collection menu:

• "Download" - this option will initiate the download of the collection.
• "Modify the download package" - this option will initiate the preparation of a new download, for example in case something was added or removed from the collection.

Creating a new collection out of selected assets

It is also possible to quickly create a new collection from the selected assets. There are three methods of achieving it:

1. After selecting the assets, the user needs to drag and drop them onto New collection option under the Collections menu (the Collections menu expands automatically when the user begins dragging the assets);
2. After selecting the assets, the user needs to click on Share in the multiselect menu on the top bar, and then select New collection;
3. While the collections are displayed in the center of the screen, after selecting the assets, the user needs to drag and drop the selection onto the Create new collection button.

All these methods are presented in the video below: