Digital asset management (DAM)

The Magnolia Digital Asset Management (DAM) system excels at organizing, storing, and retrieving digital assets like images, videos, and documents with efficiency. It combines robust native features with seamless integration to external DAM tools, ensuring flexibility and interoperability for technical and content teams.

Powerful modules, such as image recognition tagging, enhance asset organization and discoverability. Users can apply metadata and tags to streamline search and retrieval, making it easy to manage rich media content. Whether using Magnolia’s built-in DAM or connecting to external systems, the platform delivers a comprehensive solution tailored to diverse needs.

The DAM supports different storage options from keeping assets entirely in Magnolia’s Java Content Repository (JCR) or adopting a hybrid approach (binaries in a third-party system like S3, metadata in JCR) with the DAM module, to deep integration with an external DAM solution thanks to the External DAM Integration Framework. These options optimize performance and integration for your organization.

In the Assets app, you can manage and edit assets, embed them in webpages, or link them as downloadable files.

Features

The Assets app supports a range of capabilities for efficient asset management:

Bulk upload multiple assets at once, including .zip files to preserve folder structures and simplify batch imports.
Store all media types (image, video, audio, Flash, documents) in one place.
Use assets on webpages and in custom content types.
Edit images (cropping, resizing) within the Assets app.
Tag images with metadata tags for easy search and organization. Image content is automatically recognized upon upload and descriptive tags are attached.
Metadata. Use the Dublin Core metadata standard by default, with options to add custom schemas for specific needs.
Control access to manage who can view or edit assets, ensuring security and governance.

The DAM focuses on practical, everyday asset management for websites, complementing rather than replacing advanced media tools with archiving or complex editing features.

Benefits

The Magnolia DAM offers key advantages for content and technical teams:

Centralization: Store assets in one location, accessible across all websites on a Magnolia instance.
Re-use: Use the same asset across multiple pages, with updates applied universally.
Consistency: Update a single asset in the Assets app to propagate it to all the pages where the asset’s used.
Standardization: The same file properties are used each time the file is referenced.
Integration: Connect with external DAM systems or cloud storage, like S3 or Bynder, for scalability and interoperability.

You can make the metadata fields mandatory to ensure editors include relevant content.

Digital asset management (DAM) modules

Magnolia modules are shipped to you in different ways depending on your license:

Community Edition (CE): Modules are included as part of the free and open-source version.
DX Core: Modules are included as part of the DX Core enterprise product. These modules are in addition to those in the Community Edition license where bundled.
Special: Some modules need their own special license as they are not included with CE or DX Core licenses. In some cases, an additional license is required.

For more details, see License.