Do-It-Yourself Automation With Paths

Did you know there’s a way to notify anyone about the latest assets? It's called Paths. Paths is a feature in Acquia DAM (Widen) that allows you to create custom, automated notifications when assets meet a specified state – like ready for review, approved, or published – with no coding required.

Why Paths?

Being a digital asset management (DAM) admin is no small task. Training users, monitoring uploads, and managing permissions are just a few of the ongoing responsibilities.

One of the weekly or monthly duties likely includes emailing users with updates on new content. Until now, gathering the information on new assets, compiling share links, and sending the emails was a manual process. But we make this workflow easier for you — and help you deliver those assets faster. Enter Paths.

What can you do with Paths?

Paths is a feature in Acquia DAM that helps you automate email notifications so your teams know about the right things at the right time. Some of the highlighted features include the ability to: 

Notify teams of new assets: Automatically inform sales teams, distributors, or e-commerce groups when new marketing collateral is ready for distribution to downstream channels or notify domain experts of new content that requires metadata entry.

Notify users of new products: If you use Entries, you can notify writers of new products that require copy or creatives for assets.

Customize your email notifications: Use your brand voice and tone to deliver a clear message.

Insert a variable into your email. A variable automatically pulls information about the trigger event you selected into your email. A variable could be the number of assets, asset group name, asset share link, or asset detail link.

Do-it-yourself automation. The user interface makes it easy to select a trigger and custom notification without any coding.

How are DAM admins using paths?

Many admins are taking advantage of paths because it makes their job easier. If you’re wondering how you could use paths, ask yourself:

• What subject matter experts could help add metadata you identified as incomplete?
   
• Which teams seem to never know about new assets available for them?
   
• Who needs to know about assets before they expire?

Knowing the answers to these questions will determine if paths can help you: 

• Notify web team when assets are about to expire
• Notify sales there are new sales assets available from product marketing
• Notify admin or brand manager there are new assets to review
• Notify writers that new products need a search-optimized description and feature list

Try it out

If anything we shared has sparked an idea, then why not try it for yourself? Learn more about adding a path in the Acquia DAM support center and try it out on your site. Not an Acquia DAM customer yet? Request, watch, or click through a demo today to see our solution in action. 

Note: This article was originally published on Widen.com