Maintaining a healthy DAM system in Bynder requires ongoing attention and proactive management. Sometimes, a more comprehensive audit may be necessary to ensure everything functions optimally. This guide will take you through the steps of auditing your portal.

Does my DAM Need an Audit?

Remember that any proposed changes may impact the entire organization. Before implementing changes, ensure alignment with all relevant stakeholders.

Build the team: Refer to the Roles and Responsibilities section for recommendations.

Train on the Basics of Bynder: Everyone on the project team should know the basics of using Bynder, such as uploading via the front end, searching and filtering in the Asset Bank, downloading different sizes, and sharing via collections. 

• For example, stakeholders should understand that Bynder uses a taxonomy rather than a folder structure. This is a more dynamic and flexible way to organize, manage, and retrieve digital assets without the constraints of traditional folder structures. It allows you to filter thousands of assets by specific tags, making it easier to find what you need.

Set project goals and timeline: Align with other project deadlines and holidays.

Consider the DAM Capability Model: Determine whether your DAM is operational, functional, or strategic.

• The DAM capability model is an industry standard for assessing your DAM program. Its goal is to showcase the capabilities and functions of your current DAM and inspire you to improve its functionality.

Communicate internally: Promote the DAM audit project and communicate potential downtime well in advance.

Have scoping discussions: Define the scope of the audit project.

Research

Conduct surveys: Understand user likes, wishlists, and pain points. See here for example questions.

Interview users: Gather qualitative feedback from users.

Review analytics: Utilize Bynder's analytics to understand user behavior and trends.

Write user stories: Describe your DAM from the end-user perspective.

(Optional) If you have Integrations Enabled

Review Current Integrations: Regularly check existing integrations to avoid disruptions.

Understand Data Flow: Identify the data passed through the integrations and its purpose.
You can enable webhooks to receive notifications when assets are added or edited from your integrations to your DAM.

Maintenance Responsibility: Determine who is responsible for maintaining these integrations.

• API Tokens Management: Know who holds the API tokens.

Involve IT Team: You may need to involve your IT team to ensure proper management and maintenance. For additional resources, reference the Developers Portal.

Week 3 & 4 Asset Audit

Inventory assets: Determine what assets are in the DAM. Assets are only valuable if your users can find them!

• What assets do you have in your DAM? Is this easy to determine or not?
• If users need help finding the assets they need, it might be due to improper tagging in the DAM. Consider revisiting visibility restrictions or reviewing the required fields during upload—there may not be enough data included to make the assets easily searchable.

Archive outdated assets: Remove or hide out-of-date assets.

• Is your asset bank cluttered with out-of-date assets that are no longer relevant?
• Can you archive assets to keep a record of them but hide them from your main user base?
• If you have expired assets, do they need to be deleted?
  • Deleted assets will move to the trash. If necessary, you can restore them within those 30 days.

Identify needed assets: Identify assets from other business units or "shadow databases" to import

• Is your DAM missing important assets that would make it more useful?
• Is there a new business unit with assets stored somewhere else that you can ingest?
• Are you users creating "shadow databases" on servers or in Dropbox, Google Drive, or Sharepoint that you can bring into the DAM?

Consolidate parent/child assets: Use automated derivatives for different sizes/formats.

• Do you have multiple sizes or file formats of the same asset?
• Keep the largest/highest quality in the DAM and use automated derivatives or Dynamic Asset Transformation for smaller sizes.
• You can use the duplicate finder to review duplicate images in your DAM.
• We recommend using the AI Search Features such as duplicate finder during upload if enabled.

Week 5 Taxonomy Audit

Export and distribute Bynder taxonomy

• We recommend maintaining an up-to-date taxonomy spreadsheet to simplify larger audits.
• To request an export of your taxonomy, contact customer support.
• When you get feedback, please include as many people as possible. It may surprise you which departments are most engaged with the DAM. The project team can consolidate the feedback into themes and bullets.

Workshop the Taxonomy

• Discuss and determine the necessary changes to the taxonomy with all major stakeholders in the meeting room and ask yourself these discovery questions.

Obtain a list of products, locations, etc.

• If you have a long list of options to upload (e.g., several hundred new product names), you can send a CSV to your customer success contact or customer support, who can upload it to your portal.

Edit

• Ensure all your metaproperties and options are spelled correctly, have automations listed (if applicable), and do not duplicate options (either in the same or two different metaproperties).

Week 6 & 7 Audit Users, Permissions and Visibility

See here for more information about the permissions available for profiles in Bynder.

Export a CSV of the user list from the user management screen. 

• Are there old accounts that need to be deactivated? (Bynder recommends deactivating instead of deleting accounts).
  • You can filter by the last log-in date to identify users who haven't accessed the DAM.
• Is everyone in the correct user profile and group?
• Are there any obstacles preventing your users from utilizing the DAM effectively?
  • Do they need additional end-user training?

Review the permission profiles and decide if you need additional profiles.

• What permissions will be different in these profiles? Do you need to rename them based on any organizational changes? 
• You can duplicate existing profiles if the new profiles are similar to save time.

Update your user groups if you need to change access for specific options such as metaproperty, news articles, quick links, and Brand Guidelines.

Revisit the restrictions you currently have that may need adjustment.

• Is your method for restricting user access to certain assets easy to understand and use?
• Do your uploaders know what to tag when an asset should be restricted? 
• Can everyone see what they need to and not see what they shouldn't? 
• Have there been any organizational changes that you need to reflect?

Determine if you need restrictions on any sensitive content in your DAM.

• A DAM is fundamentally about access, so the more assets you can let your end users see, the better. Suppose you are concerned about the number of irrelevant assets to any given user, but the assets are not sensitive. We suggest using smart filters or homepage tiles that lead to filtered database states instead of applying asset restrictions. 
• You may have a legal need to silo your assets so that they only show to users from one brand or one group (like designers). If so, you can manage this on the metaproperty option level.

Decide on limited use/archived asset policy.

• You can also set dates for automated embargo or expiration using limited use/archive. These are managed on a permissions profile level and are the easiest way to introduce restrictions on who can see what assets. 
• What assets will you restrict this way?
• How will uploaders decide on the archive date?

Determine a single metaproperty, e.g., "Visible To" or "Brand," that will govern the asset restrictions.

• If you need to silo assets more granularly within your DAM, all of your Visible To metaproperty options should correspond to a user group with the same name.

Week 8 Configuration 

In this phase, you will configure the changes you made in the previous phases. 

For more information on configuring these settings, refer to the Bynder admin guide.

Configuration Checklist

Add new metaproperties and set their parameters (multi- or single-select, required, etc.)

Add new metaproperty options and automations (dependencies).

Add new metaproperties to smart filters.

Mark old metaproperty options read-only (or delete if they are not in use).

• For example, if two business units merge to form a new one, you would create a new option for the combined business unit. Before deleting the old options, please ensure all assets tagged with the previous units are retagged with the new ones by filtering and updating accordingly.

Add new user groups (and assign users to those groups).

Add new permissions profiles (and assign users to those profiles).

Configure metaproperty level restrictions.

Have your SSO manager add users to the appropriate Active Directory groups OR add new users to the DAM directly if you're not using SSO.

Keep a separate document or spreadsheet so you can present what you accomplished on the project!

• You can track most changes in Change History.

(Optional) Add a new metaproperty option called "Test Asset" and use restrictions to hide that asset from everyone except a Testing user group (this could be the team listed here).

(Optional) Configure metaproperty level automations so your front-end uploader screen only shows relevant categories.

Add a portal notification so all users will see upon login that you are currently testing in the DAM.

Week 9 Testing 

Use the front-end uploader to upload various assets and test your updated taxonomy effectively. This will allow you to experience the process from an end user's perspective.

(Optional) Create a test user (this can be done using a personal email address).

Upload test assets. 

• Restrict visibility on who can see these test assets.

(Optionally) If you restrict access based on a metaproperty option, you can log in as different users and ensure everyone sees the correct assets in the DAM. 

Tag all assets uploaded as part of testing with a unique "Test asset" tag so you can find them later and delete them. 

Ask yourself these questions to help.

• How easy is it to upload and tag assets?
• Is the order of metaproperties on the front-end uploader screen good, or should it be reordered?
• Do we have enough required fields to capture every asset's critical information? Are there too many required fields or fields that only apply to some assets?
• Can end users find what they need in the smartfilters?
• Do we need to add or re-label any metaproperty options?
• Can users see the assets they are supposed to see based on their user group/profile? Are the access restrictions working properly?

Week 10 Asset Retagging 

Retagging assets is a key part of your DAM audit and often requires significant time.

Note:  If you have a large number of assets that need retagging, we recommend contacting your Customer Success Contact to learn about our professional services. 

Enriching Metadata: Enrich assets with missing metadata. The more metadata available on an asset, the easier it becomes to find the asset in the Asset Bank.

Retagging: Ensure all assets have appropriate tags. This process can be time-consuming, so consider assigning team members or hiring a freelancer to assist with the workload. Before retagging, you may need to update assets with new metadata.

For example, if two business units merge to form a new one, create a new option for the new business unit. Before deleting the old options, filter by both options and ensure the assets are tagged with the new one.

Week 11 Governance 

Governance is all about sustaining your DAM for the long term. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but every piece of governance you can put in place, and every process you can document will help you manage your digital assets in the future. Digital asset management is never done! The more stakeholders are involved in your DAM, the more important it is to have documented governance. 

Tip: Download the governance spreadsheet here. 

Who is responsible for maintaining the DAM and making strategic decisions about its future?

• Instead of giving this responsibility to one person, which can be risky if they leave, it's better to tie these duties to a specific role or job description. This creates continuity and accountability, clarifying when to make changes and how often to review and update the taxonomy. Integrating these responsibilities into a defined role allows your organization to maintain consistent DAM management, even with staff changes.

What do uploaders need to know so that every asset going in the DAM has good, robust metadata? 

How will you measure success for your DAM? 

What have you learned from going through this process? 

What reference materials, checklists, and project plans can you use to make this a smooth and efficient process in the future? 

Week 12 Homepage Audit & User Experience Phase

Bynder is highly customizable. Use these configurations to make your portal look on-brand and drive your users to the content they need quickly and easily.

Portal Look & Feel: If you have had any branding updates, change brand colors and fonts and edit your logo.

• Refresh your homepage as it is the entryway to your DAM.
• Use analytics or user stories to determine what your users are viewing/searching for most often and surface that content up front.

Decide on a content strategy like you would for a website landing page.  See our Community for ideas on how other brands build out a homepage.

Smart filters encourage your users to make targeted searches using the controlled vocabulary. 

• Align internally on how these filters should be labeled and grouped.
• Add some fun, smart filter icons. 

Display info on thumbnails using Asset Bank Views to see metaproperty information at a glance. 

• What information is most important for users across your business units?
• We recommend three metaproperties in the grid view and up to 10 in the list view.

Consider streamlining the upload screen. 

• Keep your front-end upload screen as directed and manageable as possible. 
• Use automations to, for example, hide the Asset  Sub-Type metaproperty until the uploader has chosen an Asset Type.
• You can also use automations to custom-trigger advanced rights or disclaimers on certain assets. 

Relaunch your DAM

This phase can happen concurrently with governance writing or while you finish your final asset uploading. Launch your DAM with enthusiasm and a deliberate internal marketing campaign. Communicate early and often about the value proposition of adding the new business unit to your DAM, and get your executives to communicate how important DAM is, too! The launch phase is crucial for driving the adoption of the DAM, so make a plan to make sure your users get trained. 

Look to the Future 

Get users excited about DAM! See what some of our customers are doing with their users to get them excited.

Make a plan for user training.

Set goals for adoption metrics (if you have advanced analytics enabled, you can schedule reports or set alerts to help monitor these user metrics). 

Consider adding new business units or integrations

Think about a future audit schedule for the DAM or schedule quick audits to avoid having to do future larger-scale audits. 

Now that the DAM is mature plan some cool initiatives. Check out what customers are doing in the Community.

Research continuing education and certifications for your DAM team.

• Check out our on-demand webinars here.

We are Here to Help!

Explore our Knowledge Base for a wide range of articles, visit our FAQs, utilize our on-demand training, or engage with other Bynder users in our Community. These resources offer fast and effective solutions customized to your queries or requirements.

Updated September 27, 2024 15:03