The Paths feature helps you automate notifications so that your coworkers know about the right things at the right time. Create paths to notify sales teams, distributors, or digital e-commerce teams when new marketing collateral is ready for distribution and when content should be added to products in Entries. Customize notifications to meet your brand styles and send them to a target group of recipients. Notifications can be sent to other Acquia DAM users and users without DAM accounts.

Your site can have up to 40 paths shared across all users of your site –– not 40 per user. This means one user can see and edit paths other users create. The Administrate Paths permission must be enabled for you to access the feature and add, edit, and delete any path that has been created.

Add a path¶

To get started, select Paths Management in the left navigation of the Admin app. If you have access to Paths, you’ll see a list of all paths that have been created for your site. Select the Add new path button.

On the Add New Path page, give your path a name, then choose why you’re sending the notification. Send notification when:

• Assets are added to an asset group
• Assets are going to expire
• New products are created in the Entries app

 

Assets are added to an asset group¶

For the assets added to an asset group option, only the asset groups you have permission to view will display. One asset group per path can be selected. Paths can be added for asset groups that include up to 250,000 assets.

 

Assets are going to expire¶

When you choose to notify users that assets are going to expire, select to notify them the day they expire or 15, 30, or 60 days in advance. When the notification is sent, they’ll receive an email with links to the expiring assets’ Asset Details page, along with the assets’ expiration dates, so they can go in and take appropriate action.

We recommend that you select a frequency that will ensure you don’t miss any expiring assets. Do this each time you set up a path.

• Today - Select the daily frequency.
• In 15 days - Select the weekly frequency.
• In 30 days - Select either the weekly or monthly frequency.
• In 60 days - Select the monthly frequency.

 

More information about frequency of notifications is later in this article.

 

Add criteria¶

For assets added to an asset group or when assets are going to expire, you can add criteria to send more specific notifications that are useful to recipients and reduce notification fatigue. Up to three criteria can be added.

Criteria have "And" logic, so when multiple criteria are added, users will only receive notifications when assets meet all selected criteria.

Refine path notifications by:

• Asset group
• Controlled vocabulary metadata fields, including dependent metadata fields
• Categories, if categories are enabled in your site (Note that criteria can be selected for up to three category levels deep –– a parent category and two child categories)

 

Customize your notification¶

Next, customize your email notification. Enter one or more recipient email addresses, a subject line, and email text. The maximum number of recipients you can enter is 1,000. Customize the email text using the Rich Text Editor (RTE) options, then save the path when you’re ready to notify people.

 

You can copy and paste in special characters and emojis in subject lines and email text! Any UTF-8 characters — like accent marks, hanzi and kanji characters, happy faces, sad faces, joy faces, high fives, and more — are supported in emails. Be aware that exactly how special characters and emojis display to recipients depends on the email app you’re using.

The maximum email text you can add is 10,000 characters.

Insert a variable

Included in the RTE is the option to insert a variable into your email text. A variable automatically pulls information about the trigger event you selected into your email, taking the manual hassle of updating email content off your hands! Variables are not required for the text, but they’re helpful to include for events that occur often in your site.

In the email above, “number of assets” and “asset group” are variables for the email. When assets are added to the asset group selected in step 1, the notification will include the number added and the name of the asset group selected.

Here’s more information about each variable.

 

 

Select a path frequency¶

Last, choose how often you want email notifications to be sent. Select to send them hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

By default, paths are set to run hourly, but you can edit an existing path to change the frequency, with one exception. For assets that will expire, by default, the frequency will be sent monthly. Hourly notifications for expiring assets are not available.

If you select:

• Hourly: Notification will be sent every hour. For activity that occurs within the same hour, notifications are sent in a batch. For example, if you’ve set a path to run when assets are added to the Public asset group, if 15 are added at 10:45 a.m., six are added at 10:47 a.m., and 12 are added at 11:33 a.m., two notifications will be sent. Both will be listed in the path history.
• Daily: Choose a time for the notification to be sent. The default is 8 a.m. For example, you may want to send a notification about new products added to the Bikes product type in Entries each morning. To do that, select daily along with a preferred time.
• Weekly: Choose a day of the week and a time. The default is Sunday at 8 a.m. If you want to send notification about all assets added to the Public asset group at the end of the week, for example, select Friday along with a preferred time.
• Monthly: Send notification either on the first day of the month or the last day of the month, along with a time. The default is the first day of the month at 8 a.m.

The time for daily, weekly, and monthly are listed in your time zone. 

For notifications for assets that will expire, if the frequency is set to monthly on the first day of the month, for months with only 30 days, notifications will include assets that expire that month plus those that expire on the 1st of the following month. For example, if a notification is sent on April 1, it will include assets that expire for all of April plus those that expire May 1. On May 1, the email will include assets that expire from May 1 to May 31. For months with 31 days, notifications will include all assets that will expire in that month.

Notifications for new paths for assets added to an asset group won’t be sent for criteria selected before the path was created. In addition, if there are no updates to assets, notifications will not be sent and there will be no update to the path history.

 

An example of criteria and frequency setup

You set up a path for assets that are added to the photography asset group. You add criteria to check if the Photographer field is set to Jane Smith. The frequency is set to hourly.



Notification is sent for Asset A because the photographer was updated in the same hour that Asset A was added to the photography asset group. No notification was sent for Asset B because the photographer was updated many hours after it was added to the photography asset group.
 

New products are created in the Entries app

To send notifications for new products created, select a product type. Choose whether you want Paths to automatically notify users of the newly created products through emails or assign tasks in Entries. You can only choose one of these actions per path. 

If you select Send Email, see the Customize your notification section above. 

If you select Assign Task, a series of fields will appear on screen. Assign a task to one or more DAM users with access to Entries. The maximum number of assignees is 100.

Next, write the name of the task and instructions for completing the task. Make sure the instructions are generic enough to apply to all newly created products with the selected product type. Choose whether you want to receive an email notification when the task is completed. Then save the path. 

The next time a product with the selected product type is created, an email will be sent to each assignee notifying them of the task that needs to be completed. 

The assigned task information, as well as all tasks for that product, will be displayed in a task panel on the Product Details page in Entries. All users of the app can view and interact with the task panel, including marking a task complete by selecting the checkbox. Users can hide completed tasks using the toggle setting in the panel.

 

Enable and disable paths¶

After they’ve been saved, paths are automatically enabled and notifications will be sent once the events and criteria are met. If you no longer want to send a notification, turn off the path on the Paths list page. The path will still display in the list if you need to turn it back on in the future, but it will count toward the 40-path limit until you delete it.

 

Notifications for paths that are turned off will not be sent. If a path is turned on, notifications will be sent from that point forward.

 

Edit a path¶

When you need to make changes to a path –– say, add more people to the email list or insert another variable into the email –– choose to edit the path from the Paths list and save your changes. 

If Entries is enabled on your site and you do not have access to it, you will see product-related paths that have been created but cannot edit them.

Duplicate a path¶

You can duplicate an existing path, so you don’t have to start from scratch when creating paths with similar logic. On the main Paths page, go to the More Actions icon and select Duplicate. 

View path history¶

For each path created, see a list of when notifications were sent, as well as if a notification was sent successfully or if it failed, on the History page.

 

Delete a path¶

No longer need to notify anyone about events on your site? Has your path limit been reached and you need to create a new one? Simply delete the path from the Paths list by selecting Delete path in the More Actions icon.