One of the main sticking points that we see frequently in training and helping customer manage their sites is confusion about asset classes and their application. When used correctly, they are an efficient and easy way to protect important information and ensure that only the people that you want can see protected parts of your site. When used incorrectly, they become a time consuming management overhead.

Asset classes should be a one-off setup on site creation. Once the classes are set up on the relevant folders they shouldn’t need to be changed. As new assets are needed, they should take the correct asset class by virtue of being created in the correct folder.

In this short blog post I’ve popped down some dos and don’ts about asset classes, but the single key instruction is put stuff that belongs together in the same asset class. If you follow the advice below, life as an administrator will be easier. If you don’t, you won’t ‘burn in information management hell’, but it will be less efficient and more confusing to your own site users.

Do:

• Put stuff that belongs together in the same asset class
• Organise your folders with the correct asset classes. That means that anything new added to the relevant folders will have the correct asset class applied automatically
• Name assets based on the type of stuff they are. g. ‘Extranet’, ’Marketing brochures’, ‘Business plans’, ‘Acme software downloads’
• Use the new asset class description field to help clarify your asset classes and how you want them applied. These descriptions should not be used to describe permissions. For example, the ‘Acme software downloads’ example class above might be described as ‘Use this for the software zip files and acme documentation’ but not in terms of permissions like ‘Allows subscribers to download software but disallows everyone else’.
• Keep it simple. If your current system has more than 15 asset classes, unless you have extremely granulated access control requirements, you’re probably overcomplicating things.
• Protect your asset class management. You can set permissions so that only super-admins can change the rights on asset classes, but your average site editor can only pick what asset class to use. 

Don’t:

• Create asset classes based on permissions or who you want to allow to see something.
• Name asset classes based on permissions. Asset class names like ‘Hidden from public’, ‘Market department only’, ‘Publishers and editors’ are not descriptive of the asset’s class use and should be avoided.

 

Asset class help Links

http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/asset-classes-dos-and-donts.htm

adding a description or notes to every asset class

http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/help-edit-asset-analyser.htm

http://helpcms.sitekit.net/documentation/help/asset-classes.htm