Q2 Release: In Control at Every Stage

This quarter, the theme running through everything we’ve shipped is control. Control over the full journey of your assets, from review and approval through to embargo and expiration. Control over how your workspace looks and feels for every team that uses it. Control over what comes into your content library from external parties. And a library experience that’s faster, more visual, and more intuitive to navigate. Q2 represents a significant step forward for teams that need their DAM to do more than store files.

Your Assets, Under Control

Every asset in your library has a journey. It gets created, reviewed, approved, published, and eventually retired. Until now, managing that journey relied heavily on people remembering to act at the right moment. This quarter, we’re introducing Asset Lifecycle Management: the foundation of a governance framework that gives your content a structure it can follow, with controls that enforce it.

This is the first version of a capability we’ll be building on significantly. What’s available today is already substantial, and it’s designed to grow.

Review and approval, built in

For teams where content goes through sign-off before it goes live, Review and Approval chains bring that process directly into the platform. Configure multi-step workflows with sequential or parallel stages, set deadlines with automated escalation, and require specific metadata to be completed before an asset can move forward. Reviewers get a dedicated queue to manage everything in one place, and nothing moves without the right people having signed off.

Embargo content until it’s ready

Some content exists before it should be seen — a product launch, a seasonal campaign, a press announcement. Embargo Management lets you schedule exactly when content becomes available, keeping it hidden from general users until the moment you choose. Embargoed assets can be grouped for simultaneous release, and a dedicated timeline view gives you a clear picture of what’s going live and when, with controls to adjust, release early, or cancel if plans change.

Rules that do the work for you

Beyond individual workflows, the new Rules Engine lets you build automated rules that govern asset availability and access over time. Pair it with Asset Locking, and you can ensure that once an asset reaches a defined state, it stays there — no accidental edits, no content going live before it should, no assets drifting out of governance. And with asset expiration, content can be retired automatically once its time is up. The right asset reaches the right person at the right time, without relying on anyone to remember to act.

See how your content is used

Lifecycle management isn’t only about what happens before content goes live — it’s also about knowing what happens afterwards. Data Dwell now records how assets are consumed across every channel, including downloads, views, shares, portal activity, and showcase appearances. Those metrics appear right on the asset detail page and feed automated inactivity detection, which flags assets that haven’t been used within a period you define, so retiring stale content becomes a decision based on evidence rather than guesswork.

Asset Lifecycle Management is the beginning of something much bigger on the Data Dwell roadmap. The foundation is in place, and we’ll be building on it in the quarters ahead.

Your Workspace, Your Way

Not everyone uses Data Dwell the same way. A content coordinator, a brand manager, and an external agency partner all have different priorities the moment they log in. This quarter gives you the tools to reflect that.

Custom Dashboards

Custom Dashboards let you build a home experience with a tile editor that combines image banners, links, and text overlays however you need. Set them as private for your own workflow, or publish them so your whole team lands on the same starting point. Different teams can have dashboards built specifically for how they work, so the platform immediately points people towards what matters to them rather than leaving them to find it themselves.

Step into any user’s view

Setting up permissions is one thing; knowing exactly what each person sees is another. Administrators can now log in as another user to verify their setup, with a clear banner indicating impersonation and a one-click return to your own account. It takes the guesswork out of configuring roles and makes onboarding and permission audits far quicker.

Bringing Content In

Sharing assets out through Portals has always been a core part of Data Dwell. This quarter, we’ve added the other side of that conversation.

Transfer Links

Getting files from external parties — agencies submitting deliverables, clients sending source material, integrators uploading content — has typically meant email chains, shared drives, or file transfer tools that sit entirely outside your platform. Transfer Links change that. Create a shareable link and send it to anyone; they upload directly, no account required. Transfer Links can be tied to a specific Portal or sent as standalone links, so they fit naturally into however you’re already working with external partners.

What arrives doesn’t go straight into your library. Every submission lands in a review area first, where your team can approve or reject it before it becomes part of your content estate. You’re not just receiving files; you’re governing what comes in, on your terms.

A Library That Feels Like Yours

Data Dwell has always been a place to store and manage your brand’s content. This quarter, the platform itself starts to reflect that.

Folder Banners

Folders can now display image banners, giving each area of your library a visual identity that matches what’s inside it. A campaign folder feels like a campaign; a product range feels like a product range. Configure banners to cascade down through subfolders for a consistent look across an entire content area, or keep them specific to individual folders. Multiple images can rotate as a carousel, so high-traffic areas of your library can surface a range of content at a glance.

360° image support

The library now recognizes 360-degree images as their own asset type. Upload them once and view them interactively in the platform, in Portals, and in preview mode, giving product shots, venues, and spaces an immersive presentation without leaving Data Dwell.

Folder-level metadata

Classifying large collections just got faster. Administrators can now apply metadata directly to a folder, and every asset inside it inherits those values automatically, so an entire campaign or product range can be tagged in a single action rather than asset by asset.

Showcases driven by saved filters

Showcases can now be powered by a saved filter. Assign the filter once and the public showcase keeps itself up to date as your library evolves, so the right assets stay on display without anyone maintaining the list by hand.

Connect Data Dwell to Your AI Tools

Data Dwell now supports MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard that lets you connect the platform directly to AI tools like Claude, Copilot, and others. Once connected, your AI assistant can search your asset library, work with folders, find files, and interact with tags without you needing to leave the tools you already use.

This opens up a new way of working with your content estate, letting AI do the heavy lifting of finding and surfacing assets while you focus on what to do with them.

MCP is available to all Data Dwell customers now. Reach out to our team to get set up.

Under the Hood

Alongside the headline features, a set of smaller improvements makes everyday work smoother.

A smoother first upload

For teams setting up a new workspace, the first upload experience has been improved. Users are now guided to create a folder before uploading, removing a confusing dead end that previously left new workspaces without a clear next step, and empty folders now show clear prompts for what to do next.

Faster folder loading

Folder loading is faster across the library and within permission assignments, making it smoother to navigate larger folder structures and assign access at scale.

Drag to select assets

For anyone working with large asset libraries, you can now drag to select multiple assets at once rather than clicking each one individually, making bulk actions quicker and more intuitive.

Convert and download in one step

Converting and downloading an asset is now a single, unified action, cutting an unnecessary step out of a common task.

You can also catch up on what we shipped in our Q1 release.