Digital Asset Analytics and Reporting

Once assets live in one system, that system knows things nobody could previously establish: which images are actually used, which cost money to produce and were never downloaded again, what a client looked at after a meeting, and how much storage is being spent on copies of the same photograph. Reporting is where that knowledge becomes available, and it turns a library from a filing system into something that answers questions about itself.

The Audit Trail

The audit report records activity across the platform and can be filtered by date range and by individual user. Activity falls into categories that between them cover the meaningful events in an asset's life:

• Opened - records that have been viewed.
• Login - user sign-in activity.
• Downloaded - assets taken from the platform.
• Created - new assets and records.
• Added - assets added to portals.
• Updated - changes to assets and records, including changes to a portal's access settings.

One distinction is worth understanding, because it determines whether download figures mean anything. A download is counted only when a file is genuinely downloaded. Viewing or previewing an asset does not count, including opening a PDF, 3D or 360 asset inside a portal. Download numbers therefore measure people taking files away to use them, not people glancing at a thumbnail - which is the figure you want when judging whether an asset earns its place.

Entries in the report are clickable, so an interesting line takes you to the asset it refers to rather than to a search box.

Engagement Outside the Organisation

Internal usage is one half of the picture. When assets are shared through a portal, the platform records what recipients did with them: visits to the portal, which assets were viewed, which were downloaded, and when a portal was forwarded on.

That last signal is the one sales teams tend to care about. A portal reaching someone it was never sent to means the material travelled inside the customer's organisation, which is a fact worth knowing before the next conversation. Silence is informative too: a proposal nobody opened is a different situation from one opened repeatedly.

Processing Health

The processing queue shows the status of assets moving through upload processing, including thumbnail generation, with the file's name, type, extension and dates.

Its real function is catching failure. A file that fails to process would otherwise sit in the library looking broken, with nobody responsible for noticing - a large video that never generated a preview, or a format that could not be read. The queue surfaces these so they can be reprocessed rather than failing silently, and reprocessing, editing and deleting are all available directly from it.

Duplicates and Storage

Every library accumulates duplicates. The same photograph is uploaded by two people, an image is re-exported at a slightly different size, a set is restored from a backup into a new folder. The duplicate report groups these into sets and reports how much storage could be recovered.

It works in two modes. File duplicates are exact matches - the identical file uploaded more than once. Visual duplicates are assets that look alike even when the underlying files differ, which is how re-exports, resizes and near-identical frames get caught. A sensitivity control sets how alike assets must be before they are grouped, from identical images only through to visually similar ones.

Each set shows the assets it contains with their folder locations, dimensions and sizes, and marks which asset carries the most metadata. That marker matters: when the same image exists three times, the copy somebody described properly is the one to keep, and it is not necessarily the oldest or the largest. You then mark each asset to keep, delete or ignore, and apply the decisions for the set.

Resolving a Duplicate Set

Within each set, mark what should happen to each asset:

• Keep - Retain the asset. Keeping an asset does not remove it from future duplicate detection.
• Delete - Remove the asset from the platform.
• Ignore - Dismiss the match without changing the asset. The set can resurface if a new matching asset is uploaded later.

You must mark at least one asset in a set to delete or ignore before you can act on it; a set where everything is kept needs no action. When you are ready, click Execute to apply your choices. A summary next to the button shows how many assets will be deleted and how many kept.

Who Requested Access

Access tends to outlive the reason it was granted. A user created for a campaign or a partner account set up for one project is easy to forget once the work is done. Recording who requested each user and account, shown as Requested by on the record, gives every login an owner who can confirm whether it is still needed.

The Requesters Report lists each requester with how many users and accounts they requested and how many of those users are still active, including how many are administrators. It can be exported to CSV, which makes it a practical starting point for an access review. See How to Use the Requesters Report.

Dashboards

Reports answer questions you have thought to ask. Dashboards put a smaller number of things in front of people who were not looking for them, which is how recent activity and current status get noticed at all. The home dashboard provides an overview on arrival, and custom dashboards can be built and arranged around what a particular team needs to see.

Questions Worth Asking of the Data

Reporting is only useful when it changes a decision. A few that repay the effort:

• What is never downloaded? Assets that are produced, stored and never used again are a straightforward argument about where production budget goes.
• What is downloaded constantly? High-demand assets are candidates for better conversion presets, clearer naming, or a more prominent place in the library.
• Which portals get opened? Engagement patterns say something about the material, not only the recipient.
• What is failing to process? A recurring failure usually points at a format or workflow problem worth fixing once.
• Where is storage going? Duplicate sets frequently account for more of it than anyone expects.

Who Can See Reports

Reports are available to administrators by default and can be extended to other users through permission configuration. They sit under App Setup > Reports.

Some access is worth granting beyond the admin group. The people who commission photography benefit from knowing what gets used, and sales teams benefit from portal engagement, but neither group needs full administrative rights to see it.