Workflow Automation

Triggers, conditions and actions

Every automation rule, whatever the tool, has the same three parts:

Part	Question it answers	Examples in a DAM
Trigger	When does the rule run?	A file is uploaded, metadata changes, a date passes, a schedule fires
Conditions	Which items does it apply to?	File type is video; Market is France; Campaign field is not empty
Actions	What does it do?	Add to a collection, set a field, add tags, notify a group, change the workflow status, call another system

Writing the rule as one sentence before building it catches most design errors: "When a file is uploaded, if its asset class is Product Photo and its SKU field is empty, notify the product data team."

What to automate in a DAM

The best candidates are steps that happen often, follow a fixed rule, and cause problems when someone forgets them:

• Filing. New assets go into the right campaign, product or year collection based on their metadata.
• Metadata from file names. Supplier references, product codes or shoot dates encoded in a file naming convention are copied into fields.
• Tagging and text extraction. Keywords, captions and the text inside images are added on ingestion. See auto-tagging.
• Routing for review. Assets that meet a condition, such as a regulated product line, go to the right reviewers. See approval workflow.
• Expiry. Assets whose licence or release has ended are taken out of use on the date.
• Notifications. A product team learns that new photos of its range have arrived.
• Distribution. A website, PIM or e-commerce system is told when an asset changes, so it can update its copy.
• Imports. Files from a supplier's server are pulled in on a schedule.

Rules, workflows and integrations

Three kinds of automation are often grouped under the same name:

• Rules inside one system: if-this-then-that logic on the system's own data, such as a DAM filing an upload.
• Workflow state machines: content moves through defined statuses, some moves made by people and some by rules. Business process diagrams of this kind are often drawn in BPMN 2.0, published by the Object Management Group and as ISO/IEC 19510:2013.
• Integrations between systems: one system sends an event, usually a webhook, and another system acts on it, directly or through an integration platform.

Most teams need all three: rules for the routine work inside the DAM, a workflow for approval and expiry, and webhooks to keep the website and other systems up to date.

Before you automate

• Clean the data first. A rule that files by campaign name works only if the campaign field uses a controlled vocabulary.
• Test on a sample. Run the rule against a few assets and check the result before turning it on for everything.
• Decide the order. When two rules apply to the same asset, priority decides which runs first and whether the second runs at all.
• Avoid loops. A rule that runs on every update and changes a field can trigger itself again.
• Name an owner. Rules outlive the person who wrote them. A short description and a named owner make them maintainable.

Workflow automation in Freedam

• Automation rules run on upload, on update or on both. Conditions can be combined in nested AND/OR groups, and the actions are Assign to Collection, Set Workflow State, Add Tags, Notify Users and Set Metadata. Rules have a priority and can stop the rules after them.
• Collection rules file new assets by a path built from their metadata, such as Campaigns / {year:created_at} / {campaign}, and create missing collections on the way.
• Filename parsing rules copy parts of a file name into metadata fields on upload. Freedam can suggest the pattern with AI from a sample file name and a short description.
• Field rules show, hide or require metadata fields depending on other values in the form.
• Workflow transitions can be automatic, and a nightly job moves assets whose rights have expired to the status set for their asset class.
• Bulk actions edit metadata, change workflow status, apply a rights policy, add attachments or export many assets at once. Metadata edits and exports run in the background, with their progress under Background tasks.
• Webhooks send events such as asset.created, asset.updated, workflow.transitioned and share.accessed to other systems, signed with HMAC-SHA256. See webhooks.
• Data sources import from WebDAV, S3 and Google Drive, and on the Business plan WebDAV and S3 sources can refresh on a schedule.
• The Rules overview page lists collection, access, workflow, field and automation rules in one place. See automation.

Frequently asked questions

What is an example of workflow automation?

A product photo is uploaded with the file name SUP-123_red_front.jpg. A rule reads the reference and colour from the name into metadata, a second rule files the photo under the product's collection, and a third notifies the product team and sends the photo to review.

What is the difference between workflow automation and creative automation?

Workflow automation moves and organises content: filing, routing, notifying, expiring. Creative automation produces content, such as resized versions, localised variants or documents generated from templates.

Do you need to write code to automate workflows?

Not for rules inside a DAM, which are usually built in forms with conditions and actions. Code, or an integration platform, is needed when the automation spans several systems, for example when a webhook from the DAM has to update a website or a PIM.