Simplifying Keyword Structures: Why you should care about project versus file keywords

If you’re like our clients, you’ve got tons of project and non-project photos to manage. And we rarely come across an AEC firm that doesn’t admit they have a problem managing them. Unfortunately, the idea of implementing a DAM can be daunting – especially when there are so many assets that need migrating and tagging.

We’re here to help. Today, we’ll examine number 4: Keep your keyword structure simple!

When it comes to keywords in OpenAsset, the first thing you need to know is that there are two types:

1. Project keywords
2. File keywords

Project keywords are an integral part of OpenAsset. Attributes like the client, city, country, services provided and market sector can all be assigned to the project. This means that any time you upload a file to that project it will automatically be assigned that project’s keywords.

Why is this important?

1. First, it is a lot easier to tag 300 projects with keywords than it is to tag 15,000 files.
2. Second, more than 90% of OpenAsset users start their search with a project name or project keyword.

So by assigning project keywords you have already made your OpenAsset library very searchable without a lot of work. That’s worth repeating – searchability without a lot of work.

To make this process easier you can integrate your project database (like Deltek Vision) to OpenAsset. So project keywords are incredibly important, very efficient and easy to implement.

Where people get hung during implementation is when it comes to file keywords. What are file keywords in OpenAsset? File keywords are tags that can be assigned to a specific file.

They don’t describe the project (like project keywords) and they are not copyrights/photographers (we have other fields for that). Attributes for the type of asset (photo, rendering, aerial) and elements of building (atrium, balcony, exterior, interior, lobby) are common file keywords.

Since searching by project name or project keyword is the most common way users search in OA, when would someone use file keywords in their search?

Users will search by file keyword:

1. When a search by project name or project keyword results in too many files. They will then use file keywords to further narrow down the search results.
2. When they are not searching by project name or project keyword at all. This is less common when searching across project files, but is more common when searching for non-project files like staff photos, headshots, stock photography, etc. Since there is no project to search on, all metadata is assigned to the file.

So how do you create a file keyword structure? I’ll explain in part 2.