Getting files organized in your digital asset management (DAM) system is the first step towards more efficient workflows and coordinated customer experiences. With complete and accurate asset metadata, teams can quickly find exactly what they need.

Like keeping your home clean, keeping your DAM system organized requires good habits. The asset uploader is designed to do just that – by helping your teams quickly and easily add files with the right information.

Empathy is central to Widen’s values and culture. It is reflected in our exceptional customer service, respect for our teammates, and commitment to employing people with developmental disabilities. In this TEDx Talk our CEO, Matthew Gonnering, speaks about the importance of empathy in business.

So our interest in building software that’s accessible to all users is a natural extension of our corporate culture and mindset around empathy and inclusion. With that, we’d like to share where we are in our effort to meet accessibility standards across our digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM) platform, the Widen Collective^®.

Marketing that moves people often requires a human connection. That connection was lost as the pandemic reduced in-person experiences with some of your most valuable assets – your people and products. This void forced many brands to accelerate their growth in digital spaces.

Not many people leave home today without their mobile phone. Who are we kidding? Not many people leave the room without their phone! So we know being able to access your content and data on-the-go is critical for today’s marketers. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of our new Widen Collective^® mobile app. 

If you like finding exactly what you want, you’re going to love what’s coming to the Widen Collective^Ⓡ in 2021. In Q1, we’re offering a new way to find assets called the Asset Digest. It offers new and effective options for finding and managing your assets.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade...or so the saying goes. And that’s exactly what we did for this year’s Widen Summit. While we all would have loved to meet in person, we needed a different game plan during a global pandemic. So we moved the event to a virtual platform, and are thrilled that it allowed us to share the Summit experience with more people than ever. Over 500 registrants to be exact! And here’s everything you need to know about this year’s event. 

There are many ways to find an asset in the Widen Collective^Ⓡ. You can search, filter, browse categories or collections, access a portal...the list goes on. Each way has its own uses. Our newest ways to help you discover assets are available while you’re already looking at an asset.

There’s a new way to notify anyone about the latest assets – it’s called Paths. Paths is a new feature in the Widen Collective^Ⓡ that allows you to create custom, automated notifications when assets meet a specified state – no coding required.

Accurate metadata allows users across your organization to find and retrieve assets quickly. With rapidly growing libraries of content, keeping metadata up-to-date can be a time-consuming challenge. Digital asset management (DAM) admins are often tasked with applying metadata for large batches of assets from activities like photoshoots, product updates, and rebrands.

The search system within the Widen Collective^Ⓡ allows our 500,000+ users to find the digital assets they need. Across every Collective site, the search system's job is to store all of the uploaded asset information in a format that can be searched in a wide variety of ways; so that it can return results that are accurate, complete, and in compliance with the platform's governance structure. All in a matter of milliseconds! This is a highly complex system that has gone through several major overhauls over the past 15+ years to keep pace with the exponential growth of data that Widen handles. This post is the tale of that evolution over time, and the steps we take to ensure its ability to scale into the future.