Creating the Asset Factory

Asset Factories are a great way to allow non-technical users to easily create specific types of pages or other assets.

Asset factories are managed in the Administration area, but each must be based on an actual asset in the main area.

An ideal base asset will have all the content you wish to be default for every asset of that type, which includes the appropriate configurations if the asset is a page and nothing else. A good organizational strategy would be to place all base assets in a common folder.

To create a new asset factory:

Go to the Administration area and select the Asset Factories menu.
Click Add Asset Factory.
Select the type of asset you would like to create.
On the General pane:
Name - Describes the asset (eg. Press Release, or Newsletter).
Parent Container - This allows you to choose where the asset factory should be stored in the Administration area.
Base Asset - This allows you to select the asset on which the asset factory will be based.
Placement Folder - This allows you to determine the default folder placement for all assets created using this asset factory.
Subfolder Placement - Checking this will allow assets created via this asset factory to be placed in subfolders within the placement folder.
Folder Placement Position - This allows you to determine the order in which the new asset will appear in the folder. For example, a new press release may always need to be placed first in the folder in order to render in dynamic navigation menus as the most recent item.
Overwrite - Checking this will allow newly created assets to overwrite existing assets with the same name.
Groups - Select from the available groups on the left and move to the right to determine which groups should be able to use the new asset factory.
Under Workflow:
There are three workflow modes possible for asset factories:
Folder Controlled - Pulls workflow definitions from the folder in which the asset is being created in the asset factory
As Selected Below - Allows you to select a workflow to be used for all assets created using this factory
None - uses no workflow for assets created with this factory
On the Plugins pane:
Add one or more plugins by selecting from the drop down, and clicking the green Plus icon. Some plugins will further prompt you to add various parameters.
Click Submit to save your new Asset Factory.

Videos

What is an Asset Factory?