Controlling when uploaded files should be available to users in Assets

Info: This feature requires Assets 6.77 or higher.

One of the main features of Assets that users can make use of is the option to manually upload new files to Assets Server.

As a process, uploading a file involves various steps that are performed in the background:

1. The file itself is added to the system.
2. Metadata is extracted from the file and stored in the system together with additional metadata.
3. The file is made available to other users.

By default, files that are uploaded are immediately available to other users when:

• File data is uploaded and metadata has been extracted
• The metadata is complete*

* Only when metadata is required to be added to one or more fields; this is controlled by the option requiredMetadataHandling=strict.

This means that even before the user who is uploading the files has clicked the Finish button (or the process automatically completes by means of the Auto Finish feature), files can already be available to other users to work on.

Example: When several small files are uploaded together with a very large file, the upload process for the large file takes longer than the smaller files. While the large file is still being uploaded and processed, the smaller files are already available to other users. During this time, the Finish button cannot be clicked (or the process is not automatically completed).

In some scenarios though, files need to be kept hidden from other users until the user who uploads them is absolutely sure that all files should actually be made part of the system and/or that the metadata is set correctly. This prevents other users from using incorrect files or files with incorrect data.

Configuration

Controlling if uploaded files should be available immediately or only after confirmation by the user who uploads the files is done through the following option in the cluster-config.properties.txt file of Assets Server:

hideFilesUntilUploadSessionComplete

Possible values:

• false: (Default value) Files are immediately available when the following conditions are met:
• File data is uploaded and metadata has been extracted
• Metadata is complete (only when requiredMetadataHandling=strict)

• true:
• Files are only available when the Finish button is clicked, or Auto finish is used.
  Unfinished uploads are cleaned up automatically.

In both cases the user still sees the Finish button.

Example: hideFilesUntilUploadSessionComplete=false