Creating and sharing custom metadata templates is an easy task in any Cumulus edition. Metadata consistency is important for most organizations, and shared metadata templates make it easy for users to enter standardized information, with absolutely no input errors.

But what about you? What about your needs?

Cumulus also makes it easy for you to create personal metadata templates that are accessible to only you, and no one else. Find yourself entering metadata that’s unique to you or your personal workflow over and over again? Then, it’s time for personal metadata templates!

Why Wouldn’t You Want to Share?

Metadata templates can be used to quickly assign predefined values to a hundred metadata fields at once, or they can be used to populate a single metadata field with your values. For example, say your department has a workflow in which a number of different people review and approve assets. In this case, your catalog might contain the following fields, each used to store information about the approver:

• Approver Name
• Approver Email
• Approver Phone

After someone has approved an asset, it’s her job to enter her personal information into the appropriate metadata fields. For a number of reasons, a metadata template is perfect for this task:

• It’s faster.
• It’s virtually free from the potential for error.
• It’s far, far easier than having to populate three metadata fields each time!

The trouble is that a shared metadata template wouldn’t likely include values like these, because they are unique to each user. And you certainly wouldn’t want to host dozens of shared metadata templates on your Cumulus Server that are each intended for use only by a single person—what a mess!

But Cumulus offers a simple solution for this issue through the use of personal metadata templates. You create them; you save them; and, because they are automatically stored alongside your Cumulus Server, you have access to them from any client workstation you use to connect to Cumulus—even over the Web!

Once your user account has been granted permission to create personal metadata templates, you can create as many as you need, for any purpose you need. And, no matter how many you create, you’ll know that no one else will ever see, access or use them.

Permission to Create

The first step is to make sure your user account includes the special permission required to create personal metadata sets. Connect to the Cumulus Server Console, open your user account properties and navigate to the Metadata Templates Permissions section under the Server Permissions tab, as shown below.

The permission needed is the Manage User Metadata Templates. (“User” is the term Cumulus uses for metadata templates that are not shared with others.)

This single permission is all that’s required to create and save personal metadata templates. The other permissions shown deal
with shared metadata templates

That’s all that’s needed. When you (or the user whose account you’ve modified) next logs into Cumulus, the Metadata Templates section of the Preferences window will be available. (See below.) This is where metadata templates are created.

Creating Personal Metadata Templates

Once the proper permission has been added to your user account, open the Preferences window of the Cumulus client and click on the Metadata Templates section icon.

Creating your own metadata template is easy:

1. Choose any existing metadata template from the drop-down menu. (All new templates are created as copies of other templates.)
2. Click Duplicate, give your metadata template a meaningful name, and click OK when you’re ready.

Duplicate an existing template as a starting point for your new template. The Share Set button is disabled in this image because the
Create Shared Metadata Templates permission has not been granted. (See Server Console screenshot, above.)

Once the template has been created, it’s time to populate it with values:

1. Click the Add button and choose a metadata field from the catalog. (Do this for as many metadata fields as you want to include on your template.)
2. In the Value area of the metadata template, enter the values you want used. (With certain Cumulus metadata field types, you might see check boxes or a drop-down menu of options instead of a text area.)
3. From the Fill Mode area, choose the option you prefer for each metadata value:
   • Replace – Replaces any existing values in the metadata field.
   • Insert After – The metadata template value is inserted after any existing field values.
   • Insert Before – The metadata template value is inserted before any existing field values.

Add as many metadata field values as you need. In this example, the values of three catalog metadata fields will be overwritten when
this template is used, because the Replace fill mode is selected.

Click Apply or OK to save your changes. The metadata template is available immediately to you, but no other users will see it.

Follow the steps above to create as many additional personal metadata templates as you need.

Making Use of Personal Metadata Templates

To make use of any metadata template available to you (shared or personal):

1. Select one or more asset records.
2. Select Asset > Fill Metadata. A small window appears from which you can choose a metadata template.
3. Click Fill and the metadata template updates the included metadata fields of the selected asset records.

All metadata templates available to you will be seen in this window.
Choose the one you want, and click Fill to update a single asset
record or thousands at a time.