Managing images for use in content records

To upload images

Before you can use image files in your iParts, you must upload them to your iMIS application server. You can do this while configuring a ContentHtml iPart, or you can do this using the standalone image manager, which can be convenient when you want to upload a batch of files.

■    Using the ContentHtml editor - While defining a content record, add a ContentHtml iPart to one of the iPart zones and configure the iPart to display the HTML editor. In the editor's toolbar, click the Image Manager button. In the Browse Files tab, open the folder in which you want to upload a new image. You can also click the New Folder icon to create a new folder. Once the destination folder is selected, go to the Upload Image tab and click Browse. Browse to the file on your computer that you want to upload, click OK, then click Upload.

■    Using the standalone image manager - In the Content Designer tool, select Manage images. In the image manager, open the folder in which you want to upload a new image. You can also click the New Folder icon to create a new folder. Click the Upload icon and browse to the file on your computer that you want to upload, click OK, then click the Upload link at the right of the Upload field. If you want to cancel the upload and return to the main view of the editor, click the Upload icon in the toolbar.

To edit an uploaded image

Both the HTML editor and the image manager have a built-in Image Editor that can perform some basic edits to images that have already been uploaded. However, it is recommended that you do not use the Image Editor to modify images that have transparent backgrounds, because doing so will replace the transparent background with solid black pixels.

If you need to edit images that have a transparent background, you should save a copy of the image to your local computer and use your preferred image editing program to modify it. Then upload the new version to iMIS again, overwriting the old version if desired.

The easiest way to save a copy of the image to your local computer is to right-click the image shown the Preview area of the Image Editor, and choose Save Picture As.

Troubleshooting

■    You must have one or both of the following content authority group (CAG) permissions in at least one CAG to which you belong:

□    To upload images using the standalone image manager, you must have Content Upload CAG permissions.

□    To upload images while configuring ContentHTML iParts in a content record, you must have Content Upload CAG permissions. You must also have both Read and Edit Document System permissions on each content record.

■    The image file that you are uploading must be located on your local workstation or a network computer that is mapped to a drive letter on your local workstation.

■    The CM.ImagePath variable (in System Setup > Set up content management > Content designer configuration) controls which directory the standalone image manager and the ContentHtml iPart editor use. The path to this directory must the the same on all servers that host CM websites.

Tip: iParts that support uploaded images

Images are supported in two of the standard iParts that ship with CM: ContentHTML and Big Button Panel iParts.

■    Images that have been uploaded to the servers that host your CM websites can be inserted into both of these iPart types.

■    If you want to reuse an image hosted by some external server instead of first uploading it to the servers that host your CM websites, you can do this only in ContentHtml iParts, by manually inserting standard html <IMG> elements that point to a URL.

Tip: Images are automatically copied to every server that uses a ContentHtml iPart

Images that you upload for use in a ContentHtml iPart are automatically propagated to all iMIS servers that host CM websites in which a content record that uses the ContentHtml iPart is used. When you first upload an image with the Image Manager, the image is placed into the CM.ImagePath folder on the server to which you are connected. By default, this folder is ~\images, but you can change the value in System Setup > Set up content management > Content designer configuration.

When you include that image in a ContentHtml iPart and publish the content record that contains that iPart, the image is first copied into a table in the iMIS database and then the iMIS publishing process copies that image from the iMIS database to the CM.ImagePath folder on all other servers that host the website that uses the content record. This same process also applies to other media types that you manually place in the CM.ImagePath folder on any server that hosts a website and then include an appropriate HTML element in the ContentHtml iPart.