Using collections

Learn about collections and what you can use them for

Charlie Pinker avatar
Written by Charlie Pinker
Updated over a week ago

A collection is a group of assets from across your Dash. They are way of gathering together assets to help you with your work, such as:

  • Collating assets for a press release

  • Sharing project assets with an external agency

  • Collaborating with colleagues

  • Sharing documentation with your customers

Creating a collection

To create a collection, either:

  1. Create an empty collection:

    1. On the Home or Browse screens, click the Collections button

    2. Type in a name in the textbox

    3. Click "Add".
      or

  2. Create a collection with some assets:

    1. Click the "Add to collection" button

    2. Choose the desired collection, or enter the name for a new one and click "Add"

Adding assets to a collection

To add an asset to a collection, first select one or more assets on the Browse screen, then click the "Add to collection" button.

You can add assets from across your Dash, from any folder.

Collections can contain as many assets as you like, but you can only add up to 500 assets at a time.

Removing assets from a collection

To remove an asset from a collection:

  1. Open the collection

  2. Select the asset/s you'd like to remove using the tick button over the asset thumbnail

  3. Click the "Remove from Collection" button

Assets removed from a collection are not removed from your Dash account.

Viewing your collections

To view your collections:

  1. Navigate to the Home or Browse screen

  2. Click the Collections button

You will be shown a list of you collections and how many assets are in them. Click on any of the collections to open it.

Changing the order of assets in a collection

If you would like to change the order of assets shown in a collection, use the sort menu to the top-right of the collection screen. This lets you re-arrange the assets by common criteria such as Date Added, File Size etc.

You can also sort assets in a collection by your own custom fields. To do this:

  1. Ensure the field is not hidden from public, by unchecking this option for the relevant field in Admin > Fields.

Once you've completed these two steps, as long as assets in your collection contain data in the chosen field, the field will now be shown as a sortable option in the "Sort By" dropdown box at the top-right of the collection screen.

Filtering assets in a collection

Within a collection you can view all the usual filters available in your Dash, to filter down the view of assets in your collection. This includes the folders that the assets are in.

Note that these filters are not available on the publicly shared version of a collection. For a full self-service experience for shared assets, we recommend using portals.

Deleting a collection

To delete a collection, open the collections menu from the Home or Browse screen, then click the bin icon. Remember, if you delete a collection:

  • Any assets within the collection will still be stored in your Dash

  • Any share links to that collection will stop working

  • The collection cannot be recovered


Collaborating on a collection

By default, collections are private to each user, but you can share them with other users to collaborate with.


Sharing a collection externally

You can share collections with non-Dash users. Shared collection links don't expire and stay up to date to reflect the contents of the collection.


Frequently Asked Questions

Can I create folders within a collection?

Not exactly. When you view a collection within Dash, you can open up the Filters pane on the left, expand the Folders section, and filter the collection by folder.

When you share the collection publicly, folders are not included and the collection will contain a flat list of assets.

What happens to collections when a user is deleted?

When you delete a user, their collections are also deleted. A warning is provided to the admin to confirm this before the user is deleted. Is it not possible to restore a collection, or identify the assets that were in it, once the user (and therefore the collection) has been deleted.

Can I restore a deleted collection?

If your collection was deleted within the last 30 days, we might be able to restore it. Just get in touch via the in-app chat with a link to the collection, or its name, and the user email address it was associated with, and we'll see what we can do.

We can't restore collections that were deleted longer than 30 days ago.

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