4 steps to migrating your assets to a new DAM

If you’ve been shopping around for a digital asset management (DAM) tool, you might feel apprehensive at the idea of migrating thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of assets from your shared drives to your new system. If you pick a complicated DAM platform with poor customer service then it will feel daunting and overwhelming. 

But it doesn’t need to be a difficult process. If you pick a great DAM with amazing customer service (like Dash 😇) we’ll make sure your migration is as easy as possible. The way we see it, the quicker you can get your assets into your DAM, the quicker you can push them back out to your campaigns.

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All you’ll need to do is follow a few simple steps. Let’s get into it. 

4 steps to moving assets to your new digital asset management system

Getting assets ready to upload to your DAM doesn’t need to stress you out. If you’ve got files scattered across multiple locations, we recommend following the process below. 

Decide what assets you want in your DAM 

First things first, what type of files do you want in your DAM? Is this going to be a place to store your brand’s product images, user-generated content and campaign graphics? Do you want to house internal docs like brand guidelines and fonts? Make sure to discuss with your team what kinds of assets you want to migrate over (eg: no personal pics please!). 

Collect your important assets in one place 

Next it’s time to collect all those assets together in one place, ready for their move. They might currently be scattered across your team’s shared drives, network servers and local hard drives. It’s your job to put them into an easily accessible location ready to share with your DAM vendor. 
And honestly, the best way to do this is with a good old-fashioned spreadsheet. A bit like the one we’ve already created for you. 😇✨

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Here’s a step-by-step guide for using the sheet:

1. Draw up a list of people in your company who look after different types of assets.
   
2. Create a central file location in Google Drive or Dropbox and add a link to the spreadsheet. 
   
3. Send the spreadsheet to the people on the list and ask them to fill out the ‘locations’ tab. 
   
4. They can either add a link to their own Google Drive, Dropbox or network server locations. Or, they can drop files into your central location. 
   
5. Once everyone has completed their section, you can pass the spreadsheet over to your DAM vendor.

💡You can also use our Google Drive integration to pull assets directly into Dash. All you’ll need to do is connect your Google Drive to Dash and select the images and videos you want to move across. 

Decide whether you want to organise them before they’re imported

At this point, it’s best to decide whether you want to organise your assets before or after they get uploaded into your DAM:

• Organise in Dash: the easiest approach (and one we usually advise our customers) is to upload everything ‘as is’ into your DAM. You can then use tags, fields and folders to organise them in the system. 
  
• Organise before upload: you could sort all your team’s assets and save them into one local folder. Delete any files you don’t want and use that folder to import to Dash.  
  

Note: you can opt to use deduplication in Dash once you’ve uploaded your assets. This means any duplicate files will be removed. For each duplicate, you’ll be left with a single file that lives in multiple folders. 

Hand over to your DAM vendor 

If you’ve used the spreadsheet above, you can simply hand it over to your DAM vendor. If you’ve picked Dash as your digital asset management tool, we can migrate all those assets over to your new Dash account for free. A member of our team will create an S3 bucket (or you can do this yourself) and move all those files from your drive to your new Dash.

And that’s about it! Migrating your assets to a new digital asset management system should be as painless as possible. The work you put in getting your visuals ready for migration will pay off in the long run. That’s the advice Nichola, from COAT (one of our customers), would give to anyone signing up to Dash: 

“Don't think it's overwhelming. It took me about a week to organise everything in Google Drive and get it set up in Dash. But once you put in the leg-work it’s definitely going to help in the long run. That initial set-up is a one off, but your life will be simpler from then on.”

Next, we can work with you to create new folders, tags and fields that’ll make it easier for your team to find content in Dash.  Have a read of Emily’s article all about building your digital asset management taxonomy. ✨ 

FAQs about moving assets to Dash

Are you considering Dash? Here are some questions you might have about moving: 

Can I upload metadata to Dash? 

Your image and video files will have metadata attached to them. And you might want to add your own data like the photographer, expiry date and usage rights. You can easily upload this data to Dash using a CSV file, or, add metadata within Dash itself. 

What file types can I upload to Dash?

You can store and organise any file type in Dash. That includes different image and video files, along with documents like PDFs and CSVs. Just bear in mind that Dash won’t let you preview file types that it doesn’t recognise. 

Can I migrate files from another cloud storage?

Absolutely! Many of our customers come from tools like Dropbox, Google Drive and SharePoint. Just get in touch with us and we can get those assets moved over for free. 

(Make sure to check out our Google Drive integration -  this is perfect if you’re still planning to use Drive after moving to Dash). 

How quickly can I get onboarded with Dash?

Getting assets ready to migrate to Dash often goes hand-in-hand with onboarding. Luckily, our system is super-easy to use, so it won't take long for you to get to grips with it. 🙌 (In fact, we were voted the easiest-to-use DAM by our customers). 

A member of our customer success team can run you through a quick demo and advise you on how to set up your Dash. Or, you can sign up and get started right away. 😉👇