Team members across your organization – and even outside your organization – need visual assets to tell your brand’s story. Your marketing and creative teams need hundreds of photos to use for social media, your website, print materials and more. Your CEO needs videos to include in presentations. Reporters you work with need photos to go with their stories.

Putting all of your creative assets in one centralized, easily accessible media library is the first step toward making sure everyone can get the assets they need, when they need them. But not everyone should have the same level of access to your team’s media. For example, a reporter who’s doing a quick story on your organization shouldn’t be able to download your staff photographer’s raw files (something only a small group of people, like your graphic design team, should be able to do).

In PhotoShelter for Brands (formerly Libris), we have five different user roles: Admin, Editors, Taggers, Invited Users and Contributors. These user roles help you grant access to different people, while keeping your media library safe and secure.

Watch the video to get an idea of how you should set up your user roles!

Now, let’s take a deep dive. Read through the breakdown of each user role below, or scroll to get our pro tips.

Breakdown: PhotoShelter for Brands User Roles

Admin

Every PhotoShelter for Brands account has one administrator (admin) – no more, no less. An admin is exactly like an editor, except for two main differences:

The admin is the only person who can add other editors and taggers
The admin controls your account’s billing information

If you’re the admin, one of the first steps you should take when you’re setting up your media library is to add editors and taggers to your account so they can help you get organized.

To add an editor or a tagger, head up to the “Admin” dropdown, and hit Library Staff.

Don’t forget, the admin has all the same permissions and capabilities as an editor. Speaking of editors…

Editors

Editors have complete access to your media library, and as trusted users they can take a wide range of actions, including:

Upload files
Download files
Tag files with relevant metadata
Create collections and galleries
Move collections, galleries and files
Delete collections, galleries and files
Customize the look and feel of your Public Portal
Give other people permission to see and download files
Send files to other people using features like Quick Send
Add invited users and contributors

Your editors should be team members who you trust with your organization’s media, for example, members of your marketing and creative departments, your photographers and videographers, your graphic designers, etc. If someone needs to upload files, download files, and create their own collections, they would make a great candidate for an editor.

Taggers

Like your admin and editors, taggers can see everything in your library, but their main job is to add metadata to your files. Taggers help you get organized.

Taggers cannot:

Create collections or galleries
Delete collections, galleries or files
Price images for sale

Taggers can:

Add metadata to files
Perform other Library actions, like upload files and quicksend files

If you have a volunteer or an intern who can help you tag files, but you want to make sure they don’t delete anything, the tagger role is just the ticket.

Invited Users

Invited users are the people who need access to files, but who don’t necessarily need full, ungated access to your media library. This could range from your sales team to your CEO to your external PR agency. If someone needs to access your brand’s media library on a regular basis, make them an invited user so they can log in, browse, search, and find exactly what they need all on their own. With invited users, you can make access to your media library self-service.

You can have an unlimited number of invited users to your media library. Invited users don’t have access to the back end of your Library, they can only see the Portal, and, more specifically, they can all only see and download what you – your admin and editors – have given them permission to see and download.

That means each invited user’s experience may look a little different. As we saw in the video, Tiffany had access to nearly every collection, while Kevin only had access to the “Sales” collection.

To add an invited user, head up to “Admin,” and click “Invited Users.” Click the green button to add a new invited user.

Add invited users so you can share files with the people who need them.

Here, you can also create groups. You might want to set up one group that includes all of your team’s graphic designers, and another that includes your whole sales team.

Don’t forget, once you’ve added these invited users, you now have to grant them permission to specific collections and galleries. To do that, head back into your Library, and click the stoplight icons of the collection or gallery you want to share. Then, grant permission to a specific invited user or to a group, and mark whether you want them to be able to download files. You can also set an expiration date or a maximum number of downloads.

Grant view and download permissions to your invited users.

Your admin and editors can all add invited users and grant them permission to see and download files.

Contributors

Contributors can only upload files to your media library. They don’t have permission to do anything other than upload, so they can’t see what’s in the back end of your PhotoShelter Library.

If you want your contributors to be able to see the galleries where they’ve added files, you can make them invited users and give them permission to see those galleries. (Note: You can be both an invited user and a tagger, which means you can upload and download, but you can’t see the back end of the Library. You can’t be both an editor and a tagger, because the capabilities are redundant, and there’s no point in that.)

You can have an unlimited number of contributors to your media library. Whether you’re working with someone who’s sending you files as a one-off, your go-to freelance photographer, or a full-time staff member, they can all upload to one secure location.

5 Pro Tips for Advanced PhotoShelter Users

Feel like you’ve got a handle on user roles, but want to get our team’s tips and tricks? Check out these pro tips.

1. Make anyone who needs regular access to your library an invited user.

When you add someone as an invited user, they can browse and search the media you have given them permission to see, all on their own. This makes file access self-service, so your team no longer has to field requests for media.

2. Use groups to quickly grant access to your invited users.

Putting your invited users into groups makes it easier for you to share collections and galleries with the right people. If all of your graphic designers, or all of your sales team members, or all of the alumni relations staff members, are in one group, you can quickly give them access to a collection or gallery. Then, if someone leaves your organization and you no longer want them to have access to your media, you can simply remove them from the group.

3. Make your regular contributors invited users.

If you work with one of your contributors on a regular basis and you want them to be able to see the files they’ve uploaded, invite them to your “Incoming Files” collection with a view-only permission setting.

4. Set up an intern or a volunteer as a tagger.

Many Libris users have a lot of files that need metadata. Set up a volunteer or an intern as a tagger, give them your team’s metadata policy, and have them tag your files. Your library will be more searchable in no time!

5. Organize your collections and galleries according to who needs the content.

The Sacramento Kings create collections for specific departments, for example, their ticket sales team. Everyone on the team has access to that top level collection, and any time new content is uploaded to the library, they automatically have access. This can help your team save time granting permissions, and make it easy for your invited users to browse and find what they need.

Check out the Kings’ PhotoShelter Portal and go behind the scenes with the Kings creative team in our webinar, Tips and Tricks from the Most Innovative Company in Sports.

Ready to have some fun with user roles? Head into your PhotoShelter account to get started!

Video: How to Set Up User Roles for Your Brand’s Media Library