Use Smart Folders to organize content automatically

Note: This article is about the new beta Admin App, which is still in development. Changes may occur. Please provide feedback directly in the beta app.

Smart Folders are a special type of folder you can add to your Classic Experiences to organize your content. As the name suggests, Smart Folders distinguish themselves from regular folders by their ability to scan content for file type, properties, specific tags, and sources and automatically pull in assets that match the set criteria.

Smart Folders can significantly reduce the time you would otherwise spend adding content to Experiences and folders. Because Smart Folders are designed to organize content automatically, regular folders created manually cannot be converted into Smart Folders. Both regular and Smart Folders live side by side in your Showpad instance to provide different ways to organize content based on your team's needs.

The order in which assets are displayed for users within Smart Folders is case-insensitive. It shows characters and symbols first before filenames that start with a digit and groups digits together. For example, “a”=“A”, “Asset.PDF” will be displayed before “1Asset.PDF”, and “1Asset.PDF”, “2Asset.PDF” will be displayed before “10Asset.PDF”.

See how it looks

Key features

• Automate the distribution of assets that meet your parameters
• Reduce the time spent populating Experiences with content
• Filter Smart Folders based on file type, property, tags, locale, author, and source

You need this to succeed

• The beta Admin App enabled
• Feature availability depends on your subscription package
• Administrator access or be a Promoted Member user with Manage Experiences permission
• A plan for your content structure
• Tags added to your content to easily allow Smart Folders to classify the content

The quick way

1. Open or create a Classic Experience in the Experience Builder.
2. Create a Smart Folder.
3. Change the icon, add information, and configure the visibility.
4. Define the criteria to populate content automatically.
5. Move or edit a Smart Folder.

Do this step by step

Create a Smart Folder

1. Navigate to the Libraries tab.
2. If your organization uses multiple Libraries, select the desired Library from the top-left dropdown menu.
3. Select Experiences from the left-side menu.
4. Click on a Classic Experience in the Experiences library.
5. In the Experience details panel, click Open Experience Builder.
6. You can place the Smart Folder in the top level of the Experience or within another folder. To add it as a subfolder, open the folder where you want to insert the Smart Folder.
7. Click Add and select Smart Folder from the drop-down menu.
8. To give the Smart Folder a custom Icon, click Browse or drag and drop the icon to the space provided.
9. Provide a Smart Folder name and optionally add a Description.
10. Select a folder Option if needed:
    • Hide label in Experience: This option hides the folder name in the Experience. It is useful when you’ve created custom icons for your folders that already have the folder name in the icon.
    • Hide folder in Kiosk Mode: Select this check box to hide the folder when a user enables Kiosk Mode.

Configure content criteria

1. In the Smart Folder settings section, set the criteria the content must meet to populate the Smart Folder. Note that you need to set at least one option. You can select different criteria to narrow which content is automatically added to the folder.
2. Filter content by File Type, Property, Tags, Locale, Author, and Source:
   • To fill the folder with only specific file types or asset properties, Click File Type or Property and select them from the list.
   • To Include assets with specific Tags, specify the parameters.
     • Match ALL of these tags: Exclude content that doesn’t have all tags.
     • Match ANY of these tags: Add results that match any single tag.
     • Match NONE of these tags: Choose which content tags to exclude.
   • To Include assets mapped to specific Locales, specify the parameters.
     • Match ALL of these languages and countries: Exclude content that doesn’t include all these locale properties.
     • Match ANY of these languages and countries: Add results that match any single locale property.
     • Match NONE of these languages and countries: Choose which locale properties to exclude.
   • Use the Source filter to narrow the source of the assets by specifying All Libraries, Other Libraries, or the Library the Experience belongs to.
3. Alternatively, you can use a saved filter. To do so, click the Select saved filter field and select the desired filter from the drop-down list.
4. Open the Sort files on drop-down list and choose the sorting criteria. Sort your files in respectively ascending or descending order.
5. In the Limit number of files to field, enter the maximum number of assets to include in your Smart Folder.
6. When you’re ready, click the Save button.

Move or edit a Smart Folder

1. Hover a Smart Folder within the Experience Builder, click the gear icon, and select Edit item. Alternatively, while viewing an open Smart Folder, click the configuration link in the message over the assets.
2. Adjust settings and criteria as needed.
3. To move the Smart Folder, scroll down to the Location section and select a new Experience or folder.
4. Click Save when done.

Learn how to use Smart Folders on the current Online Platform.