It would open up a lot of possibilities and save a lot of time - if a gallery created with an Excel file, could sense what content it contains…and add the necessary assets dynamically.
So for example…we could have an excel list with two columns 1) Name 2) Content. the “content” column would contain rows of different picture links, video links, HTML links, or simple text.
When the gallery is added to an XP, there may be a checkbox property called “dynamic assets”. When that is checked, it will fill in the assets required to visibly show each of the varying rows of content types with the content column.
(Essentially, I think it would be great to replicate the functionality of getting a feed from a local folder - where the gallery will show whatever is in it. But unlike a folder, the XP would know what content is contained, allowing us to set triggers/actions to manipulate the data)
It might be complicated - but definitely worth suggesting for IF designers like us with clients that demand content management. I’m open to suggestions/ideas - thanks!
Alex, that is possible today with images, videos and documents if the media is stored locally and dragged in at the same time as the spreadsheet. It’s discussed here in the section named “New with IntuiFace Version 5.2.5”.
Would that be sufficient for your needs if it also supported other asset types like website URL and text?
Hey Geoff,
It’s pretty cool, I hadn’t seen this actually. I think the best scenario would be if the assets could be generated on the fly, whenever the Excel spreadsheet updates. That would be the absolute, awesomely-ultimate.
The team is working on something like this. Sort of a poor-man’s CMS where IntuiFace “notices” changes in the data source. Earliest would be fall time frame. We’ll let you know when it’s time to get input about what we’re doing.
Wondering what the status of this topic is? As I 100% agree with its use case.
I’m currently trying to dynamically filter content (video & image) in the one asset flow - which appears to the user like they are loading the content. However, because the initial asset can only be either a video or image, the media being filtered/loaded will only show if it’s the same as the initial asset type.
Are you pulling in videos/images through a data feed? Or is it a predetermined number of records in Excel?
To help get around some of these different media challenges, I use binding converters within the collection item. This will allow you to show the right media depending on the scenario.
For example, the most common one I use is a custom converter to determine if a cell ‘is blank’ (see this post for custom converters: Custom Script Converter: What can you do with it?). I would set the visibility property of the image asset that is bound to the image cell in excel or data feed. If the cell is blank, the image asset automatically hides. You can then use other converters to make content items, such as video to ‘show’ when this happens. In this way, you can have a full set of images and video, but only the content that’s available will show across your collection.
You can also solve other similar scenarios by setting a trigger…with maybe a button, or when an item is ‘in-focus’, and use the IF-THEN conditions within the trigger. For example, when an item comes into focus AND the cell value = X, then do Y.
Though I don’t know your exact application, I hope this sparks some ideas for you.
Hi @AlexB, thanks for getting back to me! Provided the spark I needed! Not the most elegant solution, but appears to work.
Pulling in data from a spreadsheet. An information spreadsheet (Info Sheet) populates the “selection” Asset Flow, which then pulls up an overlay to provide more information about that selection and show/filter the appropriate media in the “Media” Carousel (from Media Sheet a mixture of Image & Video). Diagram at the bottom.
There is quite a lot of fields/copy in the Info Sheet that gets revealed in the overlay, and didn’t seem appropriate to lump data for the media carousel in there.
The Media Sheet has two columns. The first to filter by the selection, the second to call the appropriate file. For each selection that gets populated in the media carousel, there won’t be a defined number of videos or images.
Fix was
Adding a third column to the Media Sheet and adding an image & video asset into the asset flow (initially only a video asset). Then running an if statement to determine whether it should be visible or not.
Excellent! Very good to hear that you found a working solution. Beyond this, you could even bind the x,y values of your content to the visibility of the video asset; allowing you to move items around to fill the space when there is no video there. You’d use a custom binding converter with an If-Then statement to do that. I believe the previous link I posted would talk about using that as well.
