Table of Contents
Letting users edit metadata when running an action
How to configure an action to transfer files while giving users the ability to edit the contents of specific metadata fields.
29. June 2026
Table of Contents
Note
Metadata updates to the source asset are only available when using Extended Actions. Extended Actions are only available to Fotoware Main Users and Fotoware Pro Users. Standard Actions provide functionality to update only the destination asset's metadata.
FotoWeb actions can be configured to prompt users to add metadata during the operation.
The metadata can be added to the original asset, to a copy of the asset transferred to a destination using the action, or to both.
Metadata editing is enabled on the Action properties page. Metadata updates to the original asset are configured on the Source asset tab, while updates to the transferred asset are configured on the Destination asset tab. Otherwise, the configuration of user-input metadata when running the action is the same for both the source and the destination asset.
First, turn on the Show metadata editor toggle. This allows you to choose which fields the user can edit when running the action. There are two possibilities:
- Metadata fields per job: Used to enter metadata that is added to all the assets that are sent to the action. These fields will appear empty in the user interface, since it is assumed that users will want to add new information to all the files and overwrite any existing metadata in these fields.
- Metadata fields per file are fields that can be edited individually for each asset processed in the action. These fields will populate with any existing metadata in the files when the user runs the action.
You can specify fields that will be updated for all the files in the queue, and fields that require individual content per file.
Note
Per-job metadata values take precedence over per-file values. Hence, if a field is defined both for per-job and per-asset, the per-job value will overwrite any information added to that field in the per-asset area in the editor.
For each field you add, there are three options:
- Clear: The default value in the editor is empty rather than displaying the metadata field's current value(s).
- Required: The field must have content before the user may proceed.
- QL only: The user may only choose predefined content from a taxonomy. If the field has a taxonomy and this option is not ticked, the user can choose entries from the taxonomy or enter a value of choice in the field.
Note
By choosing a metadata field with a taxonomy, the user can select metadata entries from the taxonomy. By choosing QL only as described above, the user can only select predefined taxonomy entries and cannot enter new content freely.
How does this look to users?
A single metadata editor will be presented to the user when the action is run. Hence, the user does not need to know whether the information he enters is added to the source, the destination, or both, as the FotoWeb server handles this.
If a field is added to both the Source asset and Destination asset tabs in the action configuration, it will appear only once in the editor that the user sees. The user can then enter only one set of values, which will be applied to both the source and destination assets.
Action metadata flow
Metadata changes made to the source asset are not applied to the transferred asset. The transferred asset begins as a copy of the original asset, with no modifications made by the action. It is then modified by the action according to the options in the Asset transfer tab. This allows an action to modify the source asset and the transferred asset independently in completely different ways.
If the same changes should be applied to both the source and transferred assets, simply copy all settings from the Source asset tab to the Destination asset tab, or vice versa.
Values from metadata editors exposed in the workflow are applied before any metadata macros.
Using dynamic tags in macros
Metadata macros can contain dynamic tags enclosed in double curly brackets. You can find an overview of all dynamic tags here.
A dynamic tag, {{task.metadata}}, is used to differentiate between the original metadata and the metadata added to assets in the workflow process.
This tag expands to the user-entered metadata values in the metadata editor dialog when the action runs. Note the difference between:
-
{{asset.metadata:5}}: Expands to the current value of the "Title" field (field 5) of the source or transferred asset (depends on where the macro is used) -
{{task.metadata:5}}: Expands to the value of the "Title" field (field 5) entered by the user in the metadata editor when running the action
In other words, {{task.metadata:5}} always expands to what the user entered, whereas {{asset.metadata:5}} may expand to the same value or something different, based on whether or not the field was changed by a metadata macro. The following table illustrates how the value of {{asset.metadata:5}} may change during the course of running an action:
| Event | asset.metadata:5 |
task.metadata:5 |
|---|---|---|
| Field 5 in the original asset has the value "original" | "original" | n.a. |
| User enters value "foo" in field 5 metadata editor when running action | "foo" | "foo" |
| Metadata macro appends " bar" to field 5 | "foo bar" | "foo" |
| Another metadata macro appends " xyz" to field 5 | "foo bar xyz" | "foo" |
In each row, the last two columns show the value of each variable after the event. For example, in the last row, they show the values these tags would expand to if used in a metadata macro run after the ones mentioned in the table.
You can find a complete list of dynamic metadata tabs for use in workflows here.