Content Hub ONE - First thoughts 2/2

on

 


Last time, I gave my first thoughts about the new kid on the block for content, the Content Hub ONE. In short, I really like the product, but it has its limitations. If you haven't read the previous post, be sure to check it out.

Today we're going to continue and take a look at the Media Library in Content Hub ONE. So let's start with an image of how it looks. We've got the Upload assets button promptly on the screen. This opens a File prompt to select one asset to upload. I specifically mention the one, if you need to bulk upload assets, I suggest talking to your friendly developer to help you out. At this moment you can only upload one asset at a time, I hope Sitecore will improve on this and support a multi-upload.

Media Library

On the left-hand side, we've the Seach and facet filters. The text search offers a full-text search both on the file name and its description, allowing you to search your items quickly. Next to that, we have two facet filters: File type and Status. At this moment Content Hub ONE only supports four file types:
  • GIF
  • JPG
  • PNG
  • WEBP
This is a very limited set of file types. I've heard that Sitecore is working on extending the file types with PDF. I do hope that Sitecore will support AVIF as well in the future. It's a really cool new standard for images on the Web, be sure to check it out, if you haven't heard about it before now.

AVIF browser support

Then we come already to the last facet filter, called Status. The Status filter allows you to filter on the following values:
  • Publish
  • Changed
  • Draft
Spoiler alert we aren't able to add any new statuses to the system. So we need to work with just three statuses. I really like the flow of assets in the Content Hub. I expected Sitecore to follow the same flow in ONE, but unfortunately, they decided otherwise. I do hope that they will make it available in the future. For now, the content flow is as follows:

Content / media flow

  • DRAFT - content or media has not been published or has been unpublished.
  • PUBLISHED - content or media has been published for delivery and has no pending changes.
  • CHANGED - content or media has been published but has changed and is awaiting publication. This means the version published to Experience Edge is an older version.
* Copied from Sitecore Content Hub ONE documentation

Now that we've seen Media, let's move to the last page on the list. We only have Settings left to discuss. The settings menu has two options: API Keys and OAuth client. These two settings are used to integrate with ONE. 

Please be aware that you only have this option if you have the Admin role.

Let's first start with the obvious one, API Keys. The creation of keys allows for an integrator to connect with the Experience Edge of ONE. The Experience Edge is the CDN with GraphQL's ability to query the content and media items of Content Hub. The content (including media) is divided into two buckets: Delivery and Preview. Where Delivery stands for the content that's published. The Preview gets all other content, so it includes Draft and Changed content. Keep in mind that content can be Published and Changed at the same time. Depending on the key that's used you will get a different result.

Want to read more about API keys, be sure to check out the documentation.
Content Hub ONE Experience Edge
* Experience Edge, copied from Sitecore documentation


Conclusion
Sitecore has created a beautiful foundation for a Headless CMS. The SaaS application feels and looks good, interacts fast and does what you expect. The integration options you get are really good. It ships with the GraphQL endpoint out of the box, so integrating it with any Head (read front-end app) will be a smooth operation. Don't forget that this will put a smile on your developer's faces as they already know and love GraphQL.

To be honest, there aren't any bad parts about ONE, I see my remarks purely as improvements that Sitecore could easily make happen without breaking a sweat. 
Remarks:
  • The workflow and its statuses are too limited. It would be a great improvement if Sitecore would add the UnderReview and Rejected options. To make the workflow more in line with Content Hub.
  • The option to add fractions in the Number field
  • Make fields required only if specific criteria are met
  • Limit the reference field to specific content types
  • Make uploading multi assets at once available
  • A taxonomy to describe or categorize an asset would be really helpful. As specially when the number of assets increases it will be more difficult to find the right asset
Now that I'm writing this list, I think about one more thing, that should definitely be included in the future. It should include the scheduled publication of content. The Content Hub lacks this feature, and unfortunately, it is in ONE as well.

Until next time!