The OpenAsset WordPress plugin enables AEC companies to publish projects, employee profiles with project experience and marketing-ready images directly from OpenAsset to their public-facing website. This eliminates data redundancy, ensuring that high-quality assets are maintained centrally. It streamlines workflows and boosts efficiency.

However you choose to integrate the plugin into your site, you will need the help of your web developer. The level of effort required to integrate it will depend on your site and how you choose to integrate.

Your website needs to be running at least Wordpress 6.0 and PHP 8.0.

You are able to download the plugin from the [WordPress app store] and install it in your Wordpress site as you would any other plugin. In order to connect the plugin to OpenAsset a license needs to be purchased from OpenAsset. If you are a client your Customer Success Manager can help with this or if you are a prospect please speak with your Sales Rep.

Once you have the plugin connected to OpenAsset there are settings in the plugin that determine the data that you would like to sync to your website. Then, there are a couple of options with how to display data on your website:

The details of how to do all of this follow…

Given you have a license to use the plugin from OpenAsset and you have installed the plugin from the [Wordpress App store], enter the plugin from the WordPress plugin menu.

Alternatively you should see an option for "OpenAsset" in the sidebar

The first screen asks you to enter your OpenAsset API credentials. To get these you will need to create an API token as described here. We advise that you create a token that “Never Expires” for this purpose. Once the token is generated you will need to copy the token and the token ID before you click “Complete”

Then to connect the plugin to OpenAsset you will need to enter:

Once you have successfully connected you will be taken to the screen to configure the plugin.

The plugin has 2 screens to configure it. “General Settings” and “Data Options”.

At the top of the General Settings screen are the Feed Settings. Here it is possible to change the API credentials if you need to. In this area there are also options for:

Change the API Token - It's possible to change the API token to another if you need to. Note that is is not possible to change the OpenAsset instance unless you uninstall and reinstall the plugin.

Enable logging - Turning this on produces logs for the data sync jobs and this can be useful for debugging issues if they arise as you get things set up. You may want to have this turned off if you are concerned about the size of the log over a long period of time. The log is a text file that resides in:

Sync Frequency - This sets the cadence that you would like the plugin to fetch new data from OpenAsset. We advise you to set this as low as you are comfortable with. There are 2 options 8hrs or 24hrs.

Note that this scheduling is triggered by the Wordpress wp-cron feature. This means scheduling is checked on page loads of your site.

The plugin can synchronize both Project and Employee data from OpenAsset but you may want to use either Projects or Employees. You can choose what you want to use here:

When you first install the plugin these options are set to "No" so you will need to set at least one of them to "Yes" in order to sync any data.

You are able to determine the naming of your website sections. For example, you may want to call the section that presents your company's “Employees”, “Our Team” instead. You are able to specify singular and plural options for the section names.

You are also able to define the URL key for each section. For example if your employee section is called “Our Team” you may want the URL key for the section to be “our-team”.

Each individual Project or Employee page will have a slug automatically created based on it's name. For example if you have a project called "The Tower of London" it's slug will be:

URL slugs that describe the page content contribute to SEO.

This screen enables you to choose the specific data that you would like to sync from OpenAsset to your WordPress website.

Note that the plugin only enables syncing of image files although other file types may be available in the future.

For the image files that sync, you can choose to get these fields:

Information from these fields can then be used to display on your website UI or in the metadata of the image tags. Adding descriptive metadata to your image tags contributes to SEO.

This enables you to select of any project field or keyword category to sync by clicking checkboxes:

Selecting a keyword category will mean that each project’s keywords will be available for display from that category. Keyword categories can also be used to build filter menus such as the one in the plugin’s bundled template.

You are able to set the sort order for projects by a range of criteria such as date fields and [Project File Order].

This enables you to set how Project images are pulled from OpenAsset.

You have the option to select the specific images that you would like to see for each project. To do this you must set up a yes/no field in OpenAsset with the exact name “Show on Website”. This will give the field a REST code “show_on_website”. Read this page if you are not familiar with setting up fields in OpenAsset.

The plugin can then use this field to pull in images that have this turned on and you are able to control your website project images in OpenAsset by using this field.

If you would prefer that images are synced without you choosing them, set this option to "No".

Note that only images set with the green Access Level will be synced. This applies to images that are set to "Show on Website".

You are able to set a maximum number of images to pull per project. The default is 5. Note that this number is in addition to the hero image that will always be pulled in so it can be used in your website search results and as the main image to represent the project.

You are able to set the sort order for your project images by things like Date Created or Rank.

This enables you to select of any employee field to sync by clicking checkboxes:

This enables you to set how Employee images are pulled from OpenAsset.

You have the option to select the specific images that you would like to see for each employee. To do this you must set up a yes/no field in OpenAsset with the exact name “Show on Website”. This will give the field a REST code “show_on_website”. Read this page if you are not familiar with setting up fields in OpenAsset.

The plugin can then use this field to pull in images that have this turned on and you are able to control your website employee images in OpenAsset by using this field.

If you would prefer that images are synced without you choosing them, set this option to "No".

Note that only images set with the green Access Level will be synced. This applies to images that are set to "Show on Website".

You are able to set a maximum number of images to pull per employee. The default is 5. Note that this number is in addition to the primary photo that will always be pulled in so it can be used in your website search results and as the main image to represent the employee.

You are able to set the sort order for your project images by things like Date Created or Rank.

In OpenAsset Roles are the relationships between Projects and Employees to capture the work carried out each project. The plugin enables you to select the Role fields that you would like to sync to your website.

In order for Projects and Employees to sync to the plugin you must:

You are then able to sync those Projects or Employees by clicking the “Save and Sync” button in the plugin, or waiting until the automatic sync triggered, determined by the “Sync Frequency” setting.

The plugin has some sensible limits and filtering built in in order to ensure that unwanted data does not get synced…

When new versions of the plugin become available you will be notified of the update via the admin plugin page. You will be able to install the update from there.

The plugin can be uninstalled in the standard way via the Wordpress Plugins page.

Go to the Plugins page and click "Deactivate" on the OpenAsset plugin.

Then click "Delete"

Note that uninstalling the plugin will remove all data and files that the plugin has previously pulled from OpenAsset.

In order to connect to another OpenAsset Instance you must uninstall and reinstall the plugin. This means configuring and syncing again.

If you are looking to understand more about the bundled templates please read this.

If you would like to create a fully customized UI for your website pages, please read this.