CMS overview

The Bloomberg Connects content management system (CMS) is a tool for organizing the content you want to include in your digital guide. Your guide has the potential to help visitors better understand and enjoy art, culture, and history.

This article explains different parts of the CMS. For an introduction to the Bloomberg Connects app, see App overview.

Content and assets

Content

Your guide can use these content templates:

• Items (and botanical items) are individual objects or pages. Common "items" include a painting, an architectural feature of a building, or an organization's Welcome page.
• Exhibitions are groups of items that can be experienced in any order. Examples include artworks within an exhibition, a cluster of plants in a botanic garden, or a series of instructional pages (for example, Getting Involved).
• Tours are groups of items (stops) that should be experienced in a linear order. Tours are great for highlights from your collection, a guided nature walk, or linear stories that unfold one stop at a time.
• Events are experiences that take place at a specific date and time. You can use events to represent special performances, talks and readings, or community gatherings.

Each of these templates appears as a page in your guide.

Assets

Assets are the pieces of media that you can add to a content template. Assets only appear in your guide when they're attached to a piece of content.

• Audio, video, and image files enrich your guide. With more media files, you can illustrate and explain artwork, provide behind-the-scenes audio or video from creators, or record voices from your community to add fresh perspectives.
• Creators are a special type of asset that represent the people responsible for creating the objects in your guide. Creators can be artists, filmmakers, composers, and more.

The diagram below illustrates the relationship between content and assets.

Content discoverability

After you create items, events, exhibitions, and tours, you can add them to your guide.

Visitors find content in your guide in a few different ways:

• When a visitor knows what they're looking for, they can search to pull up the relevant content. For more, see Keyword search.
• In your guide, visitors browse the home screen and map to find content that looks interesting. For example, a visitor who wants to see a particular exhibition finds a section called "Current Exhibitions" on your home screen. They tap to see the details. Then they explore the items and related content in that exhibition. For more, see Home screen and Introduction to maps.
• At your organization (or on your website), visitors use a lookup number, QR code, or link to open specific content in your guide. For example, a visitor who is standing in front of a painting scans the QR code on a nearby wall label. The item for the painting opens, and the visitor listens to its audio clip. For more, see Onsite discoverability.

The structure of your guide can help visitors understand and enjoy what you offer. A fundamental component of your guide structure is your home screen.

Home screen structure

Your guide's home screen is the first thing visitors see when they open your guide. You can think of it as your landing page or table of contents.

The home screen is made up of multiple sections. Each section can contain one or more pieces of content.

Although the sections that you choose are specific to your organization's needs and strategy, it's common for a guide's home screen to have these basic sections:

• On View
• Audio Tours
• Upcoming
• Plan Your Visit, or Get Involved

Within each section, you can add your content. For more, see Home screen.

Tour of the CMS

Navigation bar

From the navigation bar, you can open your content library, upload media assets, review analytics, and access other workflow tools. The navigation bar is made up of five sections.

1. Content: Use the content templates (items, exhibitions, tours, and events) to present your collection's objects and details about your organization in your guide.
2. Assets: Upload media assets to attach to your items, exhibitions, tours, and events. These are files that support your content, not the content itself. For example, to add a photograph from your collection, you create an item with an image, not just an image.
3. Guide: Add your logos, location and hours, and other key details about your organization. Configure how your guide looks in the app by updating your home screen and map. For more, see Organization details, Home screen, and Introduction to maps.
4. Reports: Review data to understand how visitors are using your guide, so you can make informed decisions about future content. For more, see Data dashboard.
5. Tools: Access features to help you review your guide's content. For more, see Guide export and Accessibility suggestions.

Toolbar

The toolbar contains controls that let you preview your content while you work.

• Guide name: When you get started, you'll see a "Private" label next to your guide's name. This is a reminder that your guide isn't available to the public. The label disappears after you launch your guide.
• Guide preview: Open your guide in a new browser tab to review changes while you work. The preview shows all drafts and published content together.

Content forms

Each type of content is like a template for displaying information in your guide. The following example shows the Item template, but the same principles apply to any content template.

• Add: Open a new form to create an item, exhibition, event, or tour.
• Content management actions: Save your updates as a draft, publish your changes so they appear in your guide, or cancel to discard your unsaved changes. If you've already saved or published a piece of content, you'll see other actions, like delete and unpublish. For more, see Manage drafts and published content.

• Language switcher: To provide human-translated content in a language other than your guide’s default language, choose the language here. For more, see Multilingual content.

  Note: Your translations always override Google Translate. If you don't provide a human translation, visitors whose phones are set to a different language automatically see a translation from Google Translate.

• Required fields: All templates have some required fields, indicated by asterisks. Usually, these fields include images (or media files) and the title or name. This information ensures that your guide is visually appealing and contains the most basic information that visitors need to know.
• Optional fields: All templates include some optional fields. Add as much detail as you like. Generally, the more detail you can provide, the better. All information you provide is available to visitors when they access this content in the app.