Capabilities of Acquia DAM (Widen) by domain. The product guide marks some items as add-ons (not in every subscription) and some as no longer sold; both are flagged below S18. Help-center statements win over marketing pages where they differ.
Ingestion & storage
- Upload methods: web Asset Uploader (drag and drop, full-screen tagging), FTP, REST API, bulk asset migration services S26 S18; iOS and Android apps S18; connectors that write back to the DAM (Adobe CC via CI HUB, Slack, Zapier, Airtable…) S41 S52 S36 S56.
- Upload profiles: every upload uses one profile, which applies metadata type, collections, categories, asset groups and security defaults; unlimited profiles S26 S18 S1.
- File size: up to 500 GB per file in the UI (larger files on request; very large files can take days to process); no limit on the number of files per batch S26. API: 5 GB on v1, chunked uploads in v2 (100 MB × up to 10,000 chunks) S1 S3.
- Formats: images (incl. camera raw from major brands), video (MP4, MOV, AVI, MXF, WebM, WMV…), audio, Office/Adobe/Keynote documents, PDFs, e-books, Sketch, archives (ZIP, "spinsets"); unsupported formats can be stored but not previewed or converted S84.
- Security on ingest: virus/malware scanning of all uploads S26; duplicate asset detection (AI) S18.
- Versioning: asset version control and asset history S18; versions readable via API (requires the AssetVersioning feature) S3. Alternate previews can replace generated thumbnails S1.
- Storage: AWS S3 (US-East/US-West, optional EU West/EU Central) S23; storage quota per tier (1, 5 or 10 TB) with paid overage S19 S18; "asset and archive storage" is an add-on line; archiving hides assets from standard users while keeping them (bulk archive added July 2026) S18 S30.
Metadata & taxonomy
- Metadata types: each asset has exactly one metadata type, chosen at upload, defining its field set S27 S1.
- Field types: date, numeric, limited text (255 chars), text (1,280 chars), text area/long text, and controlled-vocabulary fields — checkbox, dropdown (UI shows up to 249 values), autocompleter, palette S27. Fields can be required and per-field editability is exposed S1.
- Identifiers: each field has an immutable display key, distinct from its editable display name S11.
- Controlled vocabularies: managed in the Admin app and fully editable through API v2 (add/update/delete values) S1.
- Hierarchies: customizable categories (tree, path-addressed) S18 S1; no thesaurus/synonym feature was found — Unknown.
- Embedded metadata: IPTC, XMP and Exif can be auto-mapped to DAM fields at upload (configured in Admin → Auto-import mappings before upload, testable; all file types except InDesign) S85. Optional Embed Metadata When Downloading writes mapped fields to XMP for GIF, AI, INDD, JPG, PDF, PSD, PNG, TIFF — not for downloads from portals, share links or the API S86.
- Bulk operations: bulk upload and editing, bulk metadata importer (spreadsheet), filename-to-metadata mapping connector S18; bulk actions in the new search (download ZIP, delete, archive, add attachments) S31 S30 S34.
- Tags: human tags and AI tags kept separately S1; AI tag activity appears in asset history (August 2026) S32.
Search & discovery
- Keyword, advanced, faceted and predictive search on Elasticsearch, relevance sorting, document full-text search, related assets by metadata S18.
- Quick search syntax: operators, wildcards, phrases, field shortcuts, exact
{}match, empty/non-empty tests, date expressions S28. - AI Natural Language Search (renamed from "AI Semantic Search" on 2026-02-05): interprets queries using metadata, categories, tags, AI tags and video transcripts; vectorization with Qwen3; optimized for English with basic support for other languages S18 S21. Exposed in the API as
include_natural_language_resultsS1. - Visual similarity ("related assets by look", One More Cloud/bonsai) is marked as no longer included in new subscriptions S18. Color filtering by HEX value is advertised S21.
- Saved searches exist in the UI S32; a "new search experience" and redesigned Asset Digest can be turned on organization-wide by admins (March 2026) S34.
AI capabilities
All AI features are opt-in and off by default; pre-trained models, no training on customer data, processing inside Acquia's AWS environment with PII masking S18.
| Feature | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| AI Tagging | Image tags via Amazon Rekognition (processor switched from Clarifai, product-guide entry 2026-08-13); backfill for existing assets (June 2026) | S18 S31 |
| Facial detection / recognition | Non-biometric face detection and grouping into "people" that users can name; self-service backfill (March 2026) | S18 S21 S34 |
| Video transcripts | Searchable AI transcripts (a branch of OpenAI Whisper) shown on Asset Digest | S18 |
| PDF summarization | AI summaries of PDFs on the Asset Digest (July 2026) | S30 |
| Duplicate detection | Visually identical assets flagged for review | S18 S21 |
| Alt text, descriptions, translation | Alt text and metadata generation, translation/transcreation; Amazon Translate integration for tags and fields (August 2026); Anthropic/OpenAI/Azure OpenAI/Gemini integrations write AI output into metadata | S21 S40 S37 S32 |
| AI Copilot | Support chatbot on Amazon Bedrock, trained on the knowledge base | S18 |
| Partner generative AI | Workflow AI Assistant (Ziflow), product description generation (Syndic8), Video Creator (movingimage: text-to-video, subtitles, text-to-speech, translation) | S18 |
| MCP server | Read-only access for external AI assistants (see Integrations) | S14 |
Organization
- Categories (hierarchical, admin-defined) and collections (global, private, shared; collaborative collections) S18 S1 S34.
- Asset groups: security groupings; every asset belongs to at least one, combined with role permissions to determine visibility S18 S1.
- Portals: standard portals in all tiers (WYSIWYG builder, curated sections, public / passcode / login access, embeddable); Portals+ add-on adds branded headers, custom navigation, multi-column layouts, auto-updating sections, video playlists S18 S19. Portals were launched in 2017 S63.
- Entries (add-on PIM): products, variants, categories, typed attributes, channels with filterable product lists, channel export (download, FTP, API), channel portals S18 S1.
- Role-based dashboards and dashboard messages; branded login page S18.
Workflow & collaboration
- Workflow add-on (proofing): images, PDFs or videos as proofs; multi-stage reusable workflows; routing to users or workgroups; request forms; review, comments and annotations; due dates, priorities; dashboards; Workflow AI Assistant S18. API for projects, deliverables and proofs S1.
- DAM-to-Workflow project automation triggered by metadata or expiration dates, and Workflow-to-DAM metadata sync (April 2026) S87 S37.
- Paths: rule-based e-mail notifications (e.g. legal/brand review before external use) S18 S21.
- Creative tool access through CI HUB connectors (Adobe CC, Figma, Sketch, Office) S41 S42 S50 S35.
Rights & governance
- Release and expiration dates per asset; asset groups; rights management; download EULA and login EULA S18.
- Watermarking; digital watermarking via Digimarc (add-on, Digimarc account needed) S18.
- Permission model: unlimited roles with custom access levels; roles × asset groups; per-field visibility for metadata S18 S1.
- Audit: asset history, Insights activity reports, deleted-user export S18 S23 S33. Rights-management partner integration with FADEL S36.
- AI-content flagging through upload profiles and asset-group flags S21.
- Retention / legal-hold policies: Unknown.
Distribution & delivery
- Sharing by e-mail order, collections, share links, embed codes; global CDN; unlimited bandwidth S18.
- On-the-fly image and video conversions, configurable conversion formats, metadata and search-result exports S18; embed links via
embed.widencdn.netwith URL-based sizing; focal point honoured for embeds through the Drupal module (May 2026) S1 S33. - Templates add-on: InDesign plugin to build templates, HTML5 live editor, permissioned template groups, image swap from approved or user-uploaded assets, output as print PDF or web JPG/PNG S18.
- Syndicate add-on (data automation) listed on the pricing page; details Unknown S19.
- Instant Search Connector (embeddable DAM search UI) S1.
Video & rich media
- HTML5 full video previews, "true HD" streaming; HLS playback S33 S18.
- Video analytics (loads, plays, retention) S18.
- AI transcripts and subtitles; Video Creator add-on (movingimage): trim/crop, AI text-to-video, subtitles, text-to-speech, translation, background removal, templates, publish to DAM and other destinations S18.
- 3D: not listed — Unknown S84.
Analytics & reporting
- Insights: asset-level downloads, shares, views; video analytics; site-level metrics (search patterns, engagement, referrers, location); custom dashboards in every tier S18 S19.
- Analytics API: downloads, shares, views and event queries (search, upload, login, portal view, embed view…) over up to 3 years S1.
- API usage endpoint for month-to-date call counts S8.
Administration
- Admin app: global settings, features toggles, permissions per role, upload/search settings, auto-import mappings S13 S85.
- SSO: SAML 2.0 with JIT provisioning (activated by Acquia), simple one-way HTTP SSO S25 S18. SCIM: not documented S25.
- Multi-language UI with admin and user preferences (June 2026) S31.
- Vanity URL (add-on) S18. Multi-brand / multi-tenant: separate sites linked by the "DAM to DAM" connector S18 S37; tenant-level multi-brand features Unknown.
- Test site: optional "Test Site - 1 year" in some bundles S18.
- Release cadence: monthly release notes S29.