An external digital asset management (DAM) system stores the digital asset files (binary data for images, videos, etc.), while the asset object and certain metadata are stored within STEP, with other metadata residing in the DAM.
STEP can integrate with multiple external DAMs, and can do so at the same time, but one DAM integration is thoroughly documented in this section: the Scene7 Adapter DAM integration.
The 'Scene7 Adapter' functionality provides the integration necessary to display the assets stored outside of STEP within the workbench or Web UI. URLs are used for Scene7 to retrieve the image versions and display the cached thumbnails in STEP. 'Scene7 Adapter' does not define how assets are managed in the external DAM, nor does it define how asset placeholders are created in STEP. For information on DAM systems, search the web.
When more than one DAM is configured, it is good practice to uniquely identify assets across all DAMs to ensure the correct asset is retrieved by STEP. You can provide information about where the asset is stored by setting the External Identifier to include the identity of the DAM system that holds the asset.
For details on setting up and using the Scene7 DAM integration, refer to the Initial Setup for an External DAM topic in this documentation.