How To Configure And Use SharePoint Online Organization Assets Library

Introduction

An image or visual added to a page quickly conveys the message to the reader and increases the reach of the message. Many content authors like to add images to their SharePoint News, or a blog or any normal page. Whenever we try to add a digital asset to our SharePoint pages, a file picker is shown which already allows us to insert a picture from the local site collection, web search, OneDrive, or upload a local file.

Organization Assets Library lets us create a private repository, which can host all the images, photos, logos that can be shared across all the sites. Once we configure a Library as an Organization Assets Library, we can then see a new option in the file picker called ‘Your organization’ which shows the images from the central library. This can be a private repository which is shown within an organization’s tenant.

How to create an Organization Assets Library?

You can use any existing document library, or create a new one, from an existing site collection or a new one. We need to have the absolute URL of a document library which is then configured as an Organization Assets Library using PowerShell.

Below are the PowerShell cmdlets that can be used to manage the Organization Assets Libraries. Make sure, you have the latest SharePoint Online Management Shell version and are connected to the tenant admin URL using the Connect-SPOService cmdlet.

Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary

$libraryUrl = "https://<tenant-name>.sharepoint.com/sites/Internal/Corporate%20Images"
$thumbNail = "https://<tenant-name>.sharepoint.com/sites/Internal/Corporate%20Images/thumb.jpg"
Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary -LibraryUrl $libraryUrl -ThumbnailUrl $thumbNail

This cmdlet sets the given document library as an Organization Asset. And the image provided to the –ThumbnailUrl property is shown as the tile image in the File Picker control. This image should be from the same library.

This cmdlet could prompt for the following 2 confirmations based on your tenant settings.

1. Enable Tenant CDN: If the content delivery network (CDN) is not enabled for your organization, the Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary cmdlet will enable it by asking for a confirmation. You use the below cmdlet to check if the CDN is enabled or not in your organization.

   Get-SPOTenantCdnEnabled -CdnType Private
   

2. Add a new Tenant CDN origin: The Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary also adds a CDN origin for the chosen document library with a confirmation.

Adding the CDN origin takes around 15 minutes. After running the Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary cmdlet we can use Get-SPOTenantCdnOrigins cmdlet to check the status.

Get-SPOTenantCdnOrigins -CdnType Private

If it shows (configuration pending), the CDN origin is still being added and the configuration is in progress. So, you can run the cmdlet again after 15-20 mins, to confirm that the configurations are done. When the cmdlet shows the details without (configuration pending), then we can be sure that the configurations are done and the Organization Assets Library is ready to be used.

Now, you can open any site within your tenant, and try to add an image. The default File Picker will now have the ‘Your Organization’ option which shows the tiles (each Organization Asset Library is a tile). From this, we can add images and digital assets from our organization's central repository.

Get-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary

This cmdlet can be used to see all the Organization Assets Libraries configured in your tenant. At the time of writing this article, up to 30 organization assets libraries are supported in a tenant.

Set-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary

This cmdlet can be used to change the thumbnail image for an organization assets library.

Remove-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary

You can remove an organization assets library using this cmdlet.

Summary

Organization Assets libraries can be very useful for sharing corporate brand visuals and logos easily through a centralized environment with all the users across all sites.