Uploading images to BrandOffice toolbars

How to upload images to BrandOffice toolbars

The Brand Resources folder in BrandOffice is a great place to store images for your team to use in PPT presentations and Word documents. Some considerations before uploading:

Naming convention

Saving files with the appropriate names is important for a few reasons:

Brand Search: The Brand search function uses the file name, as well as the toolbar item name when indexing the search.

Accessibility: For accessibility reasons programs such as Word, PPT, Excel and other digital platforms use the "tags" when indexing files for accessibility programs (e.g. for users who have sight problems). Incorrect file naming means that these programs will "read out" (via the workstation microphone) file names which are potentially non-sensical.

File size

Whilst you can upload files up to 25MB in size to BrandOffice toolbars, it is not advisable to upload images that are greater than 3MB. This is because the applications (PPT presentations and Word documents) are digital and don't require such high resolutions files. This will just result in very large documents, which will be difficult to distribute. Every image you upload to the toolbar, will be synchronized to each workstation. Unnecessarily large files will simply result in a longer sync period to workstations and greater resourcing required on the workstations to process these images. Since not all workstations are adequately equipped with RAM to process large images, smaller file sizes will render the best experience for your users.

Optimize images for toolbars

If you don't have a graphics package installed on your workstation, you can still optimize images using standard applications, such as Paint or Paint 3D. It is important to understand how the images will be used in order to determine the best size and aspect ratio. For most applications in Office documents, a ppi of 150-300 should be sufficient. The standard 16:9 dimension in PPT means that images in this aspect ratio, will always fit perfectly on a slide. Consider using 3200 px by 1800 px for best results.

Start by opening the image in Paint or your graphics package

Rename the file correctly and save to your BrandOffice offline location of choice:

If you don't have the ability to crop in the package you are using, then work to the width (e.g. 3200 px for PPT). The PPI does not need to be higher than 300. Selecting a "medium" quality in Paint renders a good result.

In the example above, optimizing the image correctly resulting in the file reducing from 14.48 MB to 636 KB.

Visibility

Image files lend themselves to thumbnail previews. This makes it easier for users to identify the image they are looking for by browsing through the gallery of images in a folder. Rather than placing images in the root Brand Resources directory, consider creating appropriate sub-folders which you can default to browse folders so the thumbnails are visible for users.

Important: Ensure your last folder is set to browse, and not the folders above it or a "file" thumbnail will appear for users (which is unsightly)

For example:

To achieve the thumbnails for this "products" folder to appear in BrandOffice as follows:

The folder on the toolbar carries the "preview" symbol:

In the admin console ensure your folder is set to Browse.

Supported file formats

Uploading your image file

To upload your correctly sized image file, right-mouse click on the folder where the image needs to be uploaded. Find the image on your computer and upload.