External Links. Add URLs and treat them as assets.

We always strive to make your experience with digital assets as easy, convenient, and time-efficient as possible.
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Now Pics.io goes beyond and brings you a revolution in working with your third-party resources, which can now be converted into assets in one place, your digital asset library.

You can insert a link to any resource, for example, a video from a streaming platform, and have an opportunity to play it right from your DAM or a post from a social networking site and treat it as an asset with the ability to tag, search, etc.
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The asset itself doesn't occupy your storage space in Pics.io, as it's stored on the platform you add it from.
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As well as regular assets, external links are searchable in a global Pics.io search.
Pics.io pulls up the title and description from the meta properties of the web resource and automatically assigns them to the corresponding metadata fields within Pics.io's Infopanel, as well as automatically extracts available tags and adds them to Keywords.
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It means that if your link leads to a video, you'll be able to search for such an asset with the help of a title, description, and keywords. In the case of the HTML page, e.g. a blog, the content of this page will be parsed and the file will become available for search by its content.
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Similar to working with regular assets, you can tag external assets with keywords manually, or with AI to make them more searchable, apply custom metadata fields, place external links into different collections, assign them to your teammates, or enjoy linking functionality with other assets to save time next time you need to find associated assets.

External links can also be shared and displayed on a shared collection (Website functionality), however, only using a Proofing template. Other templates for Websites do not support external links.
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​NB! Revisions are unsupported for external links as of now.

It works wonders in combination with Linking assets and allows you to access all associated resources in a few clicks. If you have an image, that is being used on several web pages, you may add the latter to Pics.io as external links and link them all together with the image. Next time you need to find all web pages the image is used on to update it, you'll spend no more than a few seconds to locate associate external links.

The upload button next to collection names, or in the action toolbar contains two options: uploading a file from your device or adding it from the URL.

In case you're adding a bunch of external links in one go and want to double-check if the links are valid, or to take a look at the current content of the site, you may do it from the upload panel by opening a link in a new tab.

It may take some time for Pics.io to create an external link.

There's a list of trusted domains Pics.io will embed as iFrame, and therefore the content will be refreshed in accordance with the latest changes on the actual website you created an external link from.

If you add a resource that's using any other domain and is different from the above-mentioned domains, Pics.io will scan the whole webpage, technically convert it into a PDF file, and add it to your library as an external link. In this case, the content will remain static, but all hyperlinks and buttons that lead to other web pages are clickable and highlighted on hover.

If you add a URL with one of the following domain names, Pics.io will receive a thumbnail from the resource and display it in your library.

The thumbnail will not be updated each time some changes are made to the external resource.

Pics.io parses the text content of the URL which means you can search, as you routinely do with assets, by any word that exists on the webpage you added to locate the external link.
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An external link is not a physical file, therefore it can't be downloaded to your local space. You may treat it as a scan of a site you inserted in your digital library that's being constantly updated (if iFramed). Due to the latter, as the content of a site is dynamic and changes in real-time, markers are not available because they can't be attached to a certain area of it.

Here's a list of domains that can't be displayed within Pics.io as external links:

You will see a corresponding message suggesting you open a URL in a new tab.

NB! If you fail to view your external link on the supported domain, please navigate to Infopanel to re-run the process of generating the asset.

The URL of an external link you add is a unique modifier and when it changes, Pics.io will lose connection with the resource, and consequently, won't be able to display it.

Only those resources that use HTTPS communication protocol can be added to Pics.io as external links.
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