In Tridion 2011, is it possible to link to a distribution in Media Manager?

Question

I have Tridion 2011 with Service Pack 1. The Media Manager connector is installed and appears to be working. (I can view the distributions)

I have an 'article schema'. That article schema contains with a multimedia link. Is it possible to link to a distribution that's inside of a mounted directory?

The requirements given to me for creating the content are these:

1. upload video into MM.
2. Create a new "article" component
3. Link to the video from the component
4. add article component to page
5. publish page
6. end user sees "article" with embedded video.

Is it possible to deliver these requirements? If so... why don't I see "SDL media Manager" in the "select item" window when I'm trying to link to a multimedia component? UPDATE:

I've read the documentation fairly thoroughly, so I'll quote the documentation for the 2011 connector.

This is from "SDL Tridion Connector for SDL Media Manager > Implementing Connector > Schemas and Metadata"

A Schema defines the types of fields and metadata of a Component. You need to add a Multimedia Link field to a Schema to allow content authors to create a link to a Multimedia Component. To link to media stored in Media Manager, you need to add a Multimedia Link to your Schemas that has as Allowed Schema ExternalContentLibraryStubSchema.

I have followed these instructions, but when I open up the component, and attempt to link to anything from media manager, SDL Media Manager does not appear in the "select Item" window. The documentation itself states that I can do this, but the GUI doesn't. I'm just trying to figure out if it's me, or the documentation.

UPDATE: I have the ability to create this 'stub schema component'. If I use the direct link from the Distribution Details window within Media Manager, I'll get the error "unable to determine filename for URI". I have a feeling this is supposed to be how I can actually link to a distribution.. but this doesn't work; I get that "unable to determine filename" error. So what would be the proper way to use this?

UPDATE: Big thanks to Lars for finally pointing me in the right direction. Couldn't have straightened stuff out without him.

Once the connector is installed and configured properly, you can, of course, browse for distributions. But, there were a few issues that I had:

1. In my configuration, I had set up my stubs folder to point to a folder that was lower in my blueprint than the schema that would ultimately use it
2. At some point, I'd changed the folder location. That had created duplicate multimedia schemas.
3. Because I had duplicate multimedia schemas, I was linking to the wrong ECL schema from my other, content schema
4. I did not know/understand that I needed a 'stub' for the magic to happen. Once I corrected these problems, and then checked-out a distribution, I was able to link to a distribution.
5. Once my schema issue was worked out, Lars was absolutely right that it became unnecessary to ~check out~ a distribution to force a stub to be created.

Answer 1

As mentioned already, your requirements match exactly what the Media Manager Connector is designed to do.

I do not know what the "Stub schema component" you refer to is. Basically MMC will create stub components (one for each distribution you for example link to), and a single schema that will be used by the stub components.

It's not clear to me what you mean with "the direct link from the Distribution Details window within Media Manager" either. This could refer to being logged into the SDL Media Manager UI, or browsing inside a node called Media Manager in the Tridion navigation tree, so please be very specific on what system you see various behavior on.

Some general comments, most of them already covered by others but there are a few things not covered already so I'll keep it combined here.

When configuring Media Manager, first make sure the users can navigate the Media Manager distributions from within the Tridion navigation tree directly (so in the main Tridion window, not in a component select window). Generally for this to work, the following must be the case:

1. The mount point must be configured at the same level or higher in the BluePrint than the publication being browsed
2. The user must have at least read access to the folder configured (in the mount point configuration) to hold the stub schema and stub components.

Now open a distribution from within Tridion. Go to the Info tab and select the "Open in xxx" button at the top of the tab page (xxx will be the name of you root node as specified in the mount point configuration). This should open the Media Manager UI with the relevant distribution selected. If this is not working, it can be an SDL Media Manager service configuration problem - if you can't determine this on your own, check the External Content Library log files on the Tridion system and post the exception details here (to make it simple delete the log, then reproduce the error - that way the log will not contain a lot of irrelevant data). If it is a Media Manager service configuration problem it can only be resolved by SDL support. If you can't open the Media Manager UI this way you might still be able to link to Media Manager items but most likely they will not work when publishing or previewing.

Once this is working check the user can select the media when browsing for content.

1. First check the mount point shows up and distributions can be selected when inserting images into a rich text field. This is a good starting point as it does not require any further configuration
2. Then check your multimedia link. Make sure you assign the schema as a valid target for the multimedia link (as already mentioned).

Notice that any change to the mount point configuration you make should be followed by: 1) Restart the TcmServiecHost process 2) Close all client side bwowser windows or tabs with Tridion. Refreshing the Tridion window will NOT work if you happen to have another Tridion window open (even if it is just for example a component you have open). You can probably get away with refreshing specific lists from within the Tridion UI, but it is not always trivial to find out where a list is cached so if you have problems always resort to close all windows.

Answer 2

ECL, which is what is used for the Media Manager Connector, currently does not have a separate Schema for each sub-type. Which means that you can only create a link (by using the ECL stub Schema) to all of the items that your ECL provider contains.

The ECL stub Schema is created in the stub folder you set under the StubFolder element in your ExternalContentLibrary.xml configuration file. The documentation (requires login) mentions it as ExternalContentLibraryStubSchema but in your stub Schema Folder it will probably be something like: ExternalContentLibraryStubSchema-mm (where mm stands for Media Manager, or more specifically the value of the id attribute in the Media Manager MountPoint).

It unfortunately is not an option to try and rename that ECL stub Schema, because ECL prevents you from doing that. So you will have to live with a less descriptive name than something like Media Manager would be. But you should be able to configure your video link in your Article Schema correctly at least (in short, yes it is possible to deliver your requirements).

Answer 3

In Tridion 2013 you need to add Media Manager as an allowed MM Schema in the content schema's link field. Have you done that?

I don't have a 2011 system with Media Manager installed to test with, so not sure if it is the same.