IMPORTANT: This feature is currently in beta. During this time, the user experience is actively in development and subject to change.

As you test this feature, your feedback is welcome; send your thoughts and suggestions to: uxfeedback@higherlogic.com

In addition to manually creating a single Library Entry to house one or more files, you can leverage a bulk-upload process to upload dozens of files at once while simultaneously creating an Entry for each one. In addition, this feature gives users the option to employ AI to auto-generate titles and descriptions for each of these files, further reducing your workload.

The method you choose depends on the number of files you're uploading and whether you want to organize them in a single Library Entry or multiple.

NOTE: The ability to bulk-upload is only available to customers using our latest library experience. See Libraries Overview to learn more. If you're currently using our legacy library experience and want to learn how to upgrade, see Upgrading to the Redesigned Library.

Before we begin...

Super Admins must enable this feature before it can be used. Refer to the Enable the Bulk-upload feature section below to learn how.
Only Community Admins and Super Admins can bulk-upload files.
See Supported File Types & Sizes to view all of the supported file types.
Admins can only bulk-upload in a specific community's Library.
Entries created via bulk-upload will not appear in the community's widgets (e.g., Activity Feed); this is intentional to prevent Widgets from being overloaded by dozens of Entries at once while other community content is quickly buried.
Admins can choose whether to auto-publish during the bulk-upload process; choosing not to provides an opportunity to first verify AI-generated titles/descriptions (if you employed the AI generation functionality). Files that are not auto-published are indicated with the Needs Review tag for easy identification.

Enable the Bulk-upload feature

Super Admins can turn this feature ON/OFF at any time from the Admin Interface.

Navigate to Settings > Optional Features > AI Features.
In the Library Bulk Upload with AI area, click the toggle at the top right to turn on the feature.

Refer to the information below to learn how to bulk upload and manage files.

AI-accepted document types

If you choose to employ the AI-generation feature during your bulk upload, note that it is limited to text-based files, such as Word documents, PDFs, etc.

If a text-based file doesn’t have much text, the AI may struggle to write a quality title/description.
Admins can bulk-upload image and video files but AI cannot generate content for them.

How to bulk-upload files

As stated above, you can only bulk-upload within a specific community. Let's walk through the process.

Navigate to the community's Library tab.
Click Create Entry > Bulk Upload.

In the Bulk Upload dialog, you'll choose the files to upload and configure several options. Each option is described below.

The Library dropdown displays the community in which you're bulk-uploading the files. It cannot be changed.
Optionally use the Folder dropdown to select a folder in which to organize the Entries. When bulk-uploading files, a Library Entry is automatically created for each one. If you do not select one of the community's available folders, all uploaded Entries will be added to the Main (top-level default) folder.
Click Upload files to display the standard file uploader, where you can choose to upload files from your device or various other external sources, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, and others. Read more about this in the File uploader overview section below.

NOTE: While you can manage your selected files in the file uploader dialog, you cannot manage them individually once inserted in the Bulk Upload dialog. At that point, they will be grouped as one "batch," and to make changes you will need to click the X to delete the batch and start over.

Additionally, If you're uploading a .zip file, the system will ask whether you want to create new folders mimicking the structure of your .zip file. This is a great way to have the system quickly build out a Library structure for you, while also placing the Entries within the structure. If you choose not to do this, all .zip files will be organized in the single folder selected earlier.

If you're bulk-uploading text-based files, you can choose whether to employ AI to automatically generate titles and descriptions for each of the files you're uploading. To use this feature, check the Use AI-generated entry titles and descriptions box. Higher Logic recommends reviewing these generated titles and descriptions for accuracy.
An important option to consider is Auto-Publish Entries.
- If unchecked, the Entries created from the uploaded files will be pending and viewable only to Community and Super Admins; each Entry will be indicated via the Needs Review label and will have to be manually published. This is ideal when uploading large numbers of files with AI generation and you want an opportunity to review the AI-generated titles and descriptions prior to publishing the Entries to your users.
- If this option is checked, the Entries will be automatically published and available to your users as soon as the files finish uploading.

Optional Settings

Click the Optional Settings section to expand the options below:

At the top of this section are the AI-generated content settings that allow you to guide the AI on how long you want the Entries' titles and descriptions to be. You can either accept the default of standard or use the slider bar to set your preferred lengths (shorter or longer).

NOTE: While the length of description summary may vary based on the type of document scanned, general guidelines are as follows: expect around 200–400 characters moving from short to standard and 300–700 characters between standard to long.

By default, the system automatically assigns thumbnail images to each Entry, based on its file type (Word document, PDF, etc.). However, you can click Custom Thumbnail and upload one to override this default assignment. Note that this image will be applied to all files in this upload, irrespective of file type. This is often helpful when uploading files of the same "theme" and you want them to all display a consistent thumbnail (e.g., you're uploading 25 research journals and want to use your association's official journal logo).

When finished, click Upload to initiate the upload process per your configured settings.

NOTE: If Library Entries have to be manually published, a notification will be sent to your community account Profile inbox and to the preferred email address that's in your Profile > My Account > Email Preferences when the Entries are ready for review.

Learn more about this process in the How to manage unpublished files section of this article.

File uploader overview

You can bulk-upload files from the following sources:

Locally from your device,
via a link (URL),
via web searching,
Facebook,
Instagram,
Google Drive,
and Dropbox.

As you add files, they are "staged" in the list view, showing for each file their file names, their file types, and, in the case of images, a small preview. As you can see, the list separates image files from all other file types.

Due to the "bulk" nature of this feature, the number of files displays, both next to their respective source icons on the left (number retrieved from that source) and on the Upload button (total number of files).

You can manage your inserted files before committing the upload.

Click Edit (image files only) to modify (crop, rotate, round) the image.
Click an X (all file types) to remove that file from the staged list.
Click Upload more in the lower right to continue adding files.
Click Deselect All to clear all selected files from the upload list. The dialog remains active for you to select other files.

When you have selected all the files you want to include in this bulk upload, click Upload.

At this point, you cannot make any changes to the list of files or the files themselves.
You can click the X to delete the batch and start over.

How to manage unpublished files

If you did not enable Automated publishing during the upload process, your Entries and their files will be in a pending state requiring your (or another admin's) review and manual publishing before they'll be available to your users.

Whoever initiated the bulk-upload will receive a notification in both their profile inbox (shown below) and their preferred email address listed on their Profile > My Account > Email Preferences page when the Entries are ready for review. This message indicates where the Entries are located (both the community and folders).
In this pending state, ALL Community and Super Admins can view and manage these Entries.
For convenience, you can click the see your [X] new library entries link right in the message to navigate to the files.

Prior to manual publishing, these Entries will live in either the:

Main folder, if no folder was selected during upload,
in the specified folder selected during the upload process,
or, in the case of .zip files, in the system-created structure (if you enabled the .zip option discussed earlier).

As you can see, each file is indicated by the Needs Review label.

Select a file to view its standard management options, as well as the AI-generated titles and descriptions. This is the time to review this AI content and make adjustments, if needed. Note that if you go through the process to edit the file (e.g., it's title or description), it will remain in the Needs Review, pending status until manually published.
When ready to make a file available to your community members, click Publish at the top right of the slide out panel.

Bulk-publish & bulk-move files

When bulk-uploading files and choosing not to have the system automatically publish them (because you want to review them first), you may end up with dozens, if not hundreds, of files to manage. Fortunately, you can multi-select large quantities of files to perform two key actions, Move and Publish, to streamline this process:

When viewing your pending files, click the Change to admin view icon at the top right. This enables the ability to multi-select files via their checkboxes.
Check the boxes for the files you want to manage and then click:

Move to select which folder to move them to.
Publish to immediately publish all selected files.

AI transparency

When bulk-uploading text-based files, you may choose to have the system leverage AI to automatically generate titles and descriptions. This AI content includes, by default, the AI summary label for transparency to your community members.

After files have been added to a community library, however, you can choose to turn this label ON/OFF. You may want to remove this label, for example, in situations where you end up not using the AI-generated title/description and manually write them yourself.

To turn this label ON/OFF:

Select and edit a text-based file.
Scroll down to the AI Label option and check or uncheck the box to turn it ON/OFF.
Click Next at the bottom of the page and then follow the prompts to finalize the change.

Bulk Upload with AI Generation