REDA CMS Administration

Upload one photo to a property, tag it Thumbnail, and the property's website image updates itself. That small piece of magic is the whole idea behind the REDA CMS: it's a tagging-and-copy engine, and administrators own its wiring. This article is for the person who has read the end-user media guide and now wants the mechanics — how a tag becomes a match key, how Publish to Web works and where its risks are, how to set each user's library defaults, and how to extend the CMS to an object other than Property using configuration alone. Where end users see "upload and tag," you'll see the copy rules underneath.

The moving parts

Three things work together. First, files uploaded through the CMS are marked as CMS content and carry tags — a document type, a label, a description, a sort order. Second, from those tags REDA builds a match key. Third, copy rules watch for keys they recognize and copy file information onto the linked record. Tag a file, the key forms, a rule fires, a field on the property updates. No step involves code — it's all configuration records plus the tags a user applies at upload.

Document types

The tag that drives everything is Document Type. REDA ships nine values, built for a property media catalog:

Only Thumbnail and Floor Plan drive automatic copying out of the box — the rest catalog and organize the gallery. A new document type only triggers automation once you add a copy rule keyed to it.

The tag fields on a file

Every file the CMS manages carries the same set of fields. Some you set at upload; some REDA maintains for you.

Leave the system-maintained fields alone — Key Definition literally ships with "DO NOT EDIT" in its help text, and the public-link fields are written and cleared by REDA as you publish and unpublish.

The shipped wiring for Property

Out of the box, REDA ships one upload setup for Property and four copy rules. The upload setup is what makes the Document Type field appear when you upload on the Marketing tab. The four rules do the copying:

The consequence to notice: the two URL rules only have something to copy when the file is also published to the web (below). Getting a public thumbnail URL onto the property takes both the tag and the publish tick. And it all reverses — delete or untag the file and the linked fields clear.

Publish to Web

Ticking Publish To Web on a CMS file generates a public link anyone can open in a browser, stores that link on the file, and makes the file viewable to everyone. Combined with the URL copy rules, that puts a website-ready image address directly onto the property. Unticking it deletes the public link and clears both link fields immediately — the link dies the moment you unpublish.

User library defaults

Each user has two CMS settings on their user record that you, as administrator, control: their library name (which library their uploads land in) and their library content visibility — all users, internal users, or shared users. Set these to match how your team is organized. The upload setup record also carries a default library and visibility for its process, so uploads have a sensible home even before a user's own defaults are set.

Extending the CMS to another object

The same engine that serves Property can serve any object you configure — inspection photos, for instance. It takes three configuration records and no code:

Worked example: Meridian Court #101

Meridian Properties is listing Meridian Court #101. On the property's Marketing tab, marketing uploads six photos: one tagged Thumbnail, one Floor Plan, and four Property Internal, with sort orders 1 through 4. Immediately, the property's thumbnail and floor-plan fields populate from the two tagged files. The team ticks Publish To Web on the thumbnail — a public URL appears on the file and, via the URL rule, on the property's thumbnail-URL field, ready for the website to pick up. A month later the unit is let and delisted; unticking Publish To Web kills the public URL everywhere at once.

Extending the pattern: the same team wants inspection photos tagged by room. An administrator creates an upload setup for the inspection object with a location-style tag as the key and copy rules for the target fields — the same three-record recipe, a different object. (This is an illustrative recipe, not shipped configuration.)

Where to go next

1. Adding Property Media — the end-user upload-and-tag walkthrough.
2. Publishing to Your Website — what consumes the public URLs the CMS produces.
3. Understanding Properties — the record the shipped CMS wiring serves.
4. The REDA Admin Console — the administrator's control tower.

Frequently asked questions