Digital asset management (DAM) and digital signage may seem like separate technologies at first glance, but together they form a powerful duo for delivering impactful visual communications. Both are built around the idea of maximizing the value of content—DAM by organizing and optimizing assets, and digital signage by broadcasting them to the right audience at the right time.
When integrated with digital signage using a content management system (CMS) like Korbyt, a DAM system can streamline workflows, ensure brand consistency, and supercharge the speed and effectiveness of content delivery across screens. This article explores how connecting a DAM to your CMS streamlines asset usage across signage campaigns—automatically surfacing approved, up-to-date visuals and reducing manual content uploads and time to delivery.
By centralizing access to brand-compliant media, teams eliminate outdated content, ensure consistent branding, accelerate publishing workflows, and unlock more dynamic communications. In other words, it ensures that the right content is seen on the right screen with minimal hands-on effort.
How to Integrate a DAM System with Korbyt CMS
1. Korbyt’s Courier Integration
The easiest way to integrate an enterprise DAM system with Korbyt Anywhere is through our easy-to-use Courier system. A Courier is Korbyt’s proprietary connector engine that links external cloud storage systems—like Adobe Experience Manager, Dropbox, or Google Drive—directly to Korbyt’s Media Manager. Think of a Courier as an automated delivery service that routinely fetches or removes media assets based on your rules, ensuring your digital signage always reflects the most current content without manual effort.
To configure a Courier, click the button for your service, and you will be prompted to log into the selected service. You can then specify a folder (including all subfolders, if desired) within that service to connect to.
Once connected, you can set the Courier to run every 30 minutes, hourly, or daily, copying any items from the cloud service into your Korbyt Media Manager or removing from Korbyt items that have been removed from the DAM. This ensures that only the most up-to-date items are present in Korbyt.
The Courier can even assign Tag values to the media items, allowing a dynamic “Clever Playlist” in Korbyt to then schedule those items out to their correct screens automatically based on the folder they are in or the tags assigned without the need for hands-on interaction in the CMS.
The Korbyt CMS supports having multiple Couriers configured—even multiple Couriers to the same cloud service. Different users can create their own Couriers with their own tagging and folder structures, driving different automated content to the right screens.
2. Microsoft SharePoint Adapter Integration
For organizations using SharePoint as a DAM or content repository, Korbyt provides a dedicated SharePoint Adapter.
This adapter connects to your organization’s Microsoft SharePoint account to access stored files and information, leveraging Microsoft’s ability to share information with trusted applications. It even allows SharePoint to create and manage a Playlist, and set date ranges for displaying content.
Korbyt’s advanced adapter templates take the guesswork out of connecting through SharePoint APIs. When configured, these templates allow not only media items but also scheduling information, such as playlists, view duration, and validity dates, to be passed from SharePoint to Korbyt. This gives you complete control of content and scheduling through SharePoint in addition to normal folder and tag-based automation.
3. URL and HTML-Based Elements
For DAMs that support external publishing via URLs or embeddable HTML, Korbyt’s Layout Builder offers flexible integration, with native elements to display either type of content directly on a screen.
Korbyt’s HTML Element allows any embeddable HTML code to be added to a full display or an area of a display.
Korbyt’s URL Element can display any iframe-capable website in a design, even if that website requires Form-Based or OAuth 2.0 authentication to be reached.
These integrations ensure that displayed content is always up to date because Korbyt shows the latest versions published on your DAM—no further actions required.
Key Considerations for Successful Automation
To make DAM-driven automation effective in digital signage, you need to plan carefully for your content governance and define rules. Decide how your screens will be identified—not just device names but also characteristics related to their locations, the department they serve, and anything else that will guide what content is appropriate for them to display for your use cases.
These factors can be set in Korbyt Media Player’s metadata, providing the data points that will allow a Playlist to decide if automated content should be shown on this specific player or not. For example, if a player has been told it is in the Northeast division, then it can be instructed to play content that is tagged for that division or that has been saved into a specific folder for that division in Korbyt by the DAM.
Korbyt Player Management features standard location values, as well as 100 other custom-namable data fields, so that your player can have all the information it needs to show relevant information.
The metadata fields can be referenced in Clever Playlists as variables rather than set values. The example below uses the “City” value to find relevant content tagged with the matching city name, allowing a single rule to program all cities instead of requiring unique rules for each. You can use this same process with any of the 100+ information fields a player has.
Risks and Pitfalls to Avoid
While automation offers significant efficiencies, it’s critical to design your integrations thoughtfully to avoid these common traps:
- Over-reliance on automation without oversight: Automation is powerful, but it still needs governance. A broken tag, disconnected folder, or incorrect rule can cause stale or irrelevant content to persist.
- Asset duplication from poor taxonomy design: Without clear file naming conventions or folder structures, teams risk duplicating assets, which leads to storage bloat and brand inconsistency.
- Performance bottlenecks: High-resolution media that isn’t optimized for screen delivery can slow down content rendering or overwhelm low-bandwidth locations.
- Security vulnerabilities: If internal DAMs feed public-facing digital signage, appropriate authentication, access control, and API hardening are essential.
Mitigating these issues requires coordination between IT, communications, and content teams—with regular audits and ongoing refinement.
Final Thoughts: Unlocking Scalable, Brand-Safe Digital Signage
Integrating your DAM isn’t just about convenience—it’s a catalyst for transforming digital signage into a real-time, brand-consistent communication platform.
Here’s what organizations gain:
- Faster publishing cycles with fewer manual handoffs.
- Always up-to-date content from a single source of truth.
- Consistent visual identity across locations, devices, and departments.
- Smarter workflows that scale without increasing headcount.
To get started, consider piloting the integration with one content stream—such as HR updates, brand marketing, or location-specific promotions. Once your automation rules and folder structures are proven, expanding to other teams or signage zones becomes seamless.
With the right setup, your DAM can turn static screens into living content networks. Paired with a CMS like Korbyt, it becomes the engine powering fast, brand-safe, and intelligently automated digital signage.
