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Create lenses

This guide explains how to create a lens and use it to control which assets appear on a portal page. For the concept behind them, see Understanding lenses.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

  • Admin access to the Lenses section of Administration.

  • The keywords you want to filter by already set up. See Manage taxonomy.

  • A portal where you want the filtered page to appear.

Create a lens

  1. Navigate to Administration > Lenses.

  2. Select Create New Lens.

  3. Enter a name, such as "Christmas 2026".

  4. Select Save.

  5. Select the lens’s name to open it and configure its conditions.

Configure keyword conditions

Within a lens, keyword conditions are organised into three groups:

  • All: an asset must have every keyword listed to appear.

  • Any: an asset with any of the keywords listed will appear.

  • None: an asset with any of these keywords is excluded.

For example, to show only assets tagged with both Christmas and 2026, add Christmas and 2026 to the All group. Adding them to the Any group instead would show assets tagged Christmas or 2026, which would wrongly include 2027 assets tagged Christmas.

You can also filter by asset type and by status, and use the None group to exclude sensitive assets, for example anything tagged confidential.

Associate a lens with a portal page

  1. Navigate to the portal where you want the page.

  2. Select Settings, then Navigation.

  3. Select Add Page under the relevant parent section.

  4. Choose Listing Page, then Assets.

  5. Enter the page name and a URL suffix with no spaces.

  6. Enable the page.

  7. Select Next, then select your lens from the list.

  8. Select Save.

The page is now live and displays the assets that match the lens.

Asset listing pages and print template listing pages use a lens. Digital template pages are the exception: they use keywords directly, not a lens.

For general guidance on adding pages, see Add pages to a portal.

Instead of a dedicated listing page, you can show a lens’s results from a button on a CMS page.

  1. In the Page Editor, add a Button widget.

  2. Set the link type to Lens.

  3. Select the lens from the list.

  4. Publish the page.

The button displays the filtered results when selected, without a separate page in the navigation.

Enable descriptive search on a page

  1. Navigate to Settings > Navigation and open the page.

  2. Select Edit.

  3. Enable Semantic Search.

  4. Select Save.

Users then see a descriptive search toggle on the page, which lets them search with natural language rather than exact keywords. See Find and filter assets.

Show expired assets in a lens

By default, assets past their availability dates do not appear in a lens.

Where a specific audience needs to see expired assets, create a separate lens that includes them, and restrict that page to the relevant group.

Edit a lens later

Changing a lens’s conditions updates the associated page immediately, as matching assets appear or disappear. Renaming a lens does not rename its page; update the page name separately in Settings > Navigation.

Once a lens is set up correctly, you rarely need to change it. Re-keyword assets as needed, and they flow in and out of the lens based on their tags.