Make a media item available on-demand
On-Demand Media Availability gives marketers complete control over when a media asset becomes available to visitors. Unlike scheduled availability, which automatically releases content at a predefined date and time, on-demand availability lets you push a media item live with a single click. This is ideal for product launches, press announcements, live events, and other situations where the exact release date and time may change. For example:
- Prepare marketing assets weeks in advance and publish them to your environment without exposing them to visitors. When the launch is announced, make the assets available immediately.
- Upload PDFs, images, videos, and supporting materials ahead of time while keeping them unavailable until the official release moment.
- In live events, when the exact announcement time is uncertain, avoid relying on scheduled dates. Instead, release assets when the event begins with a single action.
Only users with the Sitecore Client Publishing role can activate the Available/Not available toggle.
When a media item is configured for on-demand availability, the asset can be prepared and published in advance but remains unavailable to visitors until it is explicitly made available. When you're ready, you can make the asset available instantly without republishing, and the availability change is reflected on all the pages the media item is used, because on-demand availability is configured at the media item level, not at the page level.
On-demand availability can be used alongside availability dates. When combining both availability features, the media item is marked as Available through the on-demand toggle, and also has start or end dates are configured.
In this case:
- If a future start date is configured, the asset will not become visible until both the on-demand status is enabled and the start date has passed.
- If an end date is configured, the asset will automatically become unavailable when the end date is reached.
Page Builder surfaces availability information directly within media workflows so authors can understand the current state of an asset. Depending on configuration, you may see statuses such as:
- Publish pending – Availability settings have changed but have not yet been published.
- Scheduled – The asset has future availability or expiration dates configured.
- Ready – The asset is waiting for an author to make it available.
- Live – The asset is currently available to visitors.
- Expired – The asset is no longer available because its end date has passed.
The status is displayed wherever media items are referenced, so you can understand when an item is ready, live, scheduled, expired, or awaiting publication.
To configure a media for on-demand availability:
- In Page builder, in the canvas, click on the media item you want to set embargo dates for, then in the right-hand configuration panel, click Change to open the item in the Media Library picker.
- In the Add media dialog, on the right-hand side, scroll down to find the On-demand availability section, then click the checkmark to enable the Set On-demand availability option.
- Click Add selected to save your changes.
- If the media file status is set to Pending publish, you must publish the page.
Pages referencing those assets are already live and the page items and references panels also show the toggle to make the asset available/unavailable.
At the moment the announcement is made, after the media item has been published, the item remains unavailable until a user with the relevant role clicks the toggle and makes the media assets available moving from a Ready to Live state.
The live site visitors immediately see the newly available media.