Enterprise Digital Asset Management through AEM - The AEM 6.4 Assets New Capabilities

AEM Assets provide an option for digital asset creation , management and delivery. The new  and powerful intelligent asset management helps marketers and IT to organize, adapt, distribute rich media & experiences at scale across various customer journey.

Let us see the new AEM Asset features in detail.

Below given some of them.

Asset Management: Provides a place to manage, govern, and distribute assets across enterprise businesses, teams, projects, and customer channels.

Creative & Marketing Workflows: The new AEM provides deep connectivity across the Adobe Creative Cloud applications & services to uniquely source, scale, accelerate creative production.

Dynamic Media Transform & Delivery: The new dynamic media enables reuse of digital assets to rapidly adapt, compose, and deliver dynamic experiences with speed and impact.

Cloud & Open Architecture: The new AEM provides modern & scalable platform with a robust API & ecosystem, which helps to manage approved assets across any team and integrate with 3rd party applications.

Content Intelligence through Adobe Sensei - New AEM is easily integrated with Sensei, which has capabilities of machine learning and advanced algorithms to help organization discover hidden assets with auto-tagging, accelerate slow processes with automated workflows, and decide what matters with insights & analytics.

Digital Asset Management(DAM) Trends

Many organizations still lacking the capability of a true enterprise DAM even though they had a vision for an enterprise DAM or through multiple fragmented solutions.

Some of the common challenges which an organization faces are Unable to find assets, Increasing touchpoints, Duplicate assets, Slow rollout, efficiency Growing number of projects, collaborators, teams, Increasing creative costs, Global Sharing & Access Security & Compliance costs etc. These challenges could be over come through Creative & Marketing Workflows, Cloud solutions, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Integration & Openness.

What are all the new DAM capabilities in AEM Asset 6.4?

Creative Cloud Connectivity: Native Creative Cloud connector for Photoshop , Illustrator, & InDesign CC Adobe Stock Support through SSO. This also enables Search across AEM Assets and Creative Cloud Assets.

Smarter Asset Management

• Smart Tags: 'custom tags' - Adobe Sensei learns from the taxonomy and tags to assist with cataloguing, making assets more findable & reusable.
• Search: 'smart translation' - Use Machine Learning to auto-translate tags & search phrases on the fly
• Metadata: 'rules & bulk operations' - New admin tools for metadata schema rules, import/export of metadata
• Brand Portal: 'file sharing & distribution' - A secure, turn key cloud service for on demand asset distribution to internal teams, external partners,agencies,resellers. Quickly and cost effectively improve asset sharing efficiency, accelerate time to market, and reduce non-compliance and risk.

Media Transformation & Delivery
Smart Crop Emerging Media: 3D, VR, Panoramic media management &viewers, Experience Fragments support with Dynamic Media

Cloud Scale & Security - performance, scale and security for the most demanding businesses through integrated cloud.

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Can we use Auditor with AEM Sites? How to use Auditor with AEM Sites?

All Adobe Cloud hosted AEM sites can use Auditor service through their cloud platform. Let us understand Auditor in detail.

What is Auditor?
We all know an efficiently implemented software/website can bring best in class business for a customer.

Adobe provides unified platform for family of digital marketing solutions and services through 'Adobe Experience Cloud'. Through this interface we can quickly access the cloud solutions and related core services. One such core service is 'Activation'.

Auditor is a feature of the Activation Core Service which was co-developed with ObservePoint, who are one of the industry experts in validating digital implementations. Auditor access the Adobe Experience Cloud customers implementations and provide a report on the ways to improve it.

The three steps involved as part of Auditor analysis are,

Scan: This tool can scan 100 pages of Adobe technology at a time through this. There are a set of advanced filters to include or exclude pages.

Understand: From the report received, analyze the data in detail based on tag presence, configuration and consistency.

Improve: The report provides recommendations. Based on the recommended approach, follow the best practice and improve your implementation.

Who can get access to Auditor and what all we can do with Auditor?
All Adobe experience cloud customer have access to Auditor for auditing 100 pages. As of now analytics, Experience cloud ID Service, Media Optimizer, Target technologies can get scanned through Auditor.

How does the Auditor report look?
As of now the scanned report is a combination of URL's which were scanned and issues found vs recommendations at granular level. We can have the report downloaded in a spreadsheet format too. Report gives recommendations on 'how to improve your implementations to align with best practices'

How to run the scan?
From Adobe Experience Cloud navigation bar, follow below steps

• Click Activation
• Click Auditor
• Click New Audit
• Configure Scan: By providing a starting URL and clicking “Run Report”. An email will be received on completion.
• Understand: Either from clicking link in email or through dashboard, understand the report and take necessary action.

What if I need to scan more than 100 pages through Auditor?
Contact ObservePoint.

Does the tool scan behind authentication?
As of now the authentication behind screens are not included. You will need to contact ObservePoint for this.

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OVERVIEW - AEM 6.4

The new AEM features are categorized into below areas

1 Cloud Scale and Security
    Cloud Manager

2 Fluid Experiences
    Content Fragments, Experience Fragments,  Content Services

3 Content Intelligence
    Smart Layout, Smart Tag , Smart Crop, Automated Forms Conversion

4 Marketing and IT Velocity
    Core Components and Style System, Single-Page Application Editor, Native Support for Creative Cloud for Enterprise, Digital Signage
   
What’s New in AEM 6.4:  AEM Sites, AEM Assets, AEM Forms

Feature Video Here

1) Cloud Scale & Security Proven business:- Provides a critical cloud performance with scale and security for the most demanding brands. Below are the major highlights,
*Secure Dedicated Environments
*Upgrading and Patching
*Customer Self-Service with Cloud Manager
*Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery of custom code, Testing Automation, Best Practices

2) Fluid Experiences:-  Unique combination of data and content to  handle omni-channel experiences across owned, earned and paid end-points so brands can truly connect with customers. Below given core components of fluid experiences.

a) Content Fragments - Design, create, curate and use page-independent editorial text content with embedded or associated media.

CF: Content authoring in a modular way, below page-level and content delivery not bound to presentation
Editorial Content - Text written by Copy Writers; Elements, Paragraphs, Variations
Mixed Media - Images in paragraph sequence; Curate relevant images more strictly than with associated collections
Summarization - Goal-based shortening of text; Achieve editorial goals with  AI assistance

b) Experience Fragments -A group of components with layout that can live independently

Consistent experiences and layouts across channels

c) Content Services: A lightweight, read-only way for accessing content (e.g. JSON) from AEM to deliver to any channel. Core areas are given below.
A light weight way to get content independent of layout and repository
Channel agnostic reuse of content that may be in Assets or part of a Sites project
Out of the box, extensible content models
Automatically generated service endpoints

3) Content Intelligence:- Valuable insights and automation of content discovery, creation and performance powered by Adobe Sensei and pervasive data platform.

Content Intelligence
Automatically create and scale personalized variations of page experiences, based on your audience engagement preferences. Core feature are given below.

Smart Layout: Smart Layout uses Adobe Sensei artificial intelligence to optimize the layout of content and surface the most engaging content within a page based on analytics across your key business performance metrics.

Smart tags: The next-generation of Smart Tags uses a self-learning algorithm to recognize images and populate tags based on your unique business taxonomy.

Smart crop: Non-destructive editing selects the appropriate area of the asset and automatically crops to the precise standards powered by AI.

Automated Forms Conversion
Automatically identify & digitize input fields on a traditional PDF form Creates more inviting mobile experience, reduces enrollment abandonment

4) Marketing & IT Velocity:- Enable Marketing, IT and Creatives to work in parallel so no team is a bottleneck to realizing value. Core features are below.

Style System: Design Consistency with Minimal Development Effort
Single-Page Application Editor: IT and Business Collaboration. Preview and edit Single Page Applications built on your favorite framework. This allows marketing and developer authors to collaborate and edit content seamlessly regardless of the authoring framework used for creation of SPA. Allows entry into Progressive Web Apps – emerging trend for mobile web with native mobile app accessibility.
Native Support for Creative Cloud for Enterprise with AEM Assets
Digital Signage : Access screens though unified AEM admin, Locations can be organized hierarchically, Schedules on location ,Single screen sequenc.

Follow us for latest AEM updates, we are coming up with new articles on working with AEM 6.4 and demo videos.

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Interested in taking a first look at AEM 6.4 UI and dash board? Watch this video.

Read More on AEM 6.4

AEM 6.4 Features

Advantages of using Adobe Cloud Manager for AEM

Dynamic Media & Related Features in AEM 6.4

OVERVIEW  - AEM 6.4

Machine Learning Enabled Features in AEM

Summary of release details : Adobe Experience Manager

AEM Release history

Product: Adobe Experience Manager

• 6.6 , 2020 - Major Release  - Date not finalized
• 6.5 April 8, 2019 - Major Release
• 6.4 April 4, 2018 - Major Release
• 6.3 April 26, 2017 - Major Release
• 6.2 April 21, 2016 - Major Release
• 6.1 May 28, 2015 - Minor Release
• 6.0 May 28, 2014 - Major Release

List of new features/ capabilities in each release

AEM 6.6
To be updated

AEM 6.5
Content Velocity, Fluid Experiences improvements, Cloud Agility, Experience Intelligence

AEM 6.4
Fluid Experiences, AI Based crop features, Core components etc.

AEM 6.3
Oak Segment Tar File Format, User Interface, Security, OAuth

AEM 6.2
MongoDB support, User Interface  changes

AEM 6.1
Authoring enhancements, Enhancements to AEM Forms app, Experience targeting in AEM forms

AEM 6
Jackrabbit Oak,Touch UI,Sightly, More open source with Jetty & Apache Solr


Note: Please let us know if you find any discrepancy in the content/ data.

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Dynamic Media & Related Features in AEM 6.4

Dynamic Media helps content creator to author and deliver rich dynamic media experiences, which are optimized for any screen quickly and effortlessly.

The major features of Dynamic Media are listed below.

Click on image to see it big

Master file approach:
Dynamic Media works on one master file,and seamlessly create unlimited automatically created versions(size,format,resolution,crop,effect) for any media

Interactive Video
Create shoppable video experience which are engaging and having scrolling side panels & CTAs in minutes

Responsive Viewers and Adaptive videos
Automatically deliver combined videos and images the right format at the right quality and size to all screens with responsiveness and fit to the bandwidth adaptiveness

Interactive Imagery
Combine the images and add interactivity for a carousal effect and provide engaging shoppable hot spots for a better navigation

Easy build interactive elements
Visually create using WYSYUG editors and delivery immediately.

Smart imaging
images are automatically analyzed to deliver intelligently sized delivery.

Smart crop:
Automated Adobe Sensei enabled cropping feature for a appropriate area crop

Utilizing the Power of Dynamic Media with AEM

• Integrates seamlessly with AEM assets to offer asset management, rich experience authoring and delivery
• Easy author, build , customize and launch rich experiences quickly without the need for technical help
• WYSIWYG look & feel and behavior editors for image viewers and video players
• Shoppable Media creation interfaces allows speedy creation of image hotspots and shoppable video
• Accelerated creation and deployment of personalization features for visual product builder and email/banners.

6.4 Related- Dynamic Media Capabilities

• Interactive Media Integration with Experience Fragments
• Smart Crop
• Smart Imaging
• Viewer Enhancements

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Interested in taking a first look at AEM 6.4 UI and dash board? Watch this video.

Read More on AEM 6.4

AEM 6.4 Features

Advantages of using Adobe Cloud Manager for AEM

Dynamic Media & Related Features in AEM 6.4

OVERVIEW  - AEM 6.4

Machine Learning Enabled Features in AEM

Advantages of using Adobe Cloud Manager for AEM

There has to be a solid content experience to enable a smooth customer satisfaction over any content management system. The application crash can be very costly for the customers too. 98% of organizations claim 1 hour of downtime costs on average $100K for them.

Let us see the building blocks for enabling smooth engaging digital experiences.

• Rapid Development
• Easily scalable capacity
• Continuous performance monitoring
• Enterprise grade security

Below given the common challenges with AEM On Premise which organization usually face

• Slow time to market
• Too costly to scale
• Performance risks
• Security threats

The advantage AEM Cloud Managed Cloud services.
Below given the list of values of moving AEM to Adobe Managed Cloud Services.

• Dedicated Hosting Environments
• Expert Support
• Go Live Process coaching
• Auto Scaling for peaks
• 24x7 Monitoring & Event Response
• FedRAMP, GLBA,HIPPA,SOC-2,ISO 27001(Security, standards & Law enabled)
• Customization Best Practices
• Updates & Patching
• Change Management
• Backup & Disaster Recovery

Cloud improvements in AEM 6.4 are mainly under Cloud scale & Security:

• Cloud manager: Which facilitates the self service through interface
• Continuous Integration & Continuous delivery

Common release challenges an AEM Project faces usually:
There are cases where we need to push the changes due to business requirements from dev to qa, stage & prod environments. It can be quick manual fixes, or production fixes. Due to this product become unstable which will have impact on business in the areas like, slow time to market for custom fix or new features, User experience issues due to low quality code, lac of control & quality in managing  releases.

How do we achieve a better control over the quick & stable deployments

One option could be the cloud manager self service portal newly available in AEM.  This helps to

• Setup and configure  environments
• Manage roles and permissions
• Monitor application performance and Key process indicators.

The cloud manager helps to build the code,  deploy artifacts, once tested  release it to production in an efficient and quick way.


The new AEM provides CI/CD Frameworks with

• UI to set up CI-CD Pipeline
• Code inspection based on best practices
• Automated functional & Load Testing
• Security validation

Also the cloud manager enables various deployment modes like

• Automated deployments for mature pipelines
• Scheduled deployments for flexibility  of deploying  even business hours
• Manual deployments for maximum control and custom deployments.

Summary:
The key benefits of cloud manager are given below

• Speed delivery of customizations
• Minimize user disruptions
• Provide more flexibility and control
• Ensure customer KPIS are always achieved

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AEM Cloud, Topology, Nodestore, Datastore App server, Auth. Web Server

 Below given some of the AEM specific combinations available.

AEM products

•     Sites
•     Assets
•     Forms
•     Screens
•     Communities
•     Commerce
•     Mobile
•     LiveFyre
•     Dynamic Media/Scene7
•     Brand Portal

Adobe Experience Cloud solutions

•     Analytics
•     Target
•     Campaign
•     Audience Manager
•     Media Optimizer
•     Primetime
•     Social
•     Mobile Services   

Which Cloud Environment is used?

•     Adobe Managed Services
•     Amazon Web Services
•     Microsoft Azure
•     Rackspace
•     Private cloud
•     Other   

Topology

•     Non-High Availability (1 Author active node, 1 Publish active node)
•     Publish-Farm (2 or more Publish active nodes)
•     Author-Cluster (2 or more Author active nodes)
•     Author-Cold Standby (1 Author standby node)
•     Author-Offload (1 or more Author active worker nodes)   

Nodestore Micro Kernel (MK)

•     SegmentMK with Tar
•     DocumentMK with MongoDB
•     DocumentMK with Oracle
•     DocumentMK with DB2
•     DocumentMK with MySQL
•     DocumentMK with SQLServer   

Datastore configuration

•     Segment
•     File System
•     Amazon S3
•     Azure Blob Storage
•     MongoDB
•     RDBMS   

Application Server

•     Jetty
•     CQSE
•     Oracle WebLogic
•     IBM WebSphere
•     Apache Tomcat
•     Oracle JBoss   

Security Authentication method

•     AEM
•     LDAP
•     SAML
•     Oauth
•     Other   

Web Server technology    

•     Apache
•     Microsoft IIS
•     Oracle iPlanet