AEM 6.4 Supports Content Fragments to deliver content as a service. Experience
Fragments enables Experience-as-a-Service, where the CMS controls
partial-page rendering, or Hybrid CMS, solutions that let you push your
content to any channel — just as headless systems do — using a delivery
tier that connects all those channels and shares data between them.
Content Fragments helps to project AEM as a headless CMS.
What is a content fragment?
Contains one or more Content Elements,
Content can have one or more Variations.
Content fragment can be created based on templates which define the structure.
Content fragments are a type of new assets.
Content Fragment use existing Assets functionality & fully integrated with assets.
Content Fragments are well tied with Translation workflows, metadata schema.
A
content fragment groups renditions, related items, associated items,
metadata, model, elements, variations etc in a single Content.
Can we add a Content Fragment to a page?
Yes it can be added to a page using default content fragment component as other components.
Which is the API service for Content Fragments?
Latest AEM provides server side API com.adobe.cq.dam.cfm to programmatically interact with Content Fragments.
Through this post we are talking about AEM 6.4 Brands and method of creation of brands. In case if you are interested in 6.3 version of Brands follow this page.
Brands in AEM 6.4
To work with personalization, we need to create brands.
The personalization configuration page can be opened by clicking on Adobe Experience Manager link as below.
Login to AEM 6.4
Traverse through Navigation> Personalization> Activities>
Remember you can create Brand in both 'Activities' or 'Offers'
Click on Create Brand
Then in next screen(Template) select the Brand , click on Next
In 'Properties' screen enter title and select any tags if required. Then click on 'create'.
You will get a message that page is created and it will be listed under activities section
Note: The newly created brand will be listed under both Activity & Offers
If we are under Activity Section;
Under the new brand we have options to create Activity, Area, Area As Live Copy.
If we are under Offers Section;
Under the new brand we have options to create Folder or offer, Area, Area As Live Copy.
Based on the requirement we can now create any levels of various personalized content utilizing this brands.
Through this post, we are discussing about the ContextHub based personalization and method of ContextHub creation. ContextHub/Segments - Audience Creation
ContextHub is a new form(Touch based) of segments which helps to configure the personalization. The ContextHub page provides information about the default and user created stores and UI modules, the client library folders that are loaded, and links to useful pages. Read About ContextHub/Segments - Audience Creation AEM 6.3 version
Steps to create ContextHub in AEM 6.4
Login to AEM 6.4
Traverse through Navigation> Personalization> Audiences>
Then enter into the site where you want to create ContextHubs
I have selected 'we-retail' site for my example.
[You can also follow the path to reach ContextHub creation section
through link :
http://(host):(port)/libs/cq/personalization/touch-ui/content/v2/audiences.html/conf/we-retail]
Create Context Hub Segment: A section where we can add new segments and update existing ones.
ContextHub 'Create' provides below option.
Enter the segment title and boost value if it has to be boosted on evaluation
Once you click on Create Context Hub Segment, below screen appears.
This section has grid/ list views.
Once Context Hub Segment is created, select the newly created one and edit it
You can see a 'Container AND' component placed by default. If it is not available, add it.
Again click on the newly added container (+) icon and insert new component and select 'Comparison: Property - Value'
Now the container appears as below with property null (3).
Now edit the property as below (4) , so that the newly added Context Hub Segment becomes a 'male' test based on profile; for that follow next step.
Setting for male: set the values as 'gender equal string male'
Since we have logged in as default admin user, the user/persona satisfy the male condition, which is shown below.
If persona is selected as female the condition becomes un-satisfied.
If persona is selected as male the condition becomes satisfied again.
In the upcoming posts we will be discussing further topics on AEM 6.4 personalization.
Adobe consulting services provides a set of utilities which extends the capabilities of AEM. This additional features helps the site administrator/content managers to generate various reports. This tools are further extensible for specific needs.
Adobe consulting services(ACS) provides a set of utilities which extends the capabilities of AEM. This additional features helps the site administrator/content managers. These tools are further extensible for specific needs.
List of ACS AEM Commons tools are given below.
Generic Lists - Helps to create custom lists
Reports - Helps to create, execute and view reports
Audit log search - Search for audit log events
Content Packagers - create query, ACL and authorizable packages
Automatic package replication - tooling to automatically replicate AEM packages.
Dispatcher Flush - Manually flush the AEM Dispatcher cache
Version Replicator - replicate specific version of content
Version compare - compare AEM page version content and structure
Page Compare - Compare AEM Page content and structure
Manage Controlled Processes- Execute and monitor a suite of provided tasks
JCR Compare: Compare JCR Content trees across AEM instances
Bulk workflow manager- Execute AEM workflow at scale
System Notification - Notify AEM users of important AEM Events
Workflow remover - Power tooling for Workflow instance remover
Users to CSV Exporter - Export AEM users to CSV for reporting
QR Code - Quickly review published pages on mobile devices
In this post, we are concentrating on the 'Reports' tool which helps to create, execute and view reports based on our needs.
Introduction AEM Content Reports
Open Source AEM ACS commons project, provides AEM Content Reports which is available in version 3.14.0 and supported for AEM 6.3+. This is not an out of the box feature in AEM. This reports can be used to see various reports like,
The user who has done some mistakes and caused to break the site,
The user who has activated the home page without approval
How many pages use the article component which may be deprecating in this release
How many pages still need to activate in IT site
Content managers need this reports to get a detailed view on the activities happening on the site. This reports provide Web view or csv download options. Also this reports are sharable through links and can be saved for future use.
Upload / install package in AEM through package manager
Validate installation : Go to {host}:{port}/aem/start.html > Tools > ACS AEM COMMONS > Reports
List of available reports
We have options to
Create a report
Update a report
view a report
Execute the report
Download the CSV format report
From above options, we can generate various reports by mentioning its corresponding parameters. Sample Result from Content Reports: This report is generated from 'page report' option to list out all pages under '/content'
How to compare pages using ACS AEM Commons tools? Read This
We can configure any reports using below options :
Customizable queries and columns
supports user params
Extensible Model: This tools are customizable due to below reasons.
Built as AEM component
Java extensible APIs
Supports custom executors, params, columns and exporters
Advantage of AEM Content reports
We can have custom queries executed to generate reports, but the advantage of AEM Content report is given below.
A more detailed explanation is provided in the below video.
Pattern Detector helps in assessing the complexity of AEM upgrades.
How the Pattern Detector works?
Pattern detector scan the existing code base before upgrade to ensure that there are no code breakers involved in current code base. After scanning, Pattern Detector provides a set of action items to fix if any issues found. This includes detailed report of violation explanations and remediation guidance.
How this is helpful?
AEM 6.4 reserves some of the paths and reserved granite codes for internal AEM use only. So Pattern Detector checks any such paths which may be over written by upgrade, also any API which may not be compatible with 6.4 version. Pattern detection is a mandatory step for upgrading to AEM 6.4
Click on image to see it big
Install & configure Pattern Detector:
The installation & configuration steps can be found here
The Pattern detector is available for versions AEM 6.1, AEM 6.2, AEM 6.3, which is downloadable using Adobe Id. This needs to be installed through AEM package manager.
Access & Analysis of report:
Go to configrMgr and select 'Status'> Pattern Detector. The reports are available in normal text or JSON formats.
Some of the Pattern detector sample codes are
OCU - Depicts Deprecated usages
ECU - Suspicious overlays, overrides, references
LOCP - Any packages that overwrites '/libs'
NBCC - Non backwards compatible changes
CAV - Directs to reduce the amount of overlayed content in general due to security problems
Usage Recommendations:
Pattern detector is recommended to use at stage environments to avoid any slowness in production environments.
Interested in taking a first look at AEM 6.4 UI and dash board? Watch this video.
AEM 6.4 has a lot more features which directly enables the developers activities. Below given my first observation which may help a developer in his day to day activities while working with AEM 6.4. This list may not be complete but definitely gives a good idea about the new things.
There are cloud related upgrades, Fluid experience support, efficient utilization of content intelligence etc in 6.4
Key notes on new features:
Core module version changes
AEM 6.4 build on top of updated versions of the OSGi-based framework (Apache Sling and Apache Felix)
Java Content Repository has the latest version: Apache Jackrabbit Oak 1.8.2
The Quickstart uses Eclipse Jetty 9.3.22 as Servlet engine.
New Style System is available which allow users in Page Editor to select from a subset of styles via UI. The Core Components which were part of AEM 6.3, and now joined by the Style System, provides an efficient way to build new and extend existing sites.
Workflow model editor is now more user friendly.
Assets improvements related to machine learning like smart crop, smart tag, smart search etc reduces the manual activities drastically.
Some of the location/path changes to be noted are,
Template design information location is moved from /etc/design to support sites specific settings in /conf. But clients who are moving from older version to new version can remain using /etc/design.
Moved default location for segments into /conf to have site/context specific Segment lists.
Component & Template Development related upgrades
Project Archetype 13+
HTL version 1.3.1
Core Components 2.0.4
There are a set of UI changes too.
'Content Tree' rail to quickly navigate a hierarchy
Experience
Fragments enables Experience-as-a-Service, where the CMS controls
partial-page rendering, or Hybrid CMS, solutions that let you push your
content to any channel — just as headless systems do — using a delivery
tier that connects all those channels and shares data between them.
