New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

In this blog, we will understand about the latest features as part of AEM 6.5 forms

AEM 6.5 Forms are built with consideration of,  Mobile First Forms & Personalized Correspondence.

- Support new use cases with interactive communications
- OOTB Forms components for AEM Sites SPA
- Simplified OSGI workflow authoring
- Enhanced Adobe Sign integration


AEM Forms 6.5 - Output & Customer Communications
->Additional Capabilities to support new use cases are given below,

- Support for new layout and templates
- Introduction of new charting styles to address new wealth management use cases
- Auto generate web channel to retain Print Channel layouts
- Usability Enhancements , Drag and drop from FDM tree to bind variables and fields.

AEM Forms 6.5 - Simplified Workflow Authoring
-> Support for variables and re-usability of workflows

- Simplified Debugging with standardized workflow logs
- Support for custom data types in meta data
- Reduce dependency on ECMA scripts and manually populate meta data across workflow steps
- Introduction of an OOTB ability to declare variables/ meta data upfront and read and populate them across workflow steps
- Increased re-usability of workflows via invocation using multiple forms.

AEM Forms 6.5 - Enhanced Forms and Adobe Sign Integration
-> Support for cloud signatures in Adaptive Forms

- Enables compliance with most rigorous legal and regulatory requirements.
- Signing using Digital ID's based on PKI infrastructure based digital certificates

AEM Forms 6.5 - Embed Forms and Documents in AEM Sites SPA
->Embed Adaptive Forms and interactive Communications web channel in SPA based AEM Sites

- Offer compelling experiences to website users through Single Page Applications
- OOTB components o embed online forms and documents in SPA Sites.
- Aligns with AEM sites framework to support SPA based sites.

What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

Let us see the assets specific new features in AEM 6.5

AEM Assets 6.5 - Adobe Asset Link

-> The new and improved Adobe Asset Link helps to discover , use and edit assets from AEM directly within Creative Cloud desktop apps.

- We can place assets in your designs, download a copy
- Add new assets to AEM directly from CC apps
- Search AEM Assets & CC Assets, access collections, preview assets & Basic metadata directly from CC apps - PS , ID, AI
- Check out. in assets stored in AEM assets directly from PS, ID and AI into CC Assets
- Keep work in progress assets and final production assets in separate locations
- Single Sign On with your Creative Cloud SSO credentials for access to digital assets from AEM Assets

AEM Assets 6.5 - AEM Desktop App Update
-> Open and edit any asset type in any desktop application (Including non- Adobe assets)

- Search for assets directly from the desktop app and find them
- Preview assets and open them in the associated desktop application
- Browse assets from AEM in a dedicated desktop app built- in browser - limit the need to use Finder/Explorer
- Edit assets locally and upload changes to AEM when done
- Upload files and folder hierarchies to AEM with progress monitoring

AEM Assets 6.5 - Adobe Stock Integration
-> Search and license Adobe Stock assets from AEM UI

- License and save original assets from Adobe Stock to AEM
- Search , preview and save Adobe Stock assets directly from AEM Assets Web UI

AEM Assets 6.5 - Remote DAM for Sites Authoring
This is a very useful feature which was expected from quite long time.

- This helps sites authors to leverage assets from Remote DAM for authoring web pages
- Configure connection with Remote DAM on cloud
- Search seamlessly on Remote DAM from content finder
- Drag & Drop remote assets into local sites page editor like a local asset
- Preview web pages with Remote DAM assets
- Further edit remote DAM assets on Sites instance with a local copy
- Publish pages with remote DAM assets

AEM Assets 6.5 Brand Portal Enhancements:Asset Distribution

- Enhances user reporting (login, share)
- Browse and search enhancements
- File acceleration for downloads
- Guest Access
- Ability to schedule publishing
- Dynamic Media video support
- Configurable URL
- Folder hierarchy support for multi brand, team usage
- Original asset access restrictions
- Additional admin configurations
- Performance enhancements

AEM Assets 6.5 - Brand Portal - Asset Sourcing

- Direct folder share with external agency from DAM
- Upload capability on Brand Portal for sourcing brand, campaign assets from external agencies, teams
- Publish to DAM for review and multi-channel campaign usage
- New contributor role for external agency user persona
- Admin configurations to control upload sizes

AEM Assets 6.5 - User Experience Enhancements

- New permission management tool in touch UI
- Accessibility Enhancements
- Improved bulk operations with 'Select All' Capability

AEM Assets 6.5 Dynamic Search Facets
->There is a new dynamic faceted search for a faster experience

- This feature helps in providing dynamic filters and search results count is provided at filter / facet level

AEM Assets 6.5 - Visual Search
->Adobe Sensei powered search for finding visually similar assets

- Find similar action in card, list and detail view
- Leverage search facets to further refine search results

AEM Assets 6.5 - Dynamic Media + Sensei
->ML/AI Extended to video. This is a notable feature as part of AEM 6.5

- Video Smart Crop - Automatically re-crop a video to new aspect ratios while preserving the points of interest inside that video
- Best Frame Selection- Automatically recommending optimal thumbnails when customers upload a video
- Video Smart Tags - Automatically add suggested tags based on the video's content.

What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features

AEM 6.5 Site related new features

Let us see the key features with AEM 6.5 Sites:

AEM is growing and improving as a best hybrid CMS now by providing or sharpening features like content services. AEM 6.5 provides extended support for hybrid Content Services now.

Major site specific features are given below.

• - Core components - Extensions, Live Coding, Maven Archetype
• - SPA Integration - support for react & Angular Javascript frameworks
• - Direct content API - Content Fragments support in Assets HTTP API
• - Experience Fragment export to Adobe Target

AEM Sites 6.5 - Core components & Maven Archtype
->There are new core components added in AEM 6.5. Creating a new or extending existing site in AEM - with or without SPA JavaScript framework is more flexible now.

- Total 20 easy to style & production ready components that are configurable in Template
- New components added as part of AEM 6.5 are: Teaser, Tab, Carousal & Separator
- The step by step tutorial to get started is now enhanced.
- Added live coding support with https://aemfed.io/

AEM 6.5 Sites - Support for react and Angular - SPA Editor
-> A better experiences built with SPA Javascript frameworks

- SPA Editor for in-context editing, composition, configuration and layout the experiences
- Step - by Step tutorial to learn how to build new or more existing SPA into AEM
- Javascript SDK for React & Angular to annotate existing code to make it work in AEM
- Server side rendering of SPA JS code for accelerated delivery and improved SEO
- New Maven Archetype for headless/SPA projects

AEM Sites 6.5 - Content Fragments in AEM HTTP API
-> Delivery of structured AEM Content over direct content API, which broaden AEM support of headless CMS Scenarios

- Enablement of output in JSON format
- Extension of AEM Assets HTTP API
- HTTP REST API for Content Fragment Delivery (Full CRUD Support Later)
- Bulk delivery of fragment structure and content

AEM Sites 6.5 Content Fragments DIFF View & Annotations
-> Editorial content governance for AEM Content Fragments

- Review content changes in content fragments across versions
i) side-by-side view, accessible in Assets admin Timeline view
ii) Ability to revert to previous version
- Annotate text in content fragment editor
i) View in rich text editing mode as well as editor default view
ii) Also visible in Assets Admin Timeline view

AEM Sites 6.5 - Export Experience Fragments
-> AEM 6.5 provides advanced experience personalization using AEM and Adobe Target with support for hybrid (HTML) and Headless (JSON) scenarios

- Define re-usable experiences in AEM and in Target activities
- Markup delivery by Target, referenced media assets by AEM
- Ability to support Target HTML offers and JSON offers
- Ability to delete Experience Fragments and associated Target offers from within AEM.


AEM Sites 6.5 - New Translation Enhancements
-> Increasing the efficiency of content translation with AEM through automation and improved 3rd party integrations

- Allow translation projects to use AEM Project masters
- Allow updating translated pages with updates in 3rd party Translation Memory
- Allow exporting translation jobs in JSON Format
- Auto approve translation jobs
- Auto - delete translation launches


What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.

AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features

What is Sling Model Exporters?

Sling Models

Sling Models are business objects that represents sling resources or sling requset objects in AEM. In other way, Sling Models let you map Java objects to Sling resources.

Sling Models Exporter

Sling Model Exporters helps to export the model as a different Java object (serialized into a different format such as JSON) by adding annotations to Sling Model. The model is programmatically exported by calling the ModelFactory method exportModel().

Jackson exporter
 
Jackson exporter which is used in Sling allows to convert Sling Model into a Java Map object. Jackson JSON exporter helps exporting Sling Models as JSON objects, which can be accessible from other third party web service applications, Java script application etc.

Sling Model Exporter is available from Sling Models version v1.3.0. 

Pictorial representation of Sling Model Vs Sling Model Exporter

Click on image to see it big

Can I use Sling Model Exporters with versions prior to AEM 6.3?

Yes AEM 6.3 onward no extra dependencies required to use Sling Model Exporters.

But versions prior to AEM 6.3 requires installation of below bundled packages from,
Sling > Downloads

• Models API 1.3.0+
• Models Implementation 1.3.0+
• Models Jackson Exporter 1.0.0
• AEM 6.2 Communities/Livefyre - FP2

How to add exporter framework to an existing sling model?

1) Add a resource type to a model,

Add below line in @Model code block of Sling Model.

resourceType = "[The type of the resourcse which we are requesting]";

2) Add a new annotation,

@Exporter ( name = "jackson", extensions = "json")

Associate a model class with a resource in SlingDocumentation here

After building the code, invoke the resource with selector model.json

This will bring back the response in JSON format and the response is picked from the getter methods in the sling model class.

Sling Exporter Documentation

Demo Video

 

Read More:

Sling Model Vs WCMUsePOJO

Sling Models vs WCMUSEPOJO

AEM component back-end logic was shifted over years from JSP’s to WCMUse class to WCMUsePOJOs and then to Sling Models.

AEM 6.1 or 6.2 were supporting WCMUsePojo class; AEM 6.2 and 6.3 started to support the Sling Models approach.

Both WCMUsePOJOs and Sling Models are used with HTL using <data-sly-use> block.

Before we jump into the difference , let us understand the concepts.

What is a POJO(Plain Old Java Objects)?

POJO's are simple Java classes which doesnt depend on other libraries, interfaces or annotations. This increases the chance that this can be reused in multiple project types. POJO's provides Getter and Setter methods, which allow you to change the underlying data type without breaking the public interface of your class which makes it more robust and resilient to changes.

What if there are no getters and setters?

Say we havent created setter and getter methods, then any one can directly call the variable and it surely will affect to the code, which may lead to security issues. Here POJO class are forcing other coder to call on the methods rather than directly calling the Instance variables.

What is Sling Models?

Sling Models are annotation driven POJOs. They allows to map resource properties, assign default values, inject OSGI services and much more.

Sling Models are pure POJOs that gives wonderful separation between logic and presentation which also extensible with custom injectors and annotations. Sling Models let you map Java objects to Sling resources. 

Use API Vs Sling Model

Use API

HTL(Formerly known as Sightly) uses  two ways of implementing support for business logic objects:
1) Java Use-API, through POJOs,
2) JavaScript Use-API,

Regular POJOs that extend WCMUsePojo implement the Use interface and are initialized with the scripting bindings, providing convenience methods for accessing commonly used objects like request, resource, properties, page etc.

HTL implementation from Sling provides the basic POJO support through the org.apache.sling.scripting.sightly.pojo.Use interface and the JavaUseProvider, whereas the use function is implemented by the org.apache.sling.scripting.sightly.js.provider bundle.

The Sling implementation provides a few extensions to the Use-API.

Sling Model API:

Sling Models are more flexible which can also be used outside HTL, thus makes the business-logic more reusable. They are managed by Sling and can be injected references to other objects using annotations and reflection.

Click on image to see it big

Conversion from WCMUsePojo to SlingModel
Just by adapting the above said methods (Remove 'Extends WCMUse', Add sling model annotation on top of the class, then add inject methods to invoke the references.) a developer can easily convert WCMUsePojo to SlingModel.

Conclusion:

For the versions AEM 6.3, AEM 6.4 and AEM Core WCM Components, Adobe recommends using Sling Models as the best practice.
 
More Details Here

Picking-the-best-use-provider-for-a-project

Video of the comparison 
 

Read More:

Sling Model Vs Sling Model Exporter

Performance Monitoring in AEM Projects

There are many reasons for performance issue in AEM projects. Identifying them and fixing in right time is mandatory to make the project successful.

Common causes of performance issues

From years people were monitoring performance issues  and identified a pattern. The issues starts from beginning of the project to end. Examples could be a poor design, poorly written code, lack of caching, memory sizing, network bandwidth latency, no proper load balancing at end point etc.

How to prevent performance issues?

1) By running multiple tests: Load tests, stress tests etc can help identifying the issues before launch.
2) Stable AEM release: Install any recommended service packs, cumulative fixes, hot fixes etc.
3) Following guidelines : Follow Assets best practices recommended by Adobe, Content Architecture guidelines etc.
4) Proper Memory Management: Allocate sufficient RAM , disk space based on research guidelines.
5) Configurational practices: Proper logging,  Caching, Sling job queue tuning etc
6) Workflows tuning: Enable transient workflows, purge workflows on time etc.
7) Oak tuning : by creating custom indexing for repeated searches, Ensuring proper JVM parameters for index querying, better lucene index configuration, external data store for huge assets handling.
8) Tar storage tuning: TarMK revision clean, OS related fixes for Tar etc.

Adobe Cloud manager is having ability to identify many of such issues.

Always keep monitoring the system and check for the bug reports , Adobe forums etc to identify

Read More>> Performance in Cloud Manager

How can we create a custom datatype in the content fragment models in AEM

For majority of the use cases, the given content fragment datatypes will satisfy any use cases. But still if we need to extend the data type functionality further, below approach can be tried.

To start with, let us understand the data type structure in AEM.

Content Fragment model data types are configured at:
/libs/settings/dam/cfm/models/formbuilderconfig/datatypes/items/enumeration

and each dataype has properties as below,

• fieldIcon
• fiedPropResourceType
• fieldProperties
• fieldResourceType
• fieldTitle
• fieldViewResourceType
• renderType
• valueType

There are some additional fields which are specific to the fields.

Now, if you observe closely,

• fiedPropResourceType having string value 'dam/cfm/models/editor/components/datatypes/field'
• fieldIcon, fiedTitle -are data type naming specific.
• fieldResourceType, renderType, valueType - are behavior specific to the data types.

All the fieldResourceType values are referred from /libs/granite/ui/components/coral/foundation, /libs/dam/cfm/models/editor/components, /libs/dam/cfm/admin/components etc.

Below given a screenshot of default Boolean data type properties.

 

Custom?

Now say if you need to create a custom data type for the content fragment, you can create a project specific structure of the data type referring the default one, the same way we extend the components.

If there is any other way to implement this, please let me know through the comments.