How to update JDK version of Cloud Manager within your program as part of the build

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What are the available JDK versions with cloud manager?

Java versions installed are Oracle JDK 8u202 and 11.0.2.

Some times, when we deploy our code, people complaint java version is not matching (for e.g. we are using a JDK 11 specific API and this Java class is giving error in cloud manager) We will see how to set the relevant java version now.

How to update the Java version of project build environment in AEM As Cloud Manager

By default, projects are built using Java 8. Customers who want to use Java 11 in their projects can do this using the Apache Maven Toolchains Plugin.

In the pom.xml file, add a <plugin> entry that looks like this:

<!-- START -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-toolchains-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>toolchain</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
            <configuration>
                <toolchains>
                    <jdk>
                        <version>11</version>
                        <vendor>oracle</vendor>
                    </jdk>
                </toolchains>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
<!-- END -->

A few FAQs about AEM As Cloud Service build environment are given below

What is the OS used for AEM as CLoud service?

Build environment is Linux-based, derived from Ubuntu 18.04.

At present what is the maven version?

The installed maven is - Apache Maven 3.6.0 version.

Which java versions are supported by AEM as cloud service?
Java versions installed are Oracle JDK 8u202 and 11.0.2.

Which repository is configured as part of Maven Build ?
adobe-public

Any other tools or packages available in AEM As Cloud environment?
unzip, bzip2, libpng, imagemagick, graphicsmagick

My code has some script with Python or ruby script and I need to trigger it as part of my code build. Is this possible?

For this we need an appropriate language interpreter installed. This can be done by calling the 'exec-maven-plugin' to invoke APT. See an example below,

<!-- START -->
        <profile>
            <id>install-Ruby</id>
            <activation>
                <property>
                        <name>env.CM_BUILD</name>
                </property>
            </activation>
            <build>
                <plugins>
                    <plugin>
                        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                        <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                        <version>1.6.0</version>
                        <executions>
                            <execution>
                                <id>apt-get-update</id>
                                <phase>validate</phase>
                                <goals>
                                    <goal>exec</goal>
                                </goals>
                                <configuration>
                                    <executable>apt-get</executable>
                                    <arguments>
                                        <argument>update</argument>
                                    </arguments>
                                </configuration>
                            </execution>
                            <execution>
                                <id>install-ruby</id>
                                <phase>validate</phase>
                                <goals>
                                    <goal>exec</goal>
                                </goals>
                                <configuration>
                                    <executable>apt-get</executable>
                                    <arguments>
                                        <argument>install</argument>
                                        <argument>-y</argument>
                                        <argument>--no-install-recommends</argument>
                                        <argument>ruby</argument>
                                    </arguments>
                                </configuration>
                            </execution>
                        </executions>
                    </plugin>
                </plugins>
            </build>
        </profile>
<!-- END -->

Difference between Brand portal, Asset Share commons & Dynamic Media

People usually gets confused with various asset management tools from Adobe. Since each product has its relevancy, here we will try to compare those tools.

What is the difference between Brand Portal & Asset Share Commons?

Functionally, Brand Portal and Asset Share Commons both does similar things, provide assets stored in your AEM Assets to users without allowing them access to items that should be protected. These two tools options are simple in setup, configure so that the implementations are minimal.

Brand Portal(This one is Licensed by Adobe) has been described as a secure, cloud enabled service for on-demand asset distribution to internal teams, external partners, agencies, and resellers for marketing purpose. The customizations are very limited in case of Brand Portal.

Where in Asset Share Commons is a technical reference implementation(a reference for AEM developers when developing asset sharing functionality) of 'asset share' functionality built using Adobe Experience Manager best practices. The source code is available in Github project page(Non licensed and no warranty product). Since it is an open-source project, contributions and enhancements can be done on this.

What are all the difference between Dynamic media & Brand portal

Dynamic Media combines the power of asset management with rich media delivery ( create, adjust, brand, and deploy interactive viewers using the WYSIWYG Viewer Designer). Basically Dynamic Media is an evolution of Scene7 (Dynamic Media Classic). Scene7 was a stand alone product and Adobe bought scene7 and now it is re branding it to dynamic media by adding more features to it.

The feature list consists of:

Single user interface and platform for managing images and video, Seamless integration with Adobe Experience Manager, Innovative merchandising features, Powered by the robust and proven delivery platform.

Where in Brand portal(cloud-based SAAS offering) helps you easily acquire, control, and securely distribute approved creative assets to external parties and internal business users across devices. It helps improve the efficiency of asset sharing, accelerates the time-to-market for assets, and reduces the risk of non-compliance and unauthorized access. We can easily integrate Brand Portal with AEM.

Final Verdict

Dynamic media is for Collaboration and shared file sync with Adobe Creative Cloud applications, where in Brand portal/asset share commons is to share to external people.
Both support asset operations and approval workflows. So chose the prouct after understanding the proper requirements.

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 Difference between  Brand portal, Asset Share commons & Dynamic Media

Working with Adobe IO Command line interface

Some times we need to work with AEM as cloud without accessing the AEM AS Cloud environment directly.

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So to work with Adobe I/O CLI we need to install Node JS first. Then follow through the steps.

Step 1: Install Adobe I/O
npm install -g @adobe/aio-cli

Step 2: Install Adobe I/O Cloud Manager Plugin
aio plugins:install @adobe/aio-cli-plugin-cloudmanager

Step 3: Update the plugins
aio plugins:update

Above diagram gives an overview on environment provisioning in AEM as cloud
 

Step 4: First List the organizations tagged
aio cloudmanager:org:list

Step 5: Then select the Organization from above list
aio cloudmanager:org:select [Your org id from above list]@AdobeOrg

Step 6: aio cloudmanager:list-programs

Step 7: Then set a program
aio config:set cloudmanager_programid [Your prog id from above list]

Step 8: List all environments
aio cloudmanager:list-environments

Now based on requirements, you can execute the commands. Some examples are given below,

To Download logs:
aio cloudmanager:download-logs [env id] author aemerror 1

To list log options
aio cloudmanager:environment:list-available-log-options [env id]

To list OSGi Environment varriables
aio cloudmanager:list-environment-variables [env id]

To List Pipelines
aio cloudmanager:program:list-pipelines

To list a specific pipeline status
aio cloudmanager:pipeline:list-executions  [pipeline id]

OSGi Commands
-----------
To Set OSGI parameters
aio cloudmanager:set-environment-variables ENVIRONMENT_ID --variable MY_VAR1 "plaintext value" --secret MY_VAR2 "some secret value"

To List environment variables
aio cloudmanager:list-environment-variables ENVIRONMENT_ID

To Delete any variables.
aio cloudmanager:set-environment-variables ENVIRONMENT_ID --delete MY_VAR1 MY_VAR2

Ref URL:
https://github.com/adobe/aio-cli-plugin-cloudmanager#aio-cloudmanagerenvironmentdownload-logs-environmentid-service-name-days
https://github.com/adobe/aio-cli-plugin-auth#aio-authlogin
https://github.com/adobe/aio-cli

 

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Assets Essentials Vs AEM Assets As Cloud

 Recently Adobe launched Assets Essentials. Let us take a look at the difference between Assets Essentials and AEM Assets and find out which suits customers.

Assets Essentials is a lightweight version of Adobe Experience Manager Assets with a simplified user experience for marketing and creative pros to store, discover, and distribute digital assets across teams. This is designed to help brands connect more agile users with the digital assets they need to deliver rich customer experiences.

Assets Essentials is cloud-based and enables customers to start with essential asset management capabilities and seamlessly upgrade to the advanced enterprise DAM, AEM Assets, as their business needs grow.

Assets Essentials is the new default asset management UI for Experience Cloud. Assets Essentials will serve as the default asset management experience across Experience Cloud apps, starting with the new Adobe Journey Optimizer and later this year with Adobe Workfront.

Some of the features of Experience Manager Assets Essentials are given below

• Collaborative workspace unites teams
• Simplified asset management
• Creative Cloud and Experience Cloud integrations
• Cloud-based peace of mind
• AI-powered search, discovery, and management
• Quick and easy, intuitive user interface
• Find the assets you need to assemble and personalize messages across the customer journey using workflows
• Unify work and asset management to personalized experiences at scale

AEM Assets As Cloud
Experience Manager Assets offers a cloud-native solution with an AI and machine learning backbone. It provides wings to creatives and marketers & Supports enhanced asset management integrations (solution specific)

Some of the differences

Assets Essentials - User Experience - Configurable
Adobe Experience Manager Assets - User Experience – Customizable

Assets Essentials - (Basic) Asset Management & Library Services

Adobe Experience Manager Assets - (Advanced) Asset Management & Library Services

Assets Essentials - (Basic) Security & Rights Management

Adobe Experience Manager Assets - (Advanced) Security & Rights Management

Assets Essentials - Supports Experience Cloud Connections
Adobe Experience Manager Assets -  can integrate with Dynamic Media, Asset Portals (Brand Portal, Asset Share)

The verdict

Always start with essential DAM capabilities and grow to Enterprise DAM as business needs growth.
Customers with heavy weight asset management requirements should consider AEM Assets Cloud Service over Assets Essentials. The emphasis should be on the customer’s requirements to determine the right solution.

Assets Essentials creates an entry path for customers to start with the essential DAM capabilities to extend access to content to more users within a larger enterprise and seamlessly upgrade them to AEM Assets Cloud Service as their business expands(i.e. need more features, analytics, campaign integration etc.).

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AEM As Cloud deployment fails with dispatcher image issue

During my initial POCs with sample WKND code, I have noticed a behavior on AEM As Cloud service.

When ever I go for the pipeline and trigger it, the deployment fails with reason - dispatcher image failed. Some analysis was done around it from the logs and was able to resolve it as below.

I was doing my code checkout on windows and while unzipping I was using a software which was breaking the symlinks within dispatcher package. I got some warning during the unzip which I did not give much attention that point of time

To debug this, first I have commented out the dispatcher section in parent pom and deployed and tested the build. It worked on cloud.

Next I used another unzip tool (I remember Winzip was the tool which helped me. 7 Zip was removing symlinks. If it doesn't work, try other way around).

This time the symlink warning did not come durng my unzip and I have redeployed the code again. It worked perfectly.

Another option to fix this, may be, we can change those symlinks to real links if you know how to do that.

As a final option, still if you are unable to find out the reason, my recommendation is to reach out to spp help of Adobe, so that they can verify whether the envirnment was setup correctly.

 

Video Tutorial on AEM Cloud Deployment 

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Site Template in AEM FAQ

 Site Template in AEM FAQ

What is Site template (known as Sites 30)?

Site template is a predefined template which can be the starting point of any website creation. It contains basic theming, page templates, configurations and sample content. Instead of going to the archetype way of creating step by step approach of developing a website, Site template helps to utilize the out of the box components and templates and setup a website in shorter period of time. Once the site is up, the developers parallely work towards achieving the brand styles and customization (utilizing CSS, JS)

This is the new recommended Adobe way of developing an AEM site

Can I get it installed on my local AEM instance?
As of now the Site Template is enabled as part of AEM as A Cloud Service ONLY. We will have to contact Adobe to get this feature enabled in our AEM AS CLOUD.

Where I can get the templates?
This is an open-sourced project like Core Components. It can be downloaded from Basic Site Template project on GitHub, but always ensure you use the latest release.
https://github.com/adobe/aem-site-template-basic

What is themes in Sites?

Themes used to depict styles. We can modify theme sources of an Adobe Experience Manager Site to apply brand specific styles.

Where I can find more details?

We can always get demo and tutorials on below link.
https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-learn/getting-started-wknd-tutorial-develop/site-template/overview.html?lang=en

Crx2Oak Migration tool Concepts and Demo

 Crx2Oak helps migrate data from older CQ versions based on Apache Jackrabbit 2 to Oak, and it can also be used to copy data between Oak repositories.

 

You may also read: AEM As A Cloud Video Tutorials

The tool can be used for:

• Migrating from older CQ 5 versions to AEM 6
• Copying data between multiple Oak repositories
• Converting data between different Oak MicroKernel implementations. (S3DataStore to FileDataStore)

Some of its features are

• The migration can be interrupted at any time, with the possibility to resume it afterwards.
• Custom Java logic can also be implemented using CommitHooks.
• CRX2Oak also supports memory mapped operations by default. Memory mapping greatly improves performance

Parameters
Node Store Options
--cache: Cache size in MB (default is 256)

--mmap: Enable memory mapped file access for Segment Store

--src-password: Password for the source RDB database

--src-user: User for the source RDB

--user: User for the targed RDB

--password: Password for the target RDB.

Version Store Options
--copy-orphaned-versions: Skips copying orphaned versions. Parameters supported are: true, false and yyyy-mm-dd. Defaults to true.

--copy-versions: Copies the version storage. Parameters: true, false, yyyy-mm-dd. Defaults to true.

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Path Options
--include-paths: Comma-separated list of paths to include during copy
--merge-paths: Comma-separated list of paths to merge during copy
--exclude-paths: Comma-separated list of paths to exclude during copy.


Source Blob Store Options
--src-datastore: The datastore directory to be used as a source FileDataStore

--src-fileblobstore: The datastore directory to be used as a source FileBlobStore

--src-s3datastore: The datastore directory to be used for the source S3DataStore

--src-s3config: The configuration file for the source S3DataStore.


Destination BlobStore Options
--datastore: The datastore directory to be used as a target FileDataStore

--fileblobstore: The datastore directory to be used as a target FileBlobStore

--s3datastore: The datastore directory to be used for the target S3DataStore

--s3config: The configuration file for the target S3DataStore.

Help Options
-?, -h, --help: Shows help information.

Debugging
--log-level TRACE or --log-level DEBUG 

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