Top 10 Features Of Aem 6.5

What’s new in AEM 6.5?

Adobe has launched a new version of Adobe Experience Manager 6.5 on April 8, 2019. This release went through 23 iterations of quality assurance and bug fixing, which is included with 1345 fixes, enhancements & exciting new features.

Adobe Experience Manager 6.5 delivers innovations that enable marketers & IT professionals to collaborate on the rapid delivery of personalized brand experiences—exactly when & where they’re expected.

Let’s take a look at top 10 features of AEM 6.5 release :

1. Enhancements in Cloud Manager: Deliver experiences faster with Cloud Manager

Below are the major enhancements delivered with Cloud manager :

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o Quality Gate Enhancements: Execute additional tests with code quality tests in non-production CI/CD Pipeline, and performance testing for Assets

o Auto-scaling: Intelligently detects the need for additional capacity when the production environment is subject to unusually high load

o Frictionless Upgrades: Utilize a wizard-driven process that leverages a sandbox environment and blue-green deployment technique

The following diagram illustrates the CI/CD process flow used in Cloud Manager, which is extracted from Adobe’s documentation :

2. Connected DAM for Sites Authoring

This feature enables practitioners to leverage assets from remote DAM for authoring web pages in the Page Editor. Site authors can perform below activities, once AEM instance is configured with remote DAM in the cloud:

o Search seamlessly in remote DAM from the content finder

o Drag & drop remote assets into local Sites Page Editor like a local asset

o Preview web pages with remote DAM assets

o Further, edit remote DAM assets on Sites instance with a local copy

o Publish pages with Connected DAM assets

o Available with Managed Services

o License is required for remote Asset repository

3. Adobe Asset Link Extension with AEM Assets

With this integration, the collaboration between creatives and marketers will strengthen in the content creation process. Please watch below demo video created by Adobe for more details :

o Discover, use and edit assets from AEM directly within Creative Cloud for Enterprise Desktop Apps

o Search, access collections, preview assets & basic metadata directly from Creative Cloud Apps

o Find Similar Assets with Adobe Sensei

o Keep Work-in-Progress assets and final production assets in separate locations

o Single Sign-On with your Creative Cloud SSO credentials for access to digital assets from AEM Assets

o Deploy easily with the Adobe Admin Console

4. Assets: Adobe Stock Integration

Adobe Stock service provides designers and businesses with access to millions of high-quality, curated, royalty-free photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, templates, and 3D assets for all their creative projects. Here are a few top benefits of Adobe Stock integration:

o AEM users are able to quickly search, preview assets, Save and view the required assets

o Copy and publish the assets

o Share the assets on Brand Portal

o Access and use the assets via AEM Desktop App

o Access metadata and asset properties

o From within the AEM user interface, users can search Adobe Stock assets and license the required assets. Once an Adobe Stock asset is licensed in AEM, it can be used and managed like a typical asset

Only AEM administrators and Admin Console administrators for an organization can perform the integration as it requires administrator privileges.

5. Assets: AEM Desktop App 2.0

AEM Desktop App enables the user to perform below operations :

o Open and edit any asset type in any desktop application (including non-Adobe ones)

o Browse assets from AEM in a dedicated desktop app built-in browser –limit the need to use Finder/Explorer

o Search for assets directly from the Desktop App

o Preview assets and open them in the associated desktop application

o Edit assets locally and upload changes to AEM when done

o Upload files and folder hierarchies to AEM with progress monitoring

6. Sites: Headless CMS

Here are key features extending support for headless CMS with a new release :

o HTTP REST API for Content Fragment-CRUD operations

o Bulk delivery of fragment structure and content

o Output in JSON format that can be consumed across SPA, Mobile App, IoT App and more

o GraphQL API for Commerce for improved integration with commerce systems

o Ability to export Experience Fragments from AEM to Target in JSON format

o Apply Experience Fragments for A/B and MVT, rules-driven or Sensei powered AI personalization

o Markup delivered by Target, referenced media assets by AEM

o Repurpose personalized offers/campaigns from the web (HTML) to SPA/Native Mobile Apps etc. (JSON)

7. AEM Single Page Application (SPA):

Single Page Application (SPA) was part of the AEM 6.4 release. Below enhanced features included in new release making SPA Editor more powerful :

o In-context composition and content editing of React and Angular powered SPA

o New Maven Archetype for SPA, which creates minimal project structure required for SPA implementation. It also includes with SPA Javascript SDK in project , which reduces developer efforts in configuration.

o Server-side rendering of SPA JavaScript to reduce first page load time and improve SEO

o Leverage the full localization and translation Support from AEM in your SPA

o Embed forms and communications from AEM Forms into SPA Editor

o Use the Template Editor to edit and configure the AEM editable parts of the SPA

o Use Multi-site Management to create a country, franchise or white-labeled SPA experiences

o Screens Add-on: Edit and deliver rich interactive experiences using SPA Editor

With extended HTTP API, it supports the delivery of content fragments in JSON format & allows CRUD operations. This JSON format can be consumed across SPA, Mobile App, iOS App, Social media and more. This makes AEM standing as Hybrid CMS & supports Modern Web and Headless Delivery

o The following diagram illustrates how AEM can support for Headless Delivery:

8. Forms: Automated Forms Conversion

With Adobe Sensei support, you can convert PDF forms and traditional input fields to digital, mobile-responsive, adaptive forms.

This approach significantly reduces the implementation efforts & time taken to digitize and modernize the end to end data capture experience. This especially helps for the organizations that have hundreds of legacy PDF forms that they need conversion.

9. Assets: Dynamic Media (license required) powered by Sensei

Below are a few cool features introduced with the help of Sensei integration:

o Smart Crop for Video: Leverage AI to dynamically crop video

 Smart Tags For Video: Automatically apply metadata tags to the video. Please watch below demo video created by Adobe for more details :

 Visual Search: Adobe Sensei powered search to find visually similar assets in the DAM

 Deliver device-optimized 360 video experiences using Dynamic Media

10. Core Components Update

Teaser, Carousel, Tabs, Separator, Download, Accordion, and few more production-ready components were included in the new core components library. These are publicly available @ http://opensource.adobe.com/aem-core-wcm-components

Key changes in AEM 6.4 to understand before any upgrade

1. Content Classifications: In order to make it safer and easier for customers to understand what areas of /libs are safe to use and overlay the content in /libs has been classified with the following mixins:

o Public (granite: PublicArea) – Defines a node as public so that it can be overlaid, inherited ( sling:resourceSuperType ) or used directly ( sling:resourceType ). Nodes beneath /libs marked as Public will be safe to upgrade with the addition of a Compatibility Package. In general, customers should only leverage nodes marked as Public.

o Final (granite: FinalArea) – Defines a node as final. Nodes classified as final cannot be overlaid or inherited. Final nodes can be used directly via sling:resourceType. Subnodes under the final node are considered internal by default

o Internal (granite: InternalArea) – Defines a node as internal. Nodes classified as internal cannot be overlaid, inherited, or used directly. These nodes are meant only for internal functionality of AEM

o Abstract (granite: AbstractArea) – Defines a node as abstract. Nodes can be overlaid or inherited ( sling:resourceSupertype ) but must not be used directly ( sling:resourceType ).

o No Annotation – Nodes inherit classification based on the tree hierarchy. The / root is by default Public. Nodes with a parent classified as Internal or Final are also to be treated as Internal