8 Great Features of AEM 6.2

AEM’s recent upgrade to 6.2 is offering both marketers and developers a bunch of new features, most of which were developed as a direct result of user requests to Adobe. Here are a few of the best:

• Search:  The enhanced search feature is both intuitive and user friendly. The more robust function, now moved to the top navbar for even easier use, can significantly improve the author experience when creating new pages. You can add items right from the search into your new page.
• Templates: With this latest version, authors can create templates. But the beauty is – there are controls that can be put in place to dictate who can do what. AEM’s new intuitive interface can allow your business to scale faster, without the risk of authors tinkering where they shouldn’t, by empowering the business users to create pages from templates newly-designed on the fly.
• Content:  Authors can generate content, independent of templates, which can allow for more creative, collaborative thinking. Authors can even work with text fragments that can be assembled into bigger content pieces.  Then they can use the new Asset Insights to know how that content is performing.
• Social: The updated version of AEM is more powerful in connecting communities, and gives you a greater, more intuitive, capacity for reusing content across channels. In addition, there is a component to capitalize on user-generated content, through newly developed forums, blogs, and calendars, helping to keep your message fresh and authentic. And you can identify your ‘top user experts’ through a simple algorithm.
• Personalization: It’s true that 75% of consumers say they are frustrated by generic marketing messages. The demand for a one to one connection is real and you’ve got to provide useful messaging. The tighter 6.2 integration with Adobe Target allows you to test and target digital content quickly, so you can deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. And better yet, you can geographically define ‘areas’ of your site to drill down even further.
• Forms: AEM forms lets you set up a form template that has specific content styles and layouts that you can then apply across any of the forms on your site. In addition, it includes a concept called Form fragments. This allows authors to easily use components of a form throughout the site such as an address block, signature, or income details.  In addition, 6.2 gives users the ability to output an interactive PDF form to fill out and submit.  AEM forms also include integration with e-sign for document signature and verification.
• Repository: In the latest version, Adobe has added some better performance and scalability with an enhanced data repository. It includes better support for a more enterprise-level database system in the form of MongoDB Enterprise 3.2.  In 6.2 they also have added support for s3 with a crx2oak migration tool. Allowing users to more easily transition to Oak. Addition of search enhancements like Faceted Search, Suggestions, Spellchecker, and more.
• References: Let’s face it, Adobe does not have a great reputation for learning resources or support. But they are trying to change that with this latest release. They have created a reference site for developers that contains their best practices and some best in class components. It allows you to see how things work in AEM without having to spend a lot of time on your own figuring things out. You can download the AEM Package or review the source code.

Overall, Adobe has made some great enhancements to the upgrade and they are covered more in-depth in some of the Summit presentations. And make sure you check back to our blog as we continue to offer great tips on successfully working in AEM from both a developer and a marketing perspective.