In my opinion, Without ACS Commons tool, AEM as CMS hasn’t provided many capabilities except stupid touch UI. Every team has to develop so many custom solutions to support operation work. One of the example, Migrating content from one environment to another. Will talk many more issues in AEM. Let’s explore about reporting feature in AEM.
Scenarios/Need of reporting feature in CMS
Let’s say there are many websites & brands hosted in one AEM author environment and multiple content teams are putting content at the same time. Page deleting, modification etc would be normal activity for a large team. And, Team often struggles to find out who has modified their pages, deleted etc. The Biggest question is that how do we restore the content? but keeping track of normal activities is essential.
Let’s say there are many websites & brands hosted in one AEM author environment and multiple content teams are putting content at the same time. Page deleting, modification etc would be normal activity for a large team. And, Team often struggles to find out who has modified their pages, deleted etc. The Biggest question is that how do we restore the content? but keeping track of normal activities is essential.
Page Activity Report Solution
AEM has reporting capabilities called page activity report. AEM Reporting lacks following basic features:
AEM has reporting capabilities called page activity report. AEM Reporting lacks following basic features:
- It is unresponsive & provides very basic information.
- Filtering based on date, author etc isn’t provided.
- Querying feature isn’t available.
- No way you can check what section of the page was modified?
Solutions
AEM OOTB (Out of the box) Page activity report could be helpful if you know the page name or title and you want to track of that page. In above snapshot, Filter setting provides a way to find out about the page.
AEM OOTB (Out of the box) Page activity report could be helpful if you know the page name or title and you want to track of that page. In above snapshot, Filter setting provides a way to find out about the page.
Custom Solution using PageEvent Handler
Here is the one custom solution to track all the events of the page in AEM. Keep one PageEvent handler and keep pushing activities into JCR node or other storages.
In the above code, We have multiple events specific blocks to write custom reporting code. One of the way is to create records of these activities is to create simple JCR nodes for each activities. Data models for reporting could be as follows.
Path of the code could be: /page-report/<today’s data in yyyy/mm/dd>/<current time in hours>/<page-path-replace_slashwith_hyphen>/<author>
Here is the one custom solution to track all the events of the page in AEM. Keep one PageEvent handler and keep pushing activities into JCR node or other storages.
@Component
@Service
@Property(name="event.topics", value= {DamEvent.EVENT_TOPIC, PageEvent.EVENT_TOPIC})
public class PageActivityReport implements EventHandler {
/**PageModification.ModificationType.CREATED
PageModification.ModificationType.DELETED
PageModification.ModificationType.MODIFIED
PageModification.ModificationType.MOVED
PageModification.ModificationType.VERSION_CREATED
PageModification.ModificationType.RESTORED
***/
@Override
public void handleEvent(Event event) {
PageEvent pageEvent = PageEvent.fromEvent(event);
if(pageEvent != null) {
Iterator<PageModification> modifications = pageEvent.getModifications();
while (modifications.hasNext()) {
PageModification modification = modifications.next();
if (PageModification.ModificationType.CREATED.equalsIgnoreCase(modification.getType().toString())) {
//Log it or write code to save created pages.
} else if (PageModification.ModificationType.DELETED.equalsIgnoreCase(modification.getType().toString())) {
//Log it or write code to save deleted pages. Notification or alert can be triggered from here.
}else if (PageModification.ModificationType.MODIFIED.equalsIgnoreCase(modification.getType().toString())) {
//Log it or write code to save modified pages.
}
}
}
}
In the above code, We have multiple events specific blocks to write custom reporting code. One of the way is to create records of these activities is to create simple JCR nodes for each activities. Data models for reporting could be as follows.
Path of the code could be: /page-report/<today’s data in yyyy/mm/dd>/<current time in hours>/<page-path-replace_slashwith_hyphen>/<author>
- path: /content/abc/en/example.html
- pageTitle: <title of the page>
- event: delete/modify/moved
- activityBy: who performed any activity
- timestamps: <Format should be correct so that it can be queried>
Final Thoughts
The above solution can be implemented or scale for other types of reporting. For example, Keep tracking assets activity reporting. One Challenge in scaling this solution would be, Keeping activities records in JCR nodes and fetching them quickly. Also, the Above data model needs more thoughts based on how query would look like when generating final reports.
The above solution can be implemented or scale for other types of reporting. For example, Keep tracking assets activity reporting. One Challenge in scaling this solution would be, Keeping activities records in JCR nodes and fetching them quickly. Also, the Above data model needs more thoughts based on how query would look like when generating final reports.
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