Basic non-Adobe Integrations with AEM

Adding onto your AEM platform though the integration of a new application can add new, robust capabilities to your already powerful system. But many integrations are not as simple as plug and go. They take expertise and know-how to make them work best and give your system the benefits and performance you need.

We asked our developers to walk us through some of the more popular non-Adobe integrations that add value and capabilities to enterprise AEM systems. They have cultivated valuable expertise with multiple client experiences in each of these integrations, and share some of the challenges they’ve faced, and the best practices that have proved to be successful.

Solr: Add Robust Search Capabilities
Solr is a fast and powerful search platform that powers many of the world’s largest sites. It uses advanced algorithms to organize data in a variety of ways, according to the needs of the business and its users. It’s highly customizable to meet the unique challenges and expectations of enterprise business and the needs of its customers. When integrating Solr with AEM, there are two areas that should be considered: indexing content and searching content. It’s important to take the time to clean and prepare your content before sending the data into Solr so that the application can index it, and quickly find relevant results for your user.

One of the major challenges of Solr is that documentation from Apache can be tough to decipher. While a plain instance is relatively easy to get going, more custom integration and full utilization of the Solr benefits are much more difficult. It is also not a very intuitive integration, and even though it is a very widely used, open-sourced application, not a lot of developer information or examples of complex integrations are available. The time commitment for a Solr integration is fully dependent on the search query complexity that you want to create, and how much user interaction you want to allow.

Salesforce: Track your Lead Generation
Salesforce is a CRM that helps businesses connect with their customers, bringing together all of their information into a single platform that gives you a more complete understanding of your customers, and the ability to translate that into success. It is a widely used application that keeps track of your customer's movements and can steer them to relevant content, increasing the likelihood of turning them into a qualified lead. One of the benefits of Salesforce is that it can be pointed to multiple applications, yet keep each set of data siloed.

The major challenge when integrating Salesforce into AEM is that you need to simultaneously work in both applications, and that is not always intuitive. You need to add AEM to the Salesforce register and generate a client key, and then add that to your AEM system to properly connect the two; essentially you are telling Salesforce that it should associate with your site. Another issue can arise if the enterprise is using the test version of Salesforce to test the system. But really, a production-level account is needed to fully integrate the two, and know how the systems will interact and share data.

Video: Add a New Dimension to your Content
For AEM integrations, two of the more popular video hosting sites are Brightcove and YouTube. They each have good API integration, but the level of difficulty increases as you add to the customization through things like search functionality, comment moderation, playlists, etc. How much you want to offer your user will directly affect the time and effort of the integration, like adding in a search function.

A significant amount of video integration work from these hosts is actually prepared on the hosting side. The complexity comes when you are adding in different players and features that are designed specifically for, and are dependent on the end user’s device (ie mobile, tablet, or desktop).

Google: Create Fuller User Experiences
Google offers a variety of tools that can offer the users of your site a more complete experience. From customized map functions to in-depth analytics, its features are easy to work with and the support that’s available across the web is excellent. Integrating one of these Google products into your system, instead of simply inserting iframes, for example, allows you to create customizable features that give your customers the solution they are looking for.

A good example of how a Google Map integration can be beneficial is that it will store and show particular information that is most useful and complete for your customer. Tightly integrating into your system allows users to search in specific zip code ranges, obtain directions from their location, see location specifics (i.e. hours and address), and a variety of other useful features.

Education is the Starting Point
Integrating non-Adobe products into AEM can be a challenge, but armed with the right know-how ahead of time can help you mitigate any potential issues and be prepared for the glitches that tend to always pop up.