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Experience Manager and Creative Cloud integration best practices aem-and-creative-cloud-integration-best-practices

CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our . Find the supported versions here.

51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Experience Manager Assets is a digital asset management (DAM) solution that can integrate with 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Creative Cloud to help DAM users work together with creative teams, streamlining collaboration in the content creation process.

51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Creative Cloud provides creative teams with an ecosystem of solutions and services to help them to create digital assets. It includes desktop and mobile applications, cloud services like storage with desktop sync or web experience, as well as marketplaces like 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock.

Read on to know what integrations to pick between desktop and the enterprise-grade DAM based on your use case and what are the associated best practices for the connecting workflows.

NOTE
Folder sharing from Experience Manager to Creative Cloud is deprecated and is no longer covered in this guide. 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ recommends using newer capabilities such as or Experience Manager desktop app to provide creative user with access to assets managed in Experience Manager.

Collaboration needs of creatives, marketers, and DAM users collaboration-needs-of-creatives-marketers-and-dam-users

Requirements
Use case
Involved surfaces
Simplify experience for creatives on desktop
Streamline access to asset from a DAM (Assets) for creative professionals, or more broadly, users on desktop working in native asset creation applications. They need an easy and straightforward way to discover, use (open), edit and save changes to Experience Manager, as well as upload new files.
Win or Mac desktop; Creative Cloud apps
Provide high-quality, ready-to-use assets from 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock
Marketers help accelerate the content creation process by assisting with asset sourcing and discovery. Creative professionals use the approved assets right from within their creative tools.
Assets; 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock marketplace; metadata fields
Distribute and share assets by organizations
Internal departments/local branches and external partners, distributors, and agencies use the approved assets shared by the parent organization. The organization wants to securely and seamlessly share the created assets for wider reuse.
Brand Portal, Asset Share Commons

51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ offerings to support the collaboration need adobe-offerings-to-support-the-collaboration-need

Value proposition for the involved personas
51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ offering
Involved surfaces
Creative users discover assets from Experience Manager, open and use them, edit and upload changes to Experience Manager, as well as upload new files into Experience Manager, without leaving Creative Cloud apps.
Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
Business users simplify opening and using assets, editing and uploading changes to Experience Manager, and uploading new files into Experience Manager from the desktop environment. They use a generic integration to open any asset type in the native desktop application, including non-51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ ones.
Experience Manager desktop app
Experience Manager desktop app on Win and Mac desktop
Marketers and business users discover, preview, license and save, and manage the 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock assets from within Experience Manager. Licensed and saved assets provide select 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock metadata for better governance.
Experience Manager and 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock integration
Experience Manager web interface

This article focuses primarily on the first two aspects of the collaboration needs. Distribution and sourcing of assets at scale is briefly mentioned as a use case. For such needs solutions, consider 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Brand Portal or Asset Share Commons. Alternate solutions such as , solutions that can be built based on components, Link Share, using Experience Manager Assets should be reviewed based on specific requirement.

Creative Cloud connections for Experience Manager: Deciding which capability to use

Mapping of use cases

Use case
Experience Manager desktop app
Folder sharing
Other solutions
Share smaller number (1) of DAM assets with Creative user
✔✔
✔
Share larger number (2) of DAM assets with Creative user
✔✔
✘
Brand Portal
Asset Share
Share DAM assets with users who have access to DAM
✔✔
✔
Link Share
Share DAM assets with users who don’t have access to DAM
✘
✔✔
Brand Portal
Asset Share
Save smaller number/volume of assets to DAM
✔✔
✔
Web UI Upload
Save larger number of assets to DAM (3)
✔✔
✘
Web UI Upload
Custom script / tool
Migrate huge number of assets to DAM
✘
✘
Migration Guide
Quickly open an asset on desktop
✔✔
✘
Quickly open and change asset on desktop
✔✔
✘

The legend for the symbols:

  • ✔✔: preferred solution
  • ✔: acceptable solution
  • ✘: shouldn’t be used for the use case

Additional remarks:

  • (1) Smaller number of assets: for example, a small set of assets related to a project or campaign
  • (2) Larger number of assets: for example, all approved assets in the organization
  • (3) Use Experience Manager desktop app upload folder feature

To support asset distribution use cases, other solutions should be considered:

  • for a configurable, SaaS add-on to Experience Manager Assets to publish assets.
  • Custom solutions are created based on code base.
  • Experience Manager link share to share assets ad hoc using links.
  • Experience Manager Assets web interface with areas for external parties secured by Experience Manager Access Control setup and with necessary IT / network configuration adjustments, giving these external users access to Experience Manager.

Key concepts and use cases key-concepts-and-use-cases

Glossary of common terms glossary-of-common-terms

  • Work-in-progress or creative work-in-progress (WIP): A phase in asset lifecycle where an asset undergoes multiple changes and is typically not yet ready to be shared with broader teams.
  • Creative-ready assets: Assets that are ready to be shared with a broader team, or have been selected / approved by the creative team for sharing with marketing or LOB teams.
  • Asset approvals: The approval process that runs for assets already uploaded to DAM, which typically includes brand approvals, legal approvals, and so on.
  • Final asset: An asset that has gone through all approvals/metadata tagging and is ready to be used by the broader team. Such an asset is stored in DAM and made available to all (or all interested) users. It can be used in marketing channels or by creative teams to create designs.
  • Minor asset update/change : A quick and small change to a digital asset. It is often made in response to a retouching or minor editing request, asset review, or approval (for example, reposition, change text size, adjust saturation/brightness, color, and so on).
  • Major asset update/change : A change to a digital asset that requires considerable work, and sometimes must be done over a longer period of time. It typically includes multiple changes. The asset must be saved multiple times while being updated. Major asset updates typically cause the asset to enter a WIP stage.
  • DAM: Digital asset management. In this document, it is synonymous with Experience Manager Assets, unless specifically mentioned otherwise.
  • Creative user: A creative professional, who creates digital assets using Creative Cloud apps and services. In some cases, a creative user may be a member of a creative team who may use Creative Cloud, but does not create digital assets (like a creative director or creative team manager).
  • DAM user: A typical user of a DAM system. Depending on the organization, a DAM user can be a marketing or a non-marketing user, for example a Line-of-Business (LOB) user, librarian, sales person, and so on.

Considerations when using Experience Manager and Creative Cloud integration considerations-when-using-aem-and-creative-cloud-integration

This is a brief summary of best practices for Experience Manager and Creative Cloud integration. Read the rest of this document to get the detailed understanding of these.

  • For creative users, working in Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator: 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Asset Link provides the best user experience, including clean handling of the Work-in-progress on assets checked out from Experience Manager
  • For simplifying access to assets from desktop for any generic file format or application: use Experience Manager desktop app
  • Understand why and when to store assets in DAM: Updates to be made available to the broader team in your organization
  • Mind the volume of assets shared: If your use case is asset distribution, governance and security might be the most important aspects. Consider using tools built for doing that at scale, like Brand Portal.
  • Understand asset lifecycle: Know how assets are handled in your organization by different teams
  • Handle frequent saves to assets with care: 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Asset Link takes care of that for you with PS, AI, ID. For other applications, don’t carry out work in progress tasks in mapped/shared folder unless you need all the changes in DAM

Access to 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock assets from Assets access-to-adobe-stock-assets-from-aem-assets

Experience Manager and 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock integration provides Experience Manager users with the ability to search, preview, license and save, assets from 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock into Experience Manager. Licensed and saved 51ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Stock assets have selected Stock metadata, which can be used to search for them with extra filters.