Adobe Experience Cloud

 

Adobe Experience Cloud(AEC) includes a set of analytics, social, advertising, media optimization, targeting, web experience management, journey orchestration and content management products hosted on Microsoft Azure.

Products

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM): is an enterprise content management system to manage content, sites and Digital Asset Management(DAM). Learn AEM

Adobe Target: Provides everything you need to tailor and personalize your customers’ experiences. Target helps you maximize revenue on your web and mobile sites, apps, social media, and other digital channels. Learn Adobe Target

Adobe Analytics :  is one of industrial leading tool for Web Analytics. Besides default metrics and dimensions, the tool allows user to define tags implemented in webpage for web tracking, so that to create customized dimensions, metrics, segmentations, as well as to create user own's report, dashboards to make various digital marketing, user behavior analysis. Within Adobe Analytics, a tool called Data Warehouse is also provided for scheduling and delivering raw data by email or to FTP server for further data analysis. Learn Adobe Analytics

Adobe Campaign: is an enterprise Digital Campaign Marketing System. 

Pulls together cross-channel customer data into a single view and then puts it to work to create personalized cross-channel campaigns that meet customers where they're at. Campaign Marketing automation platform used in email automation, delivery and reporting. It allows users to create, coordinate and deliver dynamic campaigns through emails, mobile platforms and offline channel. 

The software provides cloud-based, web-services service that manages direct marketing campaigns, leads, resources, customer data and analytics. The software also allows companies to design and orchestrate targeted and personalized campaigns from direct mail, e-mail, SMS, MMS and more. Learn Campaign

Adobe Workfront: An enterprise work management solution for teams looking to strategically prioritize, assign, and complete projects with speed, at any scale. Learn Workfront

Adobe journey Optimizer: allows Customer to orchestrate omnichannel Journeys, determine the next best action to take for their customers and deliver contextualized Offers that are personalized and optimized in-the-moment. Learn Adobe journey optimizer

Adobe Experince Platform(AEP): enables organizations to centralize and standardize customer data and content from any system and apply data science and machine learning to dramatically improve the design and delivery of rich, personalized experiences.  Learn AEP

Happy learning! 

Adobe Experience Manager in Digital Marketing

 

In today’s digital era, businesses want to manage content that is changing continuously and deliver personalized journey to customers. For eg: user A create account to an e-commerce website and submit profile details like age, gender and some preferences. On basis of these, personalized products are shown for this user. Hence business faces these challanges & needs to manage all these use cases in simple manner.

Adobe Experience Manager solves these challenges in digital world. So let's discuss what these are..?

Content Management 

One of the most significant challenges for digital marketers is managing and delivering content across multiple channels like desktop, mobile etc. AEM provides a centralized platform that streamlines content creation, organization, and distribution.

With its interface, marketers can easily collaborate, create personalized user expriences and manage content variations effortlessly. 

Personalization and Targeting

Digital marketers seek to deliver personalized experiences that reverberate with individual customers. AEM’s powerful personalization and targeting features enable marketers to create dynamic, contextually relevant content that engages users at every touchpoint. 

By leveraging customer data, AEM allows for real-time personalization, ensuring the right content reaches the right audience. 

what is personalization in AEM. Refer adobe doc

 

Enhanced Digital Asset Management

Digital assets such as images, videos, and documents, 3D files etc, is crucial for maintaining brand consistency and delivering engaging experiences. Assets is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool that is an integral part of the Experience Manager platform and enables your enterprise to manage and distribute digital assets

AEM offers robust digital asset management capabilities, allowing marketers to organize, search, and repurpose assets effortlessly.

AEM DAM is OOTB and apart from this for Adobe provides Dynamic media to serve interactive viewing experiences includinf zoom functionality, 360 spin etc.

What is DAM in AEM?

Multi-Channel Delivery

Delivering a consistent and personalized experience across various channels, such as websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, is vital for success in digital marketing. AEM enables marketers to seamlessly publish and manage content across multiple channels from a single platform.

Scalability

As AEM as cloud services is designed to handle high volume of user requests effiently. The clooud native architecture allows authentication system to scale seamlessly to meet increased demand. When there is peak time or sudden spikes are there in user actibity this platform ensures that auth processes can accomodate the load without compromising performance.

AEMaaCS has auto scaling features as complete architecture deployed on kubernetes k8 pods.

Integration

AEM as cloud integrates with other adobe experience cloud solutions and 3rd party system seamlessly. This integration allows for a authentictation ecosystem where different organizations work together. Organizations can easily integrate theri auths system with IAM i.e. Identity Access Management solutions, user directories etc.

The integration and extensibility facilitate streamlined workflows, make user management efficientand more control over content and digital access by ACL policies. 

Adobe Experience Cloud( AEC) provides everything and is game changer in today's digital era. It provides all tools required to develop any website and for better user experience. Refer what AEC includes?

Complexity of templates and applications for the AEM6.5 publish

 

In this article, we can discuss how we can determine the number of servers (or CPU cores) you need for the AEM 6.5 publish environment for an applictaion having simple and complex templates.

Below is the formula to find out number of servers:

servers = n = (traffic * complexity / 1000 ) * activations

complexity = applicationComplexity + ((1-cacheRatio) * templateComplexity)

where:

traffic : The expected peak traffic per second. You can estimate this as the number of page hits per day, divided by 35'000.

Consider below Caching efficiency and traffic

Cache efficiency is crucial for the website speed. The following table shows how many pages per second an optimized AEM system can handle using a reverse proxy, such as the Dispatcher:

Cache ratio	Pages/s (peak)	Million pages/day (average)
100%	1000-2000	35-70
99%	910	32
95%	690	25
90%	520	18
60%	220	8
0%	100	3.5

applicationComplexity : 

Use 1 for a simple application, 2 for a complex application, or a value in-between:

• 1 - a fully anonymous, content orientated site
• 1.1 - a fully anonymous, content orientated site with client-side/Target personalization
• 1.5 - a content-orientated site with both anonymous and logged in sections, client-side/Target personalization
• 1.7 - for a content-orientated site with both anonymous and logged in sections, client-side/Target personalization and some user-generated content
• 2 - where the entire site requires login, with extensive use of user-generated content and various personalization techniques.

cacheRatio:

The percentage of pages that come out of the Dispatcher cache. 

Use 1 if all pages come from the cache, or 

0 if every page is computed by AEM.

templateComplexity:

Use a value from 1 through 10 to indicate the complexity of your templates. Higher numbers indicate more complex templates. 

Value 1 for sites with an average of 10 components per page, 

Value 5 for a page average of 40 components and 

value 10 for an average of over 100 components.

activations:

Number of average activations (replication of average sized pages and assets from the author to the publish tier) per hour divided by x, 

where x is the number of activations done on a system without performance side effects to other tasks processed by the system. 

Thanks for reading.

Happy coding!

Bundles not in AEM as a Cloud Service

 

There are 87 bundles not in AEM as a Cloud Service. Here is the list:

• com.adobe.aem.transaction-core – AEM Forms Transaction Core Bundle
• com.adobe.aemds.formsmanager.adobe-aemds-formsanddocuments-core – AEM Forms and Documents Core
• com.adobe.aemds.guide.aemds-guide-core – Adaptive Forms Core API
• com.adobe.aemds.guide.aemds-guide-core-impl – Adaptive Forms Core Implementation
• com.adobe.aemfd.ccm.multichannel-ccm-multi-channel-core – Multi Channel Core
• com.adobe.cq.commerce.cq-commerce-core – Adobe Communique 5 Commerce Core
• com.adobe.cq.commerce.cq-commerce-pim – Adobe Communique 5 Commerce Product Information Manager
• com.adobe.cq.commerce.cq-commerce-social – Adobe Communique 5 Commerce Social
• com.adobe.cq.cq-activitymap-integration – AEM 6 ActivityMap Integration Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.cq-pre-upgrade-backup – CQ Pre-upgrade Backup
• com.adobe.cq.cq-pre-upgrade-cleanup – CQ Pre-upgrade Cleanup
• com.adobe.cq.sample.we.retail.core – We.Retail – Core
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens – AEM Screens – Core
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens.apps.we_retail – Screens WeRetail
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens.dcc – AEM Screens – DCC
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens.mq.activemq – Adobe Screens Apache ActiveMQ Implementation
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens.mq.core – Adobe Screens JMS implementation
• com.adobe.cq.screens.com.adobe.cq.screens.sessions –
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-activitystreams – AEM Communities ActivityStreams – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-as-provider – AEM Communities AdobeSocial Resource Provider – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-badging-api – AEM Communities Badging API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-badging-basic-impl – AEM Communities Basic Badging – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-badging-impl – AEM Communities Badging – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-calendar-api – AEM Communities Calendar – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-calendar-impl – AEM Communities Calendar – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-commons – AEM Communities Commons – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-commons-oauth – AEM Communities Commons Oauth – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-console – AEM Communities Console – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-content-fragments-impl – AEM Communities Content Fragments Impl – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-enablement-api – AEM Communities Enablement Api – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-enablement-impl – AEM Communities Enablement Impl – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-filelibrary – AEM Communities File Library – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-forum – AEM Communities Forum – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-gamification-api – AEM Communities Gamification API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-gamification-impl – AEM Communities Gamification Impl – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-graph-api – AEM Communities SocialGraph API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-graph-impl – AEM Communities SocialGraph Impl – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-group – AEM Communities CommunityGroup – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-handlebars – AEM Communities Handlebars Scripting Engine – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ideation-api – AEM Communities Ideation API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ideation-impl – AEM Communities Ideation – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-jcr-provider – Bundle –
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-jcr-provider-common – AEM Communities JCR Resource Provider Common Code – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-journal – AEM Communities Journal – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-livefyre – AEM Livefyre – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-members-api – AEM Communities Members API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-members-impl – AEM Communities Members Impl – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-messaging-api – AEM Communities Messaging – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-messaging-impl – AEM Communities Messaging – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-moderation – AEM Communities Moderation – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-moderation-spamdetector-core – AEM Communities Spam Detection Core – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ms-provider – AEM Communities Mongo Storage Resource Provider – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-notifications-api – AEM Communities Notifications – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-notifications-channels-web – AEM Communities Notifications – Web Channel
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-notifications-impl – AEM Communities Notifications – IMPL Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-qna – AEM Communities QnA – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-rdb-provider – AEM Communities Relational Social Resource Provider – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-reporting-management – AEM Communities Enablement Reporting Management- Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-review – AEM Communities Review – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-scf-api – AEM Communities SCF – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-scf-impl – AEM Communities SCF – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-scoring-api – AEM Communities Scoring API – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-scoring-basic-impl – AEM Communities Scoring Basic – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-scoring-impl – AEM Communities Scoring – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-serviceusers-api – AEM Communities Service Users – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-serviceusers-impl – AEM Communities Service Users – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-srp-api – AEM Communities SRP Base – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-srp-impl – AEM Communities SRP – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-sync – AEM Communities Sync – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-tally – AEM Communities Tally – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-translation – AEM Communities Translation – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ugc-search-collections – AEM Communities UGC SearchCollections – Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ugcbase-api – AEM Communities UGC Base – API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-ugcbase-impl – AEM Communities UGC Base – Impl Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.social.cq-social-user-ugc-management – AEM Communities User Ugc Moderation – Bundle
• com.adobe.forms.common.adobe-xfaforms-common – Mobile Forms Common Bundle
• com.adobe.forms.foundation-forms-foundation-base – Forms Foundation Base Bundle
• com.adobe.forms.foundation-forms-foundation-cloud-config – Forms Foundation Cloud Configurations Bundle
• com.adobe.granite.apicontroller – Adobe Granite API Controller
• com.adobe.livecycle.formsportal-bundle – Adobe FormsPortal Services Bundle
• com.day.cq.cq-compat-codeupgrade – Day Communique 5 Code Upgrade service
• com.day.cq.cq-upgrades-executor – Adobe Communique 5 Upgrades Executor
• com.day.cq.dam.cq-dam-pim – Day Communique 5 DAM PIM Integration Implementation
• com.day.cq.dam.cq-dam-rating – Day Communique 5 Assets Rating
• com.day.cq.pre-upgrade-tasks – AEM Pre-Upgrade Maintenance Tasks
• forms-foundation-bundle – Forms Foundation Layer Bundle

For new bundles available in AEMaaCS .. refer here

New bundles in AEM Cloud

 

In this blog, we will discuss what New bundles in AEM as a Cloud Service(AEMaaCS) has been introduced.

AEM as a Cloud Service has some new bundles:

• com.adobe.bp.bp-cloudservice – Adobe Brand Portal Cloudservice configuration
• com.adobe.bp.bp-distribution – Adobe Brand Portal Distribution Implementation
• com.adobe.cq.cq-ref-update-processor-util – AEM – Reference Update Processor Utility bundle
• com.adobe.cq.dam.cq-dam-ui-models – AEM – DAM Sling Model Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.inbox.cq-inbox-api – AEM – Inbox API
• com.adobe.cq.remotedam.cq-remotedam-api – Adobe CQ Remote DAM API Bundle
• com.adobe.cq.ups-integration – Unified Profile Service IMS integration
• com.adobe.cq.ups-profile-lookup – Unified Profile Lookup routines
• com.adobe.granite.jobs.async.ui.commons – Adobe Granite Async Jobs
• com.adobe.granite.toggle.api – Adobe Granite Toggle API
• com.adobe.granite.toggle.impl – Adobe Granite Toggle Implementation
• com.adobe.granite.toggle.impl.static – Adobe Granite Toggle Implementation
• com.day.cq.dam.cq-dam-asset-sourcing – Day Communique 6 DAM Asset Sourcing Implementation
• com.day.cq.remote.content.renderer – Remote Content Renderer
• org.apache.felix.configadmin.plugin.interpolation – Apache Felix Configuration Admin Values Interpolation Plugin
• org.apache.felix.log – Apache Felix Log Service
• org.apache.felix.rootcause – Apache Felix – Root Cause Analysis
• org.apache.jackrabbit.oak-authorization-principalbased – Oak Principal-Based Authorization
• org.apache.sling.feature.apiregions – Apache Sling Feature API Regions Runtime
• rideau – Adobe Rideau (PDF API)

Difference between Bundle and Package in AEM

 

In this article, we will learn what exactly is the difference between Bundle and Package.

Bundle is a tightly coupled, dynamically loadable collection of classes, jars, and configuration files that explicitly declare their external dependencies (if any).

A Package is a zip file that contains the content in the form of a file-system serialization (called “vault” serialization) that displays the content from the repository as an easy-to-use-and-edit representation of files and folders. Packages can include content and project-related data.

Happy Coding!

How a JWT works?

 

In previous blog, we have learnt What is JWT, Anatomy and its authentication flow. Refer here to

In this blog, we will see how a JWT works via an example. We will create JWT for a specific JSON payload and validate its signature.

Step-1

 Create a JSON:

JSON payload example:

{

    "userId": "abcd123",

    "expiry": 1646635611301

}

Step-2

 Create a JWT signing key and decide the signing algorithm:

We can generate a signing key using any secure random source.

• Signing key: 
• NTNv7j0TuYARvmNMmWXo6fKvM4o6nv/aUi9ryX38ZH+L1bkrnD1ObOQ8JAUmHCBq7Iy7otZcyAagBLHVKvvYaIpmMuxmARQ97jUVG16Jkpkp1wXOPsrF9zwew6TpczyHkHgX5EuLg2MeBuiT/qJACs1J0apruOOJCg/gOtkjB4c=
• Signing algorithm: HMAC + SHA256, also known as HS256.

Step-3

Creating the “Header”:

This contains the information about which signing algorithm is used

{

    "typ": "JWT",

    "alg": "HS256"

}

Step-4

Create a Signature:

• First, we remove all the spaces from the payload JSON : {"userId":"abcd123","expiry":1646635611301}

• and then base64 encode it to give us eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJhYmNkMTIzIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjQ2NjM1NjExMzAxfQ

• 
  
  
  

• You can try pasting this string in an https://www.base64decode.org/ to retrieve our JSON.

• Similarly, remove the spaces from the header JSON and base64 encode it

Header json: {"typ":"JWT","alg":"HS256"}

base64 encoded value: eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9

Now  concatenate <header>.<payload>

eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJhYmNkMTIzIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjQ2NjM1NjExMzAxfQ

Get the Signature:

run the Base64 + HMACSHA256 function on the above concatenated string

Base64URLSafe(

    HMACSHA256("eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJhYmNkMTIzIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjQ2NjM1NjExMzAxfQ", "NTNv7j0TuYARvmNMmWXo6fKvM4o6nv/aUi9ryX38ZH+L1bkrnD1ObOQ8JAUmHCBq7Iy7otZcyAagBLHVKvvYaIpmMuxmARQ97jUVG16Jkpkp1wXOPsrF9zwew6TpczyHkHgX5EuLg2MeBuiT/qJACs1J0apruOOJCg/gOtkjB4c=")

)

Results in:

3Thp81rDFrKXr3WrY1MyMnNK8kKoZBX9lg-JwFznR-M

Java code:

Java HMAC SHA256

Dependent on Apache Commons Codec to encode in base64.

import javax.crypto.Mac;
import javax.crypto.spec.SecretKeySpec;
import org.apache.commons.codec.binary.Base64;

public class ApiSecurityExample {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
     String secret = "secret";
     String message = "Message";

     Mac sha256_HMAC = Mac.getInstance("HmacSHA256");
     SecretKeySpec secret_key = new SecretKeySpec(secret.getBytes(), "HmacSHA256");
     sha256_HMAC.init(secret_key);

     String hash = Base64.encodeBase64String(sha256_HMAC.doFinal(message.getBytes()));
     System.out.println(hash);
    }
    catch (Exception e){
     System.out.println("Error");
    }
   }
}

Create JWT:


Append the generated signature like <header>.<body>.<signature>

eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJhYmNkMTIzIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjQ2NjM1NjExMzAxfQ.3Thp81rDFrKXr3WrY1MyMnNK8kKoZBX9lg-JwFznR-M

Verify JWT:

The authentication server will send the JWT back to the client’s frontend. 

The frontend will attach the JWT to network requests to the client’s api layer. 

At api layer, below steps are followed:

• Fetches the header part of the JWT (eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9).

base64 decoding on it to get the plain text JSON: {"typ":"JWT","alg":"HS256"}

• Verifies that the typ field’s value is JWT and the alg is HS256. It would reject the JWT if fails to verify.

Fetches signing secret key and runs the same Base64URLSafe(HMACSHA256(...))

If the incoming JWT’s body is different, this step will generate a different signature.

• Checks that the generated signature is the same as the signature from the incoming JWT. If it’s not, then the JWT is rejected.

base64 decode the body of the JWT (eyJ1c2VySWQiOiJhYmNkMTIzIiwiZXhwaXJ5IjoxNjQ2NjM1NjExMzAxfQ) to give us {"userId":"abcd123","expiry":1646635611301}.

If the current time (in milliseconds) is greater than the JSON’s expiry time (since the JWT is expired), JWT is rejected.

Accept the JWT if it approves all above steps.

Pros & Cons of JWT:

Advantages:

• Secure: JWTs are digitally signed using either a secret (HMAC) or a public/private key pair (RSA or ECDSA) which safeguards them from being modified by the client or an attacker.

Efficient / Stateless: It’s quick to verify a JWT since it doesn’t require a database lookup. 

• Stored only on the client: You generate JWTs on the server and send them to the client. The client then submits the JWT with every request. This saves database space.

Drawbacks:

Dependent on one secret key: The creation of a JWT depends on one secret key. If that key is compromised, the attacker can fabricate their own JWT which the API layer will accept.

Happy Coding!