A Comprehensive Guide on how to Create Vanity URL in AEM
Vanity URLs in AEM
It’s important to have a short and meaningful URL structure for easy readability and SEO optimization. As an author or a developer, it would be confusing to generate vanity URLs in AEM. In this article, we would be seeing steps to generate vanity URLs.
Before we proceed on how to generate vanity URLs, lets first try to understand what Vanity URL is.
What is Vanity URL?
In simple terms, Vanity URL is a meaningful short form of the long URL.
Example:
Long URL: https://www.nextrow.com/adobe-experience-manager/aem-implementation-consulting
Vanity URL: https://www.nextrow.com/aem-implementation-consulting
What are the Advantages of using Vanity URLs?
Following are the 4 benefits of using Vanity URLs:
- Easy to remember and pronounce.
- Improves SEO: When vanity URLs are used appropriately, it can be a good marketing gold. Choose vanity URLs that compliments your existing marketing and SEO strategy.
- Increase/create the brand awareness.
- Build trust with the audience.
Now, let’s see how we create vanity URLs in AEM.
Steps to create Vanity URLs:
- Open any page in author instance that you want to create Vanity URL. In this article, I am taking an example of we-retail.
http://localhost:4502/editor.html/content/we-retail/us/en/products/men/pants/analog-dark-wash-jean.html
- Open Page properties and navigate down to Vanity URL section.
- Click on Add and add the vanity URL. Then, click on Save and Close. Behind the scenes, vanity URLs are stored in the property of sling: vanityPath. You can add multiple vanity URLs to the same page.
- If you are adding multiple vanity URLs to the same page, then the values will be stored in the form of an array.
- Now, publish the page to test the vanity url.
- After publishing the changes, you can access the original page using the vanity URL.
I.e.http://localhost:4503/analog-dark-wash-jean.html
NOTE:
- Don’t use the same vanity URL for different pages.
- Vanity URLs are case sensitive.
- You don’t need to add a/at the start of the vanity URL.
- If you are adding multiple vanity URLs to the same page, then the rank of that page gets decreased as link popularity is divided between URLs and the same page competes against itself.
- To overcome this problem, one of the good ways is to configure Redirect 301 and redirect the user to original page.
- To add Redirect 301, you just need to select the checkbox in the vanity URL section in the page properties of that page.
- Publish the page after selecting ‘Redirect Vanity URL’. After publishing the page, when you try to access http://localhost:4503/analog-dark-wash-jean.html, it would redirect you to the actual link I.e., http://localhost:4503/content/we-retail/us/en/products/men/pants/analog-dark-wash-jean.html#meotsuann-28.
However, there are a few limitations with vanity URLs. Vanity URLs don’t directly work with dispatcher. That being said, if an author creates a vanity URL and publish the page, still it won’t be available without updates from the webserver and a server restart. Unfortunately, this can be a challenging task because it entails a continuous update of the configuration files and a restart of the web server every time. In our next blog, we will see how dispatcher work continuously with AEM to get the list of vanity URLs from AEM
Creating AEM Delta Content Packages Using Groovy Script
In today’s world, most of the developers try to find the delta content manually in AEM by checking the timestamp of pages and assets and add these paths in the filers of AEM package. Though its not an incorrect way, but there are high chances of missing some pages or assets doing so. So, we have curated this article to help AEM developers find the pages and assets that has been created/modified during specific given time frame and automates the package creation process.
The AEM Groovy Console provides an interface for running Groovy scripts in Adobe Experience Manager. Scripts can be created and executed to manipulate content in the JCR, call OSGi services, or execute adhoc code using the AEM, Sling, or JCR APIs without any interruptions to AEM instance.
If you have ever come across a situation where in you need to create delta content packages in AEM instances, then this blog is for you. We are going to create and execute a groovy script which creates a series of content packages in package manager, which are modified or created over a specific date range.
Pre-requisites:
Download and install the groovy console package, which is compatible with your AEM version. Below table shows the compatibility versions of AEM and Groovy Console.
| Groovy Console Version(s) | AEM Version(s) |
| 15.x.x, 14.x.x, 13.x.x | 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 |
| 12.x.x | 6.4 |
| 11.x.x | 6.3 |
| 10.x.x, 9.x.x | 6.2 |
| 8.x.x | 6.1 |
| 7.x.x | 6 |
| 6.x.x, 5.x.x | 5.6 (CQ) |
| 3.x.x | 5.5, 5.4 (CQ) |
Implementation:
In order to find the delta content for a specific date range, we are going to use SQL2 query and find out if any new pages or assets have been created or any existing pages and assets have been modified in AEM instance. We are going to utilize the JCR properties like jcr:created and cq:lastModified in our SQL2 query.
Sample SQL2 Query:
SELECT * FROM AS s WHERE ISDESCENDANTNODE() AND ((s. >= CAST(‘2020-07-28T16:00:00.000Z’ AS DATE) AND s. <= CAST(‘2020-07-30T21:00:00.000Z’ AS DATE)) OR (s. >= CAST(‘2020-07-28T16:00:00.000Z’ AS DATE) AND s. <= CAST(‘2020-07-30T21:00:00.000Z’ AS DATE))) order by
Groovy script:
Output:
After we run the above groovy script, a series of content packages will get created in package manager. Go to package manager (http://localhost:4502/crx/packmgr/index.jsp) and build the content packages.
So as you may have noticed that Groovy scripts could be quite useful, easy to use, and very handy for any AEM developer to manipulate content in one go.
How to Restore AEM Instances using Journal Log in Adobe Experience Manager?
As an AEM developer, we try multiple things in our local instance and there is a high chance of instances getting corrupted once in a while. Ever wondered how easy it is to restore AEM instances using the journal log? If not, then this blog is for you.
This blog describes how to restore our AEM instance to a specific time using the Journal log. The default configuration of the journal theoretically allows for an unlimited number of rotated log-files. Due to some older issues in Oak or some inconsistencies in the repository, a segment can go missing and repository might be inconsistent.
Steps to Implement the Journal Log in AEM
Usually the journal log file is located under /crx-quickstart/repository/segmentstore and the entries in the journal log have epoch timestamp (Unix timestamp ex: 1592560809149, 1592560959133).
- Stop the AEM instance.
- Open the journal log file and copy the last epoch time stamp entry and convert to human readable time stamp using https://www.epochconverter.com/.
- Identify the time frame when your AEM was running fine. There are couple of ways to do it. Two of them are:
* Run the consistency check
java -jar oak-run-*.jar check -d1 – bin=-1 -p crx-quickstart/repository/segmentstore/
After you run this command in terminal, look for the log entry which says “Found latest good revision: a0bf25e0-7c8b-44c7-acca-7a8066e83107:206” and then try to find this entry in journal log and delete all the entries beneath.*Randomly try to find the nearest epoch time stamp from the journal log which matches our time frame when AEM was in good condition (like 1 day ago or 2 ago days ago) and then delete the bottom entries from the log.
- Save the journal log and start the AEM.
Output:
This could potentially save a lot of time and effort of an AEM developer debugging the local AEM instances. I hope this helps.
Take Your Email Marketing to Next Level With the Adobe Campaign
Emails are as important as ever – may be even more. However, to succeed in today’s experience-driven world, you just can’t rely on the same old marketing techniques. Now, it has become important for marketers to understand the right context of the message to make it truly relevant to their audience’s preferences.
Offering an excellent experience to customers across all channels is gaining importance in today’s marketing strategies. And a good marketing strategy needs a proper platform that can help you connect with potential customers at the right time.
Why Adobe Campaign?
Following are the powerful features of Adobe Campaign that help marketers to take their email marketing to the next level:
- AI-Powered Adobe Sesnsei: Improve customer engagement with AI-powered emails. Leverage the benefits of Adobe Sensei technology in Adobe Campaign to predict the most effective time to send an email to each recipient to maximize the impact of the campaigns. You can also use the capabilities of this in-built technology to optimize the subject lines and body text that could resonate with your prospects and encourage them to increase the open rates. Adobe Sensei powered Adobe Campaign intelligently filters out contacts who are more likely to opt out
- Content Personalization: Personalization has now become the norm in the world of email marketing. The aim is to deliver the personal, engaging, and relevant message that is driven by customer behavior. With Adobe Campaign, you can take personalization to the next level and craft experiences that your audience deserves. Use the native capabilities of this platform to generate meaningful insights based on the available data and put the right message to the right customers at the right time.
- Automatization: Another feature that makes Adobe Campaign the best email management platform for large-scale enterprises is automatization. It allows marketers to come up with a simple campaign workflow that automatically triggers emails based on individual user actions. By setting up the workflows with audience segmentation, you can target the prospects with personalized emails that are delivered in real-time – without having to manually interfere.
- Responsive Templates: Create responsive emails that look great across all the devices no matter what screen size or browser your customers are using. You can customize the ready-made templates in Adobe Campaign to add a personal touch to your emails or build your own template by integrating it directly with Adobe Experience Cloud platform or third-party products.
A Single Platform for Managing Your Marketing Campaigns
Don’t just limit yourself to email management with Adobe Campaign. It’s a platform that enables marketers to manage all their marketing campaigns seamlessly. Here’s how:
Audience Segmentation and Targeting
Neither do all audiences have the same expectations from your brand nor do they bring the same value. By identifying their area of interest, likes and dislikes on certain attributes/characteristics they share, you can identify their personas and target audience (Adobe Audience Manager) for each segment with campaigns that matter them the most.
Omni-Channel Marketing
Your customers are on a journey to discover how well your organization addresses their demands. This journey takes place through the web, mobile, email, social media, and other offline mediums.
Harmonizing the power of all these marketing channels to unify your brand voice can be challenging for many organizations. However, with the help of Adobe Campaign, you can execute the relevant campaigns across every channel and measure the performance in the right way. This then helps you re-define your cross-channel campaign strategy to improve the marketing spend across various digital channels and programs.
Why Choose NextRow Digital as your Adobe Campaign Email Marketing Partner?
As a leading partner of Adobe for more than a decade, NextRow Digital helped many Fortune 100, 500 companies supporting Adobe Campaign platform. Our certified Adobe Campaign specialists can help you create and execute dynamic campaigns that converts your audience and enhance your customer experience with targeted messages delivered across channels.
We have built strategies for winning campaigns. We help you succeed in nurturing your lead and converting them into customers and help with the right marketing message to keep them as loyal customers. If you would like to discuss more, please reach out to sales@nextrow.com or simply call at +1-888-578-6558.
Getting Started with Apache Sling Repo Init
At times, setting up the initial state of AEM repository may appear cumbersome, especially when we have to setup multiple things beforehand such as:
- Creating service users
- Creating user groups
- Setting up ACLs/permissions for these users
- Base content structure inside /conf or /content
That said, it’s just not about the content, it could be configurations as well. Creating and setting up these configurations manually may lead to mistakes. Also, this doesn’t just apply to remote environments; it is much needed for a developer’s local instance as well. To overcome all these issues, Apache Sling Repository Initialization (otherwise known as Repo Init) comes very handy.
How Repo Init works?
Repo Init is a set of instructions/scripts which help us in creating JCR structures, service users and groups. There are no explicit permissions needed in order to run these scripts. These scripts are executed early in the deployment process so that all required configuration/content exist in the system before the code is executed.
This article is based and tested on AEM 6.5.5.0 with below bundle versions:
org.apache.sling.jcr.repoinit – 1.1.8
org.apache.sling.repoinit.parser – 1.2.2
Benefits of Repo Init:
- Keep all environments in-sync in terms of initial/basic configuration.
- Speeds up local environment setup for developers.
- No lag between the code deployment and basic setup of AEM repository. By the time code is deployed, Repo Init instructions are already executed.
Configuring Repo Init:
These scripts are stored as a factory OSGi configuration of type “org.apache.sling.jcr.repoinit.RepositoryInitializer”. Being an OSGi configuration, it is easy to have different set of scripts for author and publish run-modes along with different environments such as Stage and Production. For e.g. config.author, config.publish, config.author.prod, config.publish.stage etc.
Below is a sample Repo Init OSGi configuration with jcr:primaryType “sling:OsgiConfig”:
/apps/myproject/config/org.apache.sling.jcr.repoinit.RepositoryInitializer-demo.xml
scripts = “”
Tip: In order to save this OSGi configuration as repository configuration, we had to use ASCII encoded value “
” for new-line character.
During deployment, we see log statements like below in error.log file where we see each and every command is executed line-by-line.
Post deployment, you can also see the Repo Init configurations in OSGi console:
There are other ways as well for initializing a repository but Repo Init consolidates them all in one tool making the configurations easy to implement and manage. Also, Apache Sling Repo Init is compatible with AEM as a Cloud Service.
The Role of eCommerce During COVID-19 and Beyond
Recessions come and go. Depressions come and go. So do pandemics. Nothing is permanent on this planet earth. Most of us did not anticipate the fierceness of COVID-19 and it’s potential impact on our lives. People are forced to stay home, businesses are forced to close the doors for customers for the fear of virus spread. The virus forced the entire world to come to a standstill.
We, the humans, are resilient. We find ways to bounce back. While the research for a cure / vaccine has picked up the pace, we have the needs to be fulfilled, from daily necessities to luxuries. While the restaurants closed, retail shops scaled down, consumers preferring to turn to online shopping more than ever. The impact of Coronavirus is going to last for a while and aftereffects are still unknown. The biggest impact the virus is going to leave is on the commerce, how we do business going forward.
Impact of COVID-19 on eCommerce Industry
In 2019, eCommerce sales are about $600B in US compared to total retail sales of $3800B. eCommerce is still relatively smaller compared to the retail sales. The COVID-19 situation changed the face of retail sales completely. The shuttering of retail store doors due to virus fears accelerated the online sales. eCommerce giant, Amazon sales rose 26% year-over-year during the first quarter 2020 (during early stages of virus spread). With all social distancing measures and consumers being very cautious and the lack of availability of vaccine in the near future will drive more opportunities for eCommerce businesses.
Connect With Customers: Track the Customer’s Changing Behavior
Consumers have many choices. Many websites to shop from, many retail stores to visit for shopping. Though the current situation is temporary, understanding consumer behavior and presenting right experience (offer or content) to the right person at the right time is key for eCommerce success.
Your success as an eCommerce business profoundly rely on persuading your customer by delivering the best unified experiences across web, email, other online and offline mediums.
How eCommerce Platform and Responsible Marketing Are Related?
Current times are tough for everyone, for consumers, marketers and businesses alike. People rely on commerce more than ever to stay safe amid the social distancing guidelines. Obviously stress is taking a toll on everyone.
In such difficult times, it becomes important for brands to establish an emotional connection with their audience and choose the right tone of message to communicate with them. Create engaging, informative, and useful content that your customers can relate to. Show empathy towards others in your marketing message. Put yourself into their shoes and see if the message would resonate with you.
Bring your online brand in front of your audience. With all the traditional marketing methods are going out of the picture and millions of people spending time on the internet more than ever, businesses need to understand that its important to make their presence felt globally with the right marketing message.
People always make decisions based on emotions. Emotions and empathy always help businesses connect to the customers. Marketers showing empathy in their outreach to the customers will always end up on the winning side. This is why a tighter integration between marketing platforms and commerce platforms is so important as empathy can be added in your marketing messages.
Nextrow’s Role in the eCommerce Landscape:
NextRow Magento Services:
- Quickstart Packages: We have put together some Magento Quickstart packages to help clients to build stores quickly. This will help you to get up and running quickly, while letting you to customize the store however you like.
- Custom Extensions: Whether you are adding custom functionality or enhancing an extension, we will guide you and help you plan the right approach and build extensions.
- Replatform to Magento: When your current commerce platform not meeting your expectations, NextRow helps you replatform your commerce application to Magento. Whether it’s a simple replatform or a complex one, you are in safe hands with NextRow.
- Magento Development: Whether you are looking for full implementation, or some customizations, or performance enhancements, our certified Magento 2 will be up for the challenge.
- Magento Custom Themes: Responsive and customized themes are a great way to attract and retain a visitor on your site. Our templates are thoroughly tested for mobile responsiveness and all major browsers to reduce your testing time.
- Magento Integrations: Integrating to 3rd party systems is a must for all Magento clients. We will not leave you high and dry. We ensure you have all your integrations built for your eCommerce site to be successful.
- Magento Upgrades & Security: Upgrades are a standard process for any application and Magento is no different. Depending on the versions you are behind and the security concerns, we will devise a plan to ensure interruption free upgrades and patches.
Given the current market landscape, NextRow has rolled out some packages to help the clients to optimize their Magento maintenance budgets.
For any Magento services, please reach out to sales@nextrow.com or call +1-(888)-578-6558
Why Digital Marketing Is More Important in the COVID-19 Era?
When web 1.0 evolved in the 1990s, digital marketing also started in its infancy stages. As the web evolved, so did digital marketing. With .com bust in 2000, a lot of people written off digital marketing as a thing of the past. However, digital marketing not only survived but became more essential with each downturn and recession that came along.
The current COVID-19 situation is completely different. This is a once-in-a-generation pandemic that has put the whole world on high alert. People are losing their jobs with many businesses have paused (some even ceased) their operations globally. Companies slashing marketing and sales budgets, projecting far lesser sales for the year 2020.
According to the survey conducted by Morningstar.com, “US GDP will fall 3.9% and global GDP will fall 2.4% this year.” In these current circumstances, many marketing leaders will be re-assessing their digital marketing budgets for the year 2020 and beyond.
Marketing Channels During the COVID-19 Pandemic
One of the best marketing channels is the events/conferences, where you get to meet your prospect in person and try to close the deal. Starting from March 2020, many events moved online/cancelled, including Adobe Summit, Salesforce Connections, Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference, and Rakuten’s Advertising Marketing Deal Maker Event. Here is a list of marketing conferences impacted thus far – with very few are planning to go ahead with their plans.
While in-person event cancellations at this scale mean you losing valuable leads or delayed new business. With all in-person meetings are being replaced with online meetings, offline marketing will be far less impactful for the rest of the year. Because more and more people are staying indoors, and spending time on their phones, and computers more than ever, brands have opportunities to connect with their audience thru digital channels.
Impact of COVID-19 on eCommerce Industry
Widespread concern of virus spreading thru air, surfaces caused people to stay home mostly, and impacted the day-to-day habits of consumers all over the world. People not only avoiding their workplace but restaurants, malls, supermarkets, fashion stores, and other public places as well. With all the social distancing rules in place, people are spending more online, it translated into increased eCommerce orders, from local groceries to pure eCommerce players. Companies like Instacart reported 40% increase in orders since the pandemic fears started.
This presents a great opportunity for many companies to expedite their eCommerce plans, or revitalize them. Check out NextRow’s Magento Commerce services.
Where Should Marketers Put their Marketing Dollars?
As more people are staying online, social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram have reported a significant increase in content sharing. Netflix witnessed a significant jump in their content consumption during the Q1 2020.
As online browsing has become a new normal for people, as a marketing leader, it won’t be difficult for you to decide on where to invest your marketing dollars.
How to Create a Right Marketing Message During these Tough Times?
One simple answer: Empathy marketing. People make buying decisions based on emotions. No matter how superior your product/service is, if the customer doesn’t connect with your brand, the chances of buying your product/service is lesser.
Forrester Consulting found, “65 percent of marketers struggle to employ emotional marketing as they turn to automation to improve customer engagement.”
Show empathy towards others in your marketing message. Put yourselves into their shoes and assess if the message would resonate with you.
What’s the Takeaway for Marketers?
There is no right or wrong way of marketing. It’s all about emotions. It’s all about empathy. Your ability to connect with your audience with the right message is the key to your campaign success.
Analyze each campaign and see what connected the most/least with your audience. Polish and fine tune your campaigns to get the best results.
How NextRow Digital can Help You to Succeed with Digital Marketing in the Current COVID-19 Situation and Beyond?
NextRow Digital has been an Adobe partner for more than a decade and has experience with Marketo since 2015. Our marketing specialists can help you create and execute dynamic campaigns that your audience deserves. It is not just about email marketing. You need to get your audience attention at every step of the way through ABM, web personalization, and more.
We have built strategies for winning campaigns. We help you succeed in nurturing your lead and converting them into customers and help with the right marketing message to keep them as a loyal customer. If you would like to discuss more, please reach out to sales@nextrow.com or simply call +1-(888)-578-6558
5 Benefits of Outsourcing Your AEM Managed Services
You made the right choice by choosing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as your Web Content Management System. As a true enterprise-grade CMS platform built on open architecture, AEM supports your websites (public-facing or internal), and centralize Assets in one place with Digital Asset Management (DAM). AEM also supports headless CMS to grant more power to the UI team.
When you sign the deal with Adobe, you typically end up with these application hosting scenarios:
- Adobe Managed Services: Adobe hosts the application for you. They provide SLA from 99.5% to 99.9% depending on the type of contract you have.
- Internally Hosted: Typically, AWS/Azure/GCP. You have your DevOps team in place to manage the AEM application as part of the big infra team.
- Hosted by third parties: You might have hired a third-party company to host your AEM application.
Fast forward a few months, you dig deep into the application development migrating your websites to AEM, you go live on your websites built on AEM. All high fives to your team for the great work done, it’s not an easy task, your developers can vouch for this. The new enhancements, new projects come. Your development team(s) gets busy with enhancements, building new sites to support marketing/business, and working on the next great thing.
Now the fun part comes. Your site is live and kicking. This is the digital face of your organization. As Marketing and Sales teams rely on digital channels heavily for lead conversions, they need a stable website, that’s loading in a fraction of second. How do you ensure your marketing SLAs are met and you are supporting marketing/sales teams?
Whether you are hosted with Adobe Managed Services (AMS) or internally hosted or with a third party, they take the responsibility of the uptime of your AEM application, but the application fine-tuning, performance upkeep, and application fixes fall on your team or to some other team. It is extremely important that you are supported by a team that is experienced in AEM applications and has certifications on the “AEM Admin” skill set to properly manage your AEM applications and to look after the upkeep of your AEM applications.
In this era of digitization with a fast-changing MarTech landscape, many organizations lag behind in specialized skillsets like AEM administration, AEM application integrations, and AEM application maintenance.
For several companies, their digital presence is everything for them and they would do anything to ensure that their AEM environment is optimally running 24/7/365. Hiring an internal team of technical staff for AEM Managed Services can be quite expansive and extremely difficult when you have to dedicate them to your AEM environment.
NextRow Digital’s state-of-the-art NMS++ for AEM (NextRow Managed Services for Adobe Experience Manager) offering will support clients with the upkeep of AEM applications, finetune, and proactive monitoring among other things. As a trusted AEM Managed Services partner for many companies, we understand every client’s needs are different, so we offer flexible contract models to support your current and future needs.
Some of the Key Services Included in NMS++ for AEM:
Optimize AEM Applications
Optimization comes in a variety of flavors, ranging from page performance optimization to query builder cache clearing to many nitty-gritty tasks. A recent study showed the sites load in 2 seconds have 15% more conversions. With our deep expertise in Adobe Experience Manager platform and specialization we hold in AEM Managed Services, we help you optimize your AEM applications for optimal performance, helping you convert more leads and realize more sales.
Proactive Application Maintenance
It is extremely important that you maintain your AEM application up to date with available patches, service packs, and available upgrade options. Whether you are hosted on AMS (Adobe Managed Services), or internally, we help you keep your AEM instance up to date with our proactive application maintenance program.
Proactive Application Monitoring
If you are an IT leader, you must be thinking that setting up Nagios or NewRelic or some other tools will do the trick. Well, these are reactive measures that might alert you when something goes bad. We raise a step above to offer proactive application monitoring, so you catch the problems before your customers face them.
Bug Fixes
Bugs/issues and minor enhancements are common in any application development. While your team is busy focusing on more important tasks, you can rely on NextRow Digital expertise to work on these side tasks, freeing up your core team while being in safe hands at NextRow.
Compliance and Auditing
Your company’s infrastructure is continuously changing. New technologies are being rolled out. Others are phased out. People come and go. Complexity exponentially increases. At such times, addressing the Adobe Experience Manager security threats at the forefront becomes mandatory for most of the organizations, be it small or large.
NextRow Digital provides recurring AEM system administration and compliance services you need to perform the regular system checks, audit the infrastructure, and identify vulnerabilities to eliminate the gaps. We help you maintain adherence to a stringent set of industry compliance standards and implement the best security practices to keep your enterprise stay in control.
The Bottom Line
Pinterest derived 15% more signups by optimizing their website. An optimized, well-maintained site(s) means more business, more conversions. Outsourcing AEM Managed Services to NextRow Digital will also free up your core dev team to focus on building the next great thing, while we take care of your site upkeep. As a leading Adobe Business Solution Partner, NextRow Digital can help you scale up the performance of your AEM application with confidence. With our global support centers, we offer 24*7 support services as well.
If you’d like to know more about our NMS++ for AEM Managed Services, you can reach our sales team at+1-847-592-2920 or email us to sales@nextrow.com. The AEM experts at NextRow Digital would be happy to answer all your queries.
DTM to Adobe Launch Migration
Adobe announced that DTM is being sunset (effective from January 2021) to pave their way for the next-gen tag management system, Adobe Launch. While Launch offers great features, upgrading from DTM requires some planning and execution.
We helped many clients, big and small, to migrate to Launch. During these migrations, we have come up with and compiled good practices on top of Adobe’s recommendations. Before we get into those details, let us look at the reasons to switch to Adobe Launch and what benefits the platform will offer to its users.
Why Migrate to Adobe Launch?
One of the major reasons to migrate to Adobe Launch is – The Adobe DTM is being sunset. Here’s a breakdown of DTM deadlines:
- July 9, 2019 (Already Passed): Options to create new DTM properties no longer available
- October 14, 2020 (6 Months to Go): All DTM properties become read-only
- April 13, 2021 (1 Year to Go): DTM Servers go to sleep
No need to be panic, planning is key.
Benefits of Migrating to Adobe Launch
While the eventual retirement of DTM has forced organizations not to evaluate whether they wish to migrate to Adobe Launch, but rather come up with a detailed roadmap that can help them with the migration process. Instead of waiting until the end of 2020, it’s better to leverage the benefits of the following benefits now.
- Single Page Application (SPA) Support
- Multiple Event Type Support
- 3rd Party Extension Marketplace
- Centralized Rights Management
- Automated Tag Deployment
- Robust approval workflows and many more
The Migration: 4-Step Simple Process
Now that when you know the benefits, you must be wondering what does it take to migrate to Adobe Launch?
Well, some of the implementations are straightforward and can be implemented with the automated tools that Adobe provides. However, not all migrations are that simple and a few of them need proper planning and execution. For such migrations, based on our experience with other clients, we have put together below a 4-step process that you can follow for a smooth and flawless migration.
At NextRow Digital, we, taking into consideration the diverse needs of organizations, have helped several businesses to migrate to Adobe Launch using the same tips and had great success with other clients.
Step 1: Establish a Baseline
To achieve the successful migration of tags from one system to another, it is important to keep an eye on the analytics tracking status. And for that, you will need to create a baseline or a catalog for your reference and decide on the time you need to complete the process.
Make sure to follow a comprehensive approach to scan your website and take the backup of the highly valuable and sensitive data of all present technologies.
Step 2: Design a Strategy
The second phase includes analyzing your system’s requirements and designing a strategy that helps you evaluate the tags you need to change during the migration process. Although there can be innumerable ways to deploy the tags, you should proceed ahead with a roadmap that would be beneficial for you even in the future as well.
Include a testing strategy at the starting of the implementation phase to ensure that things are being deployed corrected at every step. Your QA testing can begin with manual testing, however, always remember that manual testing is time-consuming and prone to human errors. On the other hand, automation testing can deliver accurate results in less time. The choice is yours!
Step 3: Begin the Migration
After establishing the baseline and designing the foolproof strategy, you can start with the migration process. Let’s have a look at the two following approaches you can consider following for migration:
Lift and Shift
If you don’t have anything to change, you can adopt a Lift and Shift approach for a relatively simple implementation. In this approach, you just need to click the Upgrade to Launch button in DTM and that’s it! (Sometimes it may not be that simple, we can audit your instance and suggest you the best options).
Start Fresh
If you wish to start the implementation from scratch, you can go ahead with a Start Fresh approach. Ideal for large and complex implementation, this approach gives you full control over the functions.
Though it may take your several months, but if you work with full dedication, the end results will be much better.
Step 4: Test Everything!
Last but not the least, test everything!
Be careful about this step, and don’t hesitate of going the extra mile to get everything tested in detail. If you’re unsure about this process, take help from QA experts and ask them to assist you to ensure that the tags are successfully migrated from DTM to Adobe Launch.
Once the testing process is completed, you can have a sigh of relief and bask in the success of completing a great job.
The Bottom Line
These are the high-level steps, which should help you to put detailed processes around these steps. We understand you may not have enough bandwidth to migrate or enough expertise to complete the migration. No worries at all. We are here to help.
NextRow Digital is the new-age digital agency that delivers the “best of both worlds” of a digital agency and a system integrator to clients looking to boost their business growth and drive higher ROI through digital transformation. We are a born-in-digital company that uniquely combines the power of technology, analytics (Adobe Analytics), creative and content for digital transformation.
If you need any help with Adobe Launch migration or maintenance project, you can email to: adobe@nextrow.com or call +1-847-592-2920.
NextRow Digital Awarded ‘Gold Partner’ Status by Magnolia
Chicago, United States, 11 Mar 2020 – NextRow Digital, the leading provider of digital marketing solutions, is pleased to announce that we have been awarded Gold Partner status by leading Digital Experience provider Magnolia.
NextRow Digital’s new status as a Gold Partner recognizes the organization’s long-standing commitment to offering Magnolia’s content management system to help clients succeed in the age of omnichannel marketing and personalization.
Through this partnership, NextRow Digital enables businesses to leverage the Magnolia platform to meet the evolving needs of their target audience, deliver customized experiences and drive a new level of insights and innovation.
Combining our in-depth understanding of the MarTech space with engineering expertise and agile, collaborative approach, we follow a strategic roadmap to design and develop the unique web and mobile applications that help our clients to seize the “best of both worlds”, enabling them to maximize their business impact and build long-lasting relationship with their customers.
Taking into consideration the diverse needs, we at NextRow Digital create an environment that puts organizations on the path of success in the world of digital transformation, thus encouraging them to unlock the full potential of the business landscape and gain a competitive edge in the market.
Commenting on the partnership, Tim Brown, CEO at Magnolia said, “Our Gold Partners like NextRow Digital are integral in championing Magnolia as the content management system of choice as we continue to grow and expand our business.”
“Magnolia CMS provides a rich, next-generation environment that businesses need to build the brand presence, accelerate marketing campaigns and enhance the sales funnel growth”, said Kiran Ranga, Managing Director of NextRow Digital. With Magnolia’s powerful CMS, we empower the digital presence of several organizations all over the world. Magnolia has proven that the platform is best in its area of expertise and has the capability to attract and retain the clients.
Magnolia’s Partner Program was set up to establish a wide network of skilled and experienced partners to deploy the company’s CMS solution. Highly skilled partners work to implement and integrate Magnolia’s marketing technology across a range of verticals globally. To find out more about Magnolia’s Partner Program, visit https://www.magnolia-cms.com/partners/become-magnolia-partner.html.
About Magnolia
Magnolia is a leading digital experience software company helping brands outsmart their competition through better customer experiences and faster DX projects. Magnolia robust, flexible and cloud-based CMS allows organizations and enterprises to create the website the way they want. Serving a diverse range of industries such as retail & commerce, finance, media and travel, Magnolia delivers its services that are tailored to your business needs.
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Magnolia has extended its presence all over the world, with 6 regional offices in 100 plus countries. Global leaders such as Tesco, Avis, Generali and the New York Times all rely on Magnolia for maximum reliability, high-speed project implementation, and exceptional omnichannel experiences.
For more information about Magnolia click here
About NextRow Digital
NextRow Digital is the new-age digital agency that delivers the “best of both worlds” of a digital agency and a system integrator to clients looking to boost their business growth and drive higher ROI through digital transformation. We are a born-in-digital company that uniquely combines the power of technology, analytics, creative and content for digital transformation.
At NextRow Digital, our fully integrated, creative and technical development teams work together to strategically create, deploy and optimize marketing content that inspires and strengthens profitable relationships between you and your customers. While we do not believe in “one-size-fits-for-all” approach, we offer customized MarTech solutions that cater to your business requirements and enable you to reap the benefits of success.
For more information about NextRow Digital, visit: https://www.nextrow.com/.
AEM Upgrade: A Complete Playbook For Flawless Upgrade
In this digital age, organizations of all shapes and sizes are investing a lot on improving their overall customer experience. Keeping that in mind, Adobe constantly enhances Adobe Experience Cloud suite to empower marketers with the necessary tools to create and deliver amazing experiences. The foundation of many of those experiences relies heavily on Adobe Experience Manager, and like most platforms, Adobe annually updates its solutions with new features or existing features are enhanced to meet the expectations of evolving digital world. Hence, it’s imperative for organizations to upgrade AEM and avail the latest powerful features in store to deliver amazing omnichannel experiences to customers.
Though upgrading AEM to the latest version has some support from the Adobe, but the upgrade process may be a little challenging and often requires some specialized experience and knowledge to deploy everything smoothly. Also, proper planning is mandatory for upgrading any of the previous AEM, which includes – author training, writing test cases for the upgrade procedure, understanding the new changes around architecture, estimating LOE using AEM provided pattern detector and then finally creating a project plan. Further, the AEM Upgrade needs analysis and execution phases with key deliverables defined for each phase.
Considering the above complexities and problems faced while AEM Upgrade, I have put together this AEM playbook in an attempt to educate you, so you can establish clear goals and phases to upgrade AEM with little or no hiccups. Let’s discuss each and every step in some detail:
1.
Upgrade Overview:
The Upgrade process associated with AEM is a multi-step that often takes a few months to complete. The image below provides an overview of the different processes associated with an upgrade project.
| Planning For Upgrade | Author Training Plan | Develop A Test Plan | Identification Of Architectural Changes Required | Use pattern Detector To Estimate LEO | Prepare A Runbook | Build A Test Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Development & QA Requirements | Prepare A Dedicated Code Branch | Assess Usage Of Resource Resolver | Prepare A List Of Queries And Indexes | Enlist Customizations Needed For Update | Overlays Should Be Updated | |
| Maintenance Required For Pre-Upgrade | Make Sure To Have Efficient Resources | Take Backup Of Earlier Resources | Automated Analyzation Of Pre-Upgrade Maintenance | Disable Custom Login | Rotate Logs | |
| Procedure For Upgrade | Cease Authoring | Author Tier Should Be Updated | Segregate A Publish Instance | Upgrade Both Major & Additional Instances | Finalize The Upgrade | |
| Post Upgrade Inspection | Log Files Should Be Examined | Bundles Needs To Be Checked | Reinstall Backup Configuration | Determine Maintenance Tasks | Trouble-shooting Of Issues |
2.
Upgrade Scope and Requirements:
Before initiation of the upgrade, it is important to ensure that you are running a supported operating system, Java runtime, httpd and Dispatcher version. Also, upgrading components need to be accounted for in the project plan before upgrading AEM. The table below describes a list of areas that are impacted in a typical AEM Upgrade project.
| Areas Impacted During AEM Upgrade: | |
|---|---|
| Area Impacted | Description |
| JAVA Version | Every AEM version supports a specific range of JRE versions. If clients JRE version is lower than what is expected by new AEM version, then it needs to be updated. |
| Hardware | Running Pre-upgrade maintenance tasks and regular Maintenace tasks (post upgrade) requires a certain amount of heap memory and disk space. If current hardware doesn’t meet these requirements, then it needs to be updated. |
| Content Repository Migration | If AEM is being upgraded from version < 6.x, then content repository migration is a must. Earlier versions (< 6.x) of AEM used to run on CRX2 repository. AEM 6.1 onwards, content repository has been changed to Oak. |
| Repository Restructuring | Repository structure started changing from AEM 6.4 and is being continued in AEM 6.5 as well. It affects custom content. Though these restructuring duplicates content from their old location in repository to new location, but it needs a serious attention and any custom code referring to old location, needs to be updated, to fetch the content from new location. |
| Maven (POM) Updates | POM files need to be updated as well. POM files must reflect UBER jar version matching with upgraded AEM version and other dependencies versions. |
| Custom Application Code | Custom application code needs to be updated so that it refers to latest AEM Core APIs. Any deprecated AEM APIs need to be replaced with their alternate suggestive APIs. |
| Customizations of OOTB features | If any OOTB feature has been customized by client in previous AEM version, it may not work completely with upgraded AEM version. |
3.
Plan For Author Training:
There are many potential changes required to be introduced to the UI and user workflows during the AEM upgrade. It’s highly recommended to review the functional changes that have been introduced and create a plan to train your author teams to leverage them effectively. Make sure to note any changes to UIs or product features that are commonly used in your organization and after looking through what has changed in upgraded AEM, develop a training plan for your authors.
4.
Create A Test Plan:
Every organization’s implementation of AEM is unique and customized to meet their specific business needs. So, it’s important to determine all the customization made to the system and included in a test plan. The test plan empowers the QA process, which is performed on the upgraded instance. The exact production environment needs to be duplicated and testing should be performed on it after the upgrade to make sure all applications and the custom code still run as desired.
5.
Determine Changes Required For Architecture And Infrastructure:
While upgrading, you may need to upgrade other components in your technical stack such as the operating system or JVM. Also, it’s possible that due to changes in the repository, additional hardware may be required (this is for migrating from pre 6.x instances). Further, changes may be required for operational practices including monitoring, maintenance, and backup and disaster recovery processes.
6.
Assessing Complexity Associated With The Upgrade:
There are two steps involved to assess the complexity of the AEM upgrade. The first is the newly introduced Pattern Detector which is available to be run on AEM 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 instances. It is the easiest way to assess the overall complexity of an upgrade in the form of reported patterns. The pattern detector report includes patterns for identifying unavailable APIs that are in use by the custom codebase. This test gives a fairly accurate estimate of what to expect during an upgrade for most cases.
The second and more comprehensive step is to perform an upgrade on a test instance that also includes some basic smoke testing. Also, the list of Deprecated and Removed Features should not only be reviewed for the version that you are upgrading to, but also for any versions between the source and target versions.
7.
Prepare An Upgrade and Rollback Runbook:
Though, Adobe has documented the basic process associated with upgrading an AEM instance, but, each organization’s network layout, deployment architecture, and customizations require tailored and fine-tuned procedure. Hence, it’s highly recommended to view all the documentation to construct a project-specific runbook that outlines the specific upgrade and rollback procedures. All instructions should be reviewed and taken into consideration with your system architecture, customizations, and downtime tolerance to determine the appropriate switch-over and rollback procedures that will be executed during the upgrade.
8.
Develop A Project Plan:
Based on the steps described above, a project plan covering the expected timelines for test, development efforts, training, and actual upgrade execution can be built.
A comprehensive project plan includes:
- Finalization of development and test plans
- Upgrading development and QA environments
- Updating the custom code base for AEM 6.5
- A QA test and fix cycle
- Upgrading the staging environment
- Integration, performance, and load testing
- Environment certification
- Go live
9.
Perform Development And QA:
We all know that the development and the testing process go hand in hand. During the customizations, the changes made while upgrade can make an entire section of the product unusable. There is the potential of discovering some new problems even after the redressal of the root issues by developers and testing teams. So, it’s better to keep track of these newly discovered issues in the upgrade runbook to make adjustments to the upgrade process. After testing and fixing, the code base should be fully validated and ready for deployment to the stage environment.
10.
Final Testing:
A final round of testing is highly recommended after the codebase has been certified by the QA team. Also, validation of the runbook on the stage environment must be followed by user acceptance, performance, and security testing. Finding and correcting issues before going live can help to prevent costly production outages. Apart from these, it is also important to perform performance, load and security tests on the system to understand significant changes to the underlying platforms on the new version of AEM.
11.
Performing the Upgrade:
Once the green signal has been received from all the stakeholders, the execution of runbook procedures should begin. The below image depicts the various steps to be taken into consideration while performing the final upgrade.
12.
Post Upgrade Support:
Many clients do ignore the importance of post go-live support. It is very critical to have enough resources planned out for post upgrade support to ensure minimal/zero disruption to your live site(s). If you hired a vendor for this upgrade, make sure to budget for post upgrade warranty/support period. If you do it with internal resources, make sure to allocate enough resources to address any issues identified on production.
As I mentioned earlier, no two upgrades are the same and there will be unique challenges you may have to work thru specific to your scenario. Having an experienced partner like NextRow Digital to help you guide thru and execute may prove critical differentiation factor between a successful or not-so-smooth upgrade.
NextRow Digital is an Adobe Silver Business Solution Partner, specializing in marketing cloud and technology implementations. We are awarded “AEM Specialization” by Adobe, recognizing us a formidable partner in AEM and Adobe Marketing Cloud space. We have a number of deployments and upgrades under our belt, including some for fortune 100 companies. Contact NextRow Digital today @ +1-847-592-2920 or info@nextrow.com, if you need help or assistance with AEM implementations or upgrades or AEM managed services
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