AEM as a Cloud Service introduces module caching to significantly reduce build and deployment times across your CI/CD pipelines. This article explains how module caching works, why it improves build performance, and what developers need to configure to take full advantage of it. Learn how cached dependencies, optimized build steps, and smarter pipeline reuse can cut down your build duration and accelerate release cycles—making your AEM Cloud deployments faster, more efficient, and developer-friendly.
A new build model compiles only changed modules (rather than the entire
repo) using module-level caching to shorten build times. It applies to
code-quality, full-stack, and stage-only pipelines.
How to achieve this?
Edit Non-Production Pipeline dialog box showing the two Build
Strategy options which are Full Build and Smart Build.
In the Add/Edit Pipeline dialog
box, under the Source Code tab, a new Build
Strategy section lets you choose one of the following build
options:
Full Build : Builds all
modules in the repository on every run.
Smart Build : Builds only
modules that changed since the last commit, which shortens overall build
time.
You control which pipelines use Smart build.
During the beta, this option appears only for Code Quality
and Dev Deployment pipelines.
If you are Interested in this, you will have to reach out to Adobe by Email beta_quickbuild_cmpipelines@adobe.com
with your Adobe OrgID and Program ID.
The new Assets View UI in AEM as a Cloud Service introduces a modern experience: but it also breaks many legacy overlays created for the classic Assets interface. This article explains why your existing asset overlay no longer works, what changed under the hood, and the exact steps needed to migrate or rebuild your customization for the new UI. Whether you're using overlays for metadata forms, custom buttons, Rendition workflows, or UI tweaks, this guide helps you identify the root cause and apply the right fix so your AEM asset customizations continue to function seamlessly in the updated interface.
Our experience home looks as below,
The URL for assets home is: https://experience.adobe.com/?repoId=author-pXXXX-eXXXX.adobeaemcloud.com#/@client/assets/browse
The new UI will take you to below experience.
Traditional Assets Navigation
The traditional method of using
repository-level overlays under /apps to customize the Assets console does not work for
the new Assets view UI in AEM as a
Cloud Service because the new UI is built on a modern micro-frontend
architecture.
To fix this, you must rebuild your
customizations using the AEM
Assets View UI Extensibility framework, which leverages
Adobe App Builder and microservices to integrate custom components.
Steps to Rework Your
Customization
Understand the New Architecture: The "Assets
view" is a separate, search-first application that uses a
micro-frontend architecture. Customizations are no longer simple JCR node
overlays but rather independent UI extensions that integrate via defined
extension points.
Enable Assets Ultimate (Prerequisite): The UI extensibility
feature is part of the Assets Ultimate offering. Ensure your Cloud Manager
program has Assets Ultimate enabled. You may need to create an Adobe
Customer Support case to get access.
Set Up Your Development Environment:
Install the Adobe I/O command-line tool (AIO
CLI) locally.
Ensure you have a good understanding of
JavaScript, Node.js, and React technologies, as these are used for
building the extensions.
Use the AIO CLI to generate the basic
structure for your extension.
Identify the appropriate extension point
(e.g., aem/assets/details/1 for custom side
panels on the asset details page, or points for Quick Actions and the
Actions Bar) that corresponds to your original overlay's functionality.
Develop your custom UI components using the
React Spectrum library.
Test Locally: The framework allows
you to test your extensions locally, connecting them to the production AEM
Assets View for testing before full deployment.
Deploy: Deploy your extension using Cloud Manager
pipelines. The extensions are hosted outside of AEM as a Cloud Service,
which helps streamline maintenance and reduce the total cost of ownership.
By following the official Enable UI extensibility in AEM Assets View guide, you
can successfully migrate your customizations to the new UI architecture
Second Option: Replace overlays with a Sling Servlet +
Upload Restriction Validator
You must
enforce restrictions at server-side, because UI overlays are not guaranteed
to run in CS.
Steps
Create
a Servlet Filter or Sling Upload Servlet Extension that
intercepts uploads under /content/dam.
Apply
your logic:
MIME
type restrictions
Folder-level
restrictions
File
size limits
If
invalid, return an HTTP error (e.g., 403 or 409) with a meaningful message.
AEM UI
will automatically surface the error during upload.
Adobe Experience Manager offers multiple ways to share, distribute, and reuse content and digital assets. The three common solutions are Brand Portal, Asset Share Commons, and AEM Content Hub. While they may look similar, they are designed for completely different use cases. This article offers a clear comparison across features, capabilities, and ideal usage scenarios.
1. What is AEM Brand Portal?
AEM Brand Portal is an Adobe-managed, cloud-hosted platform for distributing approved digital assets to external partners such as agencies, resellers, retailers, and franchise teams. It provides secure access without exposing your main AEM author instance to external users.
Organizations that need a governed, branded portal for distributing images, product assets, and marketing materials to external stakeholders.
2. What is Asset Share Commons?
Asset Share Commons (ASC) is an open-source asset browser UI built on top of AEM. It is fully customizable and is usually used to provide asset access to internal employees or specific partner groups.
Key Features
Open-source and fully configurable
Faceted search and custom components
Browser and download portal for AEM assets
Integrated with AEM permissions and workflows
Runs on customer-managed AEM infrastructure
Best For
Organizations that want complete control over UI/UX and custom functionality without using an Adobe SaaS solution.
AEM Content Hub is a cloud-native, centrally governed content discovery and reuse layer available only in AEM as a Cloud Service. It allows authors across multiple sites or business units to search, discover, and reuse approved content instantly.
Brand Portal, Asset Share Commons, and Content Hub are purpose-built solutions that address different content distribution challenges. Brand Portal excels at external asset sharing, Asset Share Commons shines with its customization flexibility, and Content Hub leads in enterprise content reuse across distributed teams.
Sunday, 9 November 2025
Building a Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
In today’s fast-paced digital world, speed and agility are essential. Developers need an environment where they can quickly experiment, test, and deploy without lengthy setup times. This is where a Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) becomes invaluable.
What Is an RDE in AEM?
A Rapid Development Environment (RDE) is a cloud-based instance of AEM designed for rapid feature development, testing, and validation. It is a key part of AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) and provides a lightweight, developer-friendly setup that closely mirrors your production environment.
Unlike local SDK setups, an RDE can be provisioned instantly in the cloud, allowing developers to push code, content, and configurations in minutes.
Key Benefits of Using an RDE
Instant Provisioning: RDEs are created within minutes, removing long setup times.
Cloud Alignment: They replicate your AEM Cloud Service setup, ensuring consistent behavior between development, staging, and production environments.
Team Collaboration: Multiple developers can use the same RDE instance to test shared features.
Real Content Testing: RDEs allow you to test features with realistic content and user flows before merging to main branches.
Faster Debugging: Logs, Sling consoles, and error reports are available instantly through AEM Cloud Manager, making debugging faster.
How an RDE Fits into the AEM Cloud Workflow
Here’s a simplified overview of how RDEs fit into your AEM Cloud Service workflow:
Develop locally using the AEM SDK.
Push changes to Git on a feature branch.
Deploy the code to the RDE using Cloud Manager CLI or APIs.
Test and validate features directly in the cloud.
Once approved, merge the feature branch into the main branch to trigger a full deployment pipeline.
This process reduces iteration time dramatically, taking development cycles from hours or days to just minutes.
Setting Up an RDE
Follow these steps to create and use a Rapid Development Environment in AEM:
Access AEM Cloud Manager: Go to your AEM Cloud Manager project.
Provision the RDE: Under “Environments,” click Add Environment and select Rapid Development Environment.
You can deploy complete code packages, OSGi bundles, or content packages directly to the RDE.
Test and Debug: Use the AEM Developer Console and logs to verify deployments, troubleshoot issues, and monitor application behavior.
Best Practices for Using RDEs
Keep your RDE clean: Reset or redeploy regularly to maintain stability.
Automate deployments: Integrate RDE deployments into your CI/CD pipeline.
Use separate RDEs for each team: Assign dedicated environments for isolated testing.
Leverage Cloud Manager APIs: Automate repetitive tasks such as deployments and resets.
Real-World Example
Consider a marketing team preparing a new campaign component. A developer builds the component locally and deploys it to the RDE in minutes. Content authors then log in, test the new component with real content, and provide instant feedback. After validation, the developer merges the feature branch, and the change is deployed to staging and production — all in the same day.
This process allows for faster iteration, early feedback, and reduced production risk.
Conclusion
The Rapid Development Environment (RDE) in Adobe Experience Manager Cloud Service transforms how teams develop and test digital experiences. By providing instant provisioning, cloud consistency, and seamless collaboration, RDEs empower organizations to innovate faster and more efficiently.
If your team still relies solely on traditional development and staging pipelines, it’s time to adopt RDEs — the next step toward agile, cloud-native AEM development.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service allows you to forward system and application logs to external destinations. This feature is called Log Forwarding, and it helps teams monitor, analyze, and store logs outside AEM.
Why Log Forwarding?
Log forwarding lets you centralize logs from AEM environments like dev, stage, and prod into your preferred logging platform. You can use tools like Splunk for live analytics or Amazon S3 for long-term storage and compliance.
1. Forwarding Logs to Splunk
To send AEM logs to Splunk, configure your log-forwarding.yaml file with Splunk details such as the host, port, and access token.
Logs are written to your specified S3 bucket in the given AWS region.
Access keys authenticate the upload process securely.
Useful for cost-effective, long-term log retention and analysis using AWS tools like Athena or CloudWatch.
When to use: Choose S3 if you want to store logs for future analysis or compliance without needing real-time dashboards.
Splunk vs S3 – Quick Comparison
Feature
Splunk
Amazon S3
Use Case
Real-time log analysis and alerting
Long-term storage and auditing
Integration
Requires Splunk collector endpoint
Requires AWS S3 bucket and credentials
Access
Search and dashboard in Splunk UI
Access logs from S3 console or via AWS tools
Best For
Monitoring, operations, DevOps teams
Compliance, audit, and archival needs
Best Practices
Always store access tokens and keys as environment secrets in Cloud Manager.
Limit log forwarding only to necessary environments to manage cost and data flow.
Use advancedNetworking for secure connections when available.
Test log forwarding in the dev environment before enabling in production.
With AEM’s log forwarding flexibility, you can integrate your cloud logs easily into enterprise monitoring systems or cloud storage platforms depending on your operational needs.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service uses caching to speed up content delivery and reduce load on the publish servers. Caching works across multiple layers- the CDN, Dispatcher, and browser - to store and serve content quickly. However, you may need to enable or disable caching depending on your project requirements.
Understanding Caching
Caching stores copies of responses so users can access content faster. When caching is enabled, repeated requests are served directly from the cache instead of the AEM origin. Disabling caching ensures fresh content is always fetched directly from AEM.
How to Enable Caching
To enable caching, you can configure HTTP response headers that tell the CDN and browser how long to keep content in cache. You can apply this through the dispatcher configuration or programmatically in your code.
In this setup, the content remains fresh for 10 minutes (max-age=600) and continues to serve cached data briefly during revalidation or errors for improved performance.
Programmatic Approach: You can also set the same headers from a Sling Servlet or Filter to apply caching rules to specific responses.
How to Disable Caching
In some cases, such as dynamic, personalized, or secure content, you may not want caching. To disable caching, adjust your response headers to mark the response as private or non-cacheable.
Dispatcher Configuration Example:
Header unset Cache-Control
Header unset Surrogate-Control
Header unset Expires
Header always set Cache-Control "private"
Header always set Surrogate-Control "private"
This configuration ensures that content is not stored in the CDN or shared caches. You can also apply the same logic in a custom servlet or filter by adding the header Cache-Control: private.
When to Enable or Disable Caching
Scenario
Recommended Action
Public or static content (images, HTML pages)
Enable caching with a defined time-to-live (TTL) for better performance.
Personalized or dynamic data
Disable caching or set responses to private to prevent serving outdated or user-specific data.
Development or testing environments
Disable caching to see real-time changes immediately.
Mixed content types
Use selective caching rules in dispatcher or via code to manage caching per path or content type.
Best Practices
Always set explicit caching headers to avoid default or unintended behavior.
Test your caching configuration in staging before applying to production.
Use stale-while-revalidate and stale-if-error for better user experience under load.
Regularly review which pages should bypass caching (e.g., forms, user dashboards).
By managing caching properly, AEM as a Cloud Service can balance high performance with real-time content accuracy — ensuring users always get the right experience.
