Fixing Author-to-Author Migration Mistakes in AEM as a Cloud Service: How to Recover Publish State Correctly

Migrating from AEM On-Premise to AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) involves a precise content strategy. The industry-standard and Adobe-recommended practice is:

• Author → Author migration for authored content

• Publish → Publish migration for live site content

  
  
  

This ensures that the AEM Cloud Publish environment accurately reflects real production, while Author carries the drafts, workflows, approvals, and creation history.

However, mistakes do happen—and one of the most common (and most damaging) is migrating everything from Author → Author and then accidentally publishing all content to Cloud Publish.

This article explains why this is a problem, what risks it introduces, and—most importantly—how to fix it safely and correctly.

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Understanding the Mistake: Author-to-Author Migration Followed by “Publish All”

In the mistaken scenario:

1. Your team migrated all content from On-Prem Author → AEM Cloud Author

2. Then executed a bulk publish, sometimes unintentionally

3. As a result:

   • Draft-only content is now publicly visible

   • Deactivated pages from on-prem are active again

   • Historical publish status is lost

   • AEMaaCS Publish does not reflect the real production environment

   • Audit records and approval workflows have been bypassed

This leads to a polluted publish repository, breaking the very purpose of maintaining a trusted live environment.

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Why This Is Serious

Incorrect publish data affects:

1. SEO & Public Visibility

Internal pages, test pages, and drafts may get indexed by Google.

2. Compliance & Governance

Pages that were intentionally un-published are suddenly active.

3. Authoring Confidence

Teams can no longer trust what is “live.”

4. Replication Metadata

Original activation dates, users, and states are lost forever.

5. Future Deployments

Content freeze and UAT validation become unreliable.

Fixing this requires a structured, safe approach.

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How to Fix Wrong Author-to-Author Publishing During Migration

Below are the best and safest approaches, starting with the recommended one.

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Option 1: Re-Do Publish Migration Properly (Recommended Solution)

This is the cleanest and most accurate method—ideal if you are still in pre-production stages.

Steps:

1. Reset AEM Cloud Publish Environment
   Request Adobe/Cloud Manager to wipe and reinitialize Publish.

2. Re-export content from On-Prem Publish

   Use cloned instance and Content Transfer Tool 

3. Import to AEM Cloud Publish → Publish
   This restores the true, correct, production content.

4. Re-run Author-only delta migration
   If content changed on on-prem author, sync only those changes.

Result:
AEM Cloud Publish now accurately matches your pre-migration live site.

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Option 2: Use Replication Metadata to Undo Incorrect Publishing

If restarting migration is not feasible, you can restore state using metadata.

Steps:

1. Export /var/replication metadata from On-Prem Publish

2. Compare it with AEM Cloud’s metadata

3. Identify:

   • Pages that should NOT be published

   • Pages that were previously deactivated

   • Pages with mismatched activation timestamps

4. Using a script or ACS Bulk Replicator:

   • Deactivate incorrect pages

   • Re-publish only valid published pages

This is effective, but not perfect—you may miss some edge cases.

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Option 3: Partial Cleanup for Limited Content Areas

Use this if only some sections of the site were impacted.

Steps:

1. Identify URLs incorrectly published

2. Get confirmation from business/UAT

3. Use Bulk Unpublish scripts to deactivate

4. Re-publish only approved content

Good for small or medium-sized sites, but not for large enterprise DAM/content.

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What You Should NOT Do

• Do not manually check pages one-by-one — impossible for large sites

• Do not trust authors to identify wrong-published pages — risky & incomplete

• Do not keep the polluted publish environment — it breaks future releases

• Do not adjust publish directly without metadata analysis — creates inconsistencies

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Recommended Final Strategy

If you need a clean and correct fix:

➡️ Reset Publish + Re-import Publish-to-Publish Migration

Then:

➡️ Run a delta Author migration

This is how 90% of enterprise projects recover from this mistake and move forward safely.

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Conclusion

Migrating to AEM as a Cloud Service requires strict alignment between Author and Publish flows.
When everything is migrated Author → Author and mistakenly published, it disrupts production integrity, governance, SEO, and live accuracy.

Fortunately, with the methods described:

• Full republish rebuild

• Metadata-driven cleanup

• Partial environment correction

You can restore your AEM Cloud Publish environment back to the correct state.

No matter where you are in your migration cycle, there is a safe recovery path.

Faster AEM Cloud Builds: How Module Caching Changes the Game

 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.

AEM Asset Distribution Options Compared: Brand Portal, Content Hub & Ass...

AEM as a Cloud Service: How to Make Your Legacy Assets Overlay Work in the New Assets View UI

 

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Set Up Your Development Environment:

1. Install the Adobe I/O command-line tool (AIO CLI) locally.

2. Ensure you have a good understanding of JavaScript, Node.js, and React technologies, as these are used for building the extensions.

3. Set up your local environment for UI extension development as described in the official Adobe Experience League documentation.

4. Develop the UI Extension:

1. Use the AIO CLI to generate the basic structure for your extension.

2. 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.

3. Develop your custom UI components using the React Spectrum library.

5. Test Locally: The framework allows you to test your extensions locally, connecting them to the production AEM Assets View for testing before full deployment.
6. 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

1. Create a Servlet Filter or Sling Upload Servlet Extension that intercepts uploads under /content/dam.
2. Apply your logic:
• MIME type restrictions
• Folder-level restrictions
• File size limits
3. If invalid, return an HTTP error (e.g., 403 or 409) with a meaningful message.
4. AEM UI will automatically surface the error during upload.