Strategies to define AEM Asset Architecture.

Ajay Paul
Ajay Paul
Nov 7 · 2 min read

Designing AEM assets must be the first thing to do during the project inception, And, there are no hard and fast rule to define it:

1. Know the core business from inside-out.Talk to stake holders.What are the day to day requirements of a company and inter-departmental activities? What are their business drivers ? How do they group their product assets ?
a). An computer security company selling software product online might have their products arranged by: category of offering: Trail versions, Anti Virus, Antivirus with Internet security, Mobile security, Encryption, Complete security suit, Family Suit and so.
b). Products could vary by name, type, prices, discounts, rewards, cashbacks, and targeted customers segment(senior citizens, students and teachers etc) from region to region.
c). Same products for different country might have different affiliates. If customer has their initial trail version installed when purchasing a Dell laptop, Dell could be an affiliate and the Computer. So, security product might have a Dell logo. So an affiliate require a separate grouping.
d). A worldwide company selling industrial sensors and connectors might segregate the assets with part numbers, 01–07–03–05_2015.jpg
Where, In this case, do we need to arrange it in a folder structure like:
01 — Industry — Aerospace (folder 01)
07 — Turbofan connector (folder 07 inside folder 01)
03 — Sessna aircraft — company name. (folder 03 inside folder 07)
05 — Single Engine (folder 05 inside folder 03)
2015- year of making. (folder 2015 inside folder 05)
Asset file 01–07–03–05_2015.jpg goes into ‘2015’ folder.

Can we extend an existing Dam update asset workflow which creates a folder structures when first asset is uploaded in DAM ? and all subsequent similar asset goes into it.

2. In a globally distributed team, did the Japanese or German team has already defined a Structure which could be which could be taken as a reference.

3. Does the company use asset metadata for search ? How big is the searchable asset. If binary data is big, can we use binaryless replication.

4. If the company site is video heavy, storing in DAM would be a disaster(https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-64/assets/administer/performance-tuning-guidelines.html) . Can we use some solutions like https://www.brightcove.com/en/ ?

4. Look for pre-defined patterns. Does the company identify every product with one unique ID.Very handy for search.

Consider having one site-wide(Globalised) asset folder: A group of assets which transcends across different locale and geography. If the AEM assets are consumed by external websites, we can leverage connected assets feature from AEM 6.5 with a dedicated publish for DAM itself.

5. Does the company has some confidential information which requires some regulation to be followed.

6. Defining Use cases: At-least 5 to 10 uses case: Happy cases, corner cases, edge cases, what-if cases and review them with business analysts(is your best buddy) and potential authors, editor who are going to use it.

Ajay Paul

Written by

Ajay Paul

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