Extending AEM Universal Editor: Integrating External Tools for Seamless Authoring Workflows
The AEM Universal Editor introduces a powerful, flexible way to edit content across channels – but its true potential lies in its extensibility.
In this session, we'll explore how to extend the AEM Universal Editor using the Adobe Developer UI Extensions framework to integrate external tools directly into the authoring experience. Using a real-world example of integrating a third-party Digital Asset Management (DAM) system and a workflow management solution, we'll walk through the architecture, development approach, and lessons learned.
Attendees will gain practical insights into customizing the editor UI, working with extension points, and designing intuitive integrations that enhance productivity for content authors. Whether you're looking to connect existing tools or build new capabilities into AEM, this talk will equip you with the knowledge to unlock the full power of the Universal Editor.
Tomasz Sobczyk
Do you have a good way to integrate actions with groups from Experience Cloud - when implementing some use cases I felt I was doing some hacks / using hidden apis to get the information about the groups the user belongs to inside app builder actions
Patrick Heinzelmann
I would check the following two options: 1. IMS is syncing the users and groups to AEM, you can use the IMS tokens to call a custom AEM Servlet to return the groups. 2. You can use the Adobe User Management API and a Server to Server Authentication to check for the groups of an user. https://adobe-apiplatform.github.io/umapi-documentation/en/api/getUser.html
wolf
When will AppBuilder (and aio CLI) support „current” Node? Node 20 (let alone 18) is no longer in active support.
Patrick Heinzelmann
Adobe App Builder (aka Adobe I/O Runtime) supports the Node.js versions 22, 20 and 18. Check https://developer.adobe.com/app-builder/docs/guides/runtime_guides/reference_docs/runtimes
Yegor Kozlov
Is it worth the effort to migrate existing projects to AUE and instrument the old code ? We tried that in a couple of projects and the acceptance wasn't great. People are usually reluctant to touch the old code, AEM Core Components don't support AUE, and in terms of features AEU is nowhere near the classic Page Editor.
Max
The idea is not that all existing Page projects are lifted up to Universal Editor. There are Page Editor features which don't exist in the Universal Editor yet and may never will, e.g. responsive grid. We want to take the UE as a new start to build the future
Patrick Heinzelmann
If your website is running on AEM Publisher, you should stay in the classic Editor. If you want to start uing EDS, I would recommend to start from scratch. The content models of AEM components and EDS blocks are different. I would invest into a migration concept to port your content from the old components into the new blocks.
Ive
Would you suggest to have all these extended properties inside of one app or split them per different extensions?
Patrick Heinzelmann
Before starting to implement your extension, think about how the author would interact with your extension. Create an extension for single purpose and don't overload them with everything. Additonally, you can also add properties into Page Metadata and you don't need no extension.
Maverick
Is the extension manager going to allow extension activation by user/group to make it more business oriented than managing it at code level? Any way to disable out of the box buttons for specific users?
Max
you can use a meta tag to define per page which extensions are loaded in the UE. In your business logic you could consider user roles
Georg Henzler
How do you authenticate from your app builder extension towards Workfront? Do you need to use the same mechanism as used for any external application with configured secrets or is there a simpler way to configure some „permission policy“ between the two Adobe apps?
Max
Workfront is also using Adobe's IMS integration and the IMS token is shared from UE to all extensions
Ive
Are your extensions going to be available for others - can others try it?
Patrick Heinzelmann
The extensions will be soon listed as public apps on Adobe Exchange.