Integrating with Adobe Campaign Classic

Adobe Campaign lets you manage email delivery content and forms directly in Adobe Experience Manager.

To use both solutions together at the same time, you must first configure them to connect to one another. This involves configuration steps in both Adobe Campaign and Adobe Experience Manager. These steps are described in detail in this document.

Working with Adobe Campaign in AEM includes the ability to send email via Adobe Campaign and is described at Working with Adobe Campaign. It also includes using forms on AEM pages to manipulate data.

In addition, the following topics may be of interest when integrating AEM with Adobe Campaign:

• Best Practices for Email Templates
• Troubleshooting your Adobe Campaign Integration

If you are extending your integration with Adobe Campaign, you may want to see the following pages:

• Creating Custom Extensions
• Creating Custom Form Mappings

AEM and Adobe Campaign Integration Workflow

This section describes a typical workflow between AEM and Adobe Campaign when creating campaigns and delivering content.

The typical workflow involves the following and is described in detail:

1. Start building your campaign (both in Adobe Campaign and AEM).
2. Before you link the content and delivery, personalize your content in AEM and create a delivery in Adobe Campaign.
3. Link content and delivery in Adobe Campaign.

Start building your campaign

You start building a campaign at any time. Before you link the content, AEM and AC are independent That means marketers can start creating their campaigns and targeting in Adobe Campaign, while content creators are working on the design in AEM.

Before linking content and delivery

Before you link the content and create a delivery mechanism, you need to do the following:

In AEM

• Personalize using the personalization fields in the Text & Personalization component

In Adobe Campaign

• Create a delivery of type aemContent

Linking content and setting delivery

After you have prepared the content for linking and delivery, you determine exactly how and where to link content.

All these steps are completed in Adobe Campaign.

1. Specify which AEM instance to use.
2. Synchronize the content by clicking the Synchronize button.
3. Open the content picker to pick your content.

If you are new to AEM

If you are new to AEM, you may find the following links helpful to understand AEM:

• Starting AEM
• Understanding replication agents
• Finding and working with log files
• Introduction to the AEM Platform

Configuring Adobe Campaign

Configuring Adobe Campaign involves the following:

1. Installing the AEM integration package in Adobe Campaign.
2. Configuring an external account.
3. Verifying that the AEMResourceTypeFilter is configured correctly.

In addition, there are advanced configurations that you can make, including :

• Managing content blocks
• Managing personalization fields

See Advanced Configurations.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following elements beforehand:

• An AEM authoring instance
• An AEM publishing instance
• An Adobe Campaign Classic instance - including a client and a server
• Internet Explorer 11

Installing the AEM Integration Package

You must install the AEM Integration package in Adobe Campaign. To do this:

1. Go to the Adobe Campaign instance that you would like to link with AEM.

2. Select Tools > Advanced > Import package….

   

3. Click Install a standard package, then select the AEM Integration package.

   

4. Click Next, and then Start.

   This package contains the aemserver operator that will be used to connect the AEM server to Adobe Campaign.

   CAUTION

   By default, no security zone is configured for this operator. To connect to Adobe Campaign via AEM, you must select one.

   In the serverConf.xml file, the allowUserPassword attribute of the selected security zone must be set to true to authorize AEM to connect Adobe Campaign via login/password.

   We strongly recommend creating a security zone dedicated to AEM to avoid any security problems. For more on this, refer to the Installation guide.

   

Configuring an AEM external account

You must configure an external account that allows you to connect Adobe Campaign to your AEM instance.

To configure an external AEM account:

1. Go to the Administration > Platform > External Accounts node.

2. Create a new external account and select the AEM type.

3. Enter the access parameters for your AEM authoring instance: the server address as well as the ID and password used to connect to this instance. The campaign-api user account password is the same as the campaign-remote user that you set a password for in AEM.

   NOTE

   Make sure that the server address does not end in a trailing slash. For example, enter https://yourserver:4502 instead of https://yourserver:4502/

   

4. Make sure that the Enabled checkbox is selected.

Verifying the AEMResourceTypeFilter option

The AEMResourceTypeFilter option is used to filter types of AEM resources that can be used in Adobe Campaign. This allows Adobe Campaign to retrieve AEM contents that are specifically designed to be used in Adobe Campaign only.

This option should come pre-configured; however, if you change this option, it may lead to a non-functioning integration.

To verify the AEMResourceTypeFilter option is configured:

1. Go to Platform >Options.

2. In the AEMResourceTypeFilter option, check that the paths are correct. This field must contain the value:

   mcm/campaign/components/newsletter,mcm/campaign/components/campaign_newsletterpage,mcm/neolane/components/newsletter

   Or in some cases, the value is as follows:

   mcm/campaign/components/newsletter

   

Configuring Adobe Experience Manager

To configure AEM, you must do the following:

• Configure replication between instances.
• Connect AEM to Adobe Campaign via Cloud Services.
• Configure the externalizer.

Configuring replication between AEM instances

Content created from the AEM authoring instance is first sent to the publishing instance. You need to publish so that the images in the newsletter are available on the publish instance and to newsletter recipients. The replication agent must therefore be configured to replicate from the AEM authoring instance to the AEM publishing instance.

This step is also necessary to replicate certain authoring instance configurations into the publishing instance.

To configure replication between AEM instances:

1. From the authoring instance, select AEM logo> Tools icon > Deployment > Replication > Agents on author, then click Default Agent.

   

   NOTE

   Avoid using localhost (that is a local copy of AEM) when configuring your integration with Adobe Campaign unless the publish and author instance are both on the same computer.

2. Tap or click Edit then select the Transport tab.

3. Configure the URI by replacing localhost with the IP address or the address of the AEM publishing instance.

   

Connecting AEM to Adobe Campaign

Before you can use AEM and Adobe Campaign together, you must establish the link between both solutions so that they can communicate.

1. Connect to your AEM authoring instance.

2. Select AEM logo > Tools icon > Deployment > Cloud Services, then Configure now in the Adobe Campaign section.

   

3. Create a new configuration by entering a Title and click Create, or choose the existing configuration that you want to link with your Adobe Campaign instance.

4. Edit the configuration so that it matches the parameters of your Adobe Campaign instance.

   • Username: aemserver, the Adobe Campaign AEM Integration package operator used to establish the link between the two solutions.
   • Password: Adobe Campaign aemserver operator password. You may have to re-specify the password for this operator directly in Adobe Campaign.
   • API End Point: Adobe Campaign instance URL.

5. Select Connect to Adobe Campaign and click OK.

   

   NOTE

   After you create your email and publish it, you need to re-publish the configuration onto your publish instance.

   

Configuring the externalizer

You need to configure the externalizer in AEM on your author instance. The Externalizer is an OSGi service that lets you transform a resource path into an external and absolute URL. This service provides a central place to configure those external URLs and build them.

See Configure the externalizer for general instructions. For the Adobe Campaign integration, make sure you configure the publish server at https://<host>:<port>/system/console/configMgr/com.day.cq.commons.impl.ExternalizerImplnot point to localhost:4503 but to a server that is reachable by the Adobe Campaign console.

If it points to localhost:4503 or another server that Adobe Campaign cannot reach, your images will not appear on the Adobe Campaign console.

Advanced Configurations

You can also perform some advanced configurations, namely:

• Manage personalization fields and blocks.
• Deactivate a personalization block.
• Manage target extension data.

Managing personalization fields and blocks

The fields and blocks available to add personalization to your email content in AEM are managed by Adobe Campaign.

A default list is provided but can be modified. You can also add or hide personalization fields and blocks.

Adding a personalization field

To add a new personalization field to those that are already available, you have to extend the Adobe Campaign nms:seedMember schema as follows:

1. Go to the Administration > Configuration > Data schemas node in the Adobe Campaign navigation.

2. Select New.

   

3. In the pop-up window, select Extend the data in the table using an extension schema and click Next.

   

4. Enter the different parameters of the extended schema:

   • Schema: select the nms:seedMember schema. The other fields in the window are automatically completed.
   • Namespace: personalize the namespace of the extended schema.

5. Edit the XML code of the schema to specify the field that you want to add there. For more information on extending schemas in Adobe Campaign, refer to the Configuration guide.

6. Save your schema then update the Adobe Campaign database structure via the Tools > Advanced > Update database structure menu in the console.

7. Disconnect then reconnect to the Adobe Campaign console to save your changes. The new field now appears in the list of personalization fields available in AEM.

Example

To add a Registration Number field, you must have the following elements:

• The nms:recipient schema extension named cus:recipient contains:

<element desc="Recipient table (profiles)" img="nms:recipient.png" label="Recipients" labelSingular="Recipient" name="recipient">

  <attribute dataPolicy="smartCase" desc="Recipient registration number" 
  label="Registration Number"
  length="50" name="registrationNumber" type="string"/>

</element>

The nms:seedMember schema extension named cus:seedMember contains:

<element desc="Seed to insert in the export files" img="nms:unknownad.png" label="Seed addresses" labelSingular="Seed" name="seedMember">

  <element name="custom_nms_recipient">
    <attribute name="registrationNumber" 
    template="cus:recipient:recipient/@registrationNumber"/>
  </element>

</element>

The Registration Number field is now part of the available personalization fields:

Hiding a personalization field

To hide a personalization field among those that are already available, you must extend the Adobe Campaign nms:seedMember schema as detailed in the Adding a personalization field section. Apply the following steps:

1. Copy the field that you want to take from the nms:seedMember schema in the extended schema (cus:seedMember for example).

2. Add the advanced=“true” XML attribute to the field. It no longer appears in the list of personalization fields available in AEM.

   For example, to hide the Middle Name field, the cud:seedMember schema must contain the following element:

   <element desc="Seed to insert in the export files" img="nms:unknownad.png" label="Seed addresses" labelSingular="Seed" name="seedMember">
   
     <element name="custom_nms_recipient">
       <attribute advanced="true" name="middleName"/>
     </element>
   
   </element>
   

Deactivating a personalization block

To deactivate a personalization block among those available:

1. Go to the Resources > Campaign Management > Personalization blocks node in the Adobe Campaign navigation.

2. Select the personalization block that you want to deactivate in AEM.

3. Clear the Visible in the customization menus checkbox and save your changes. The block no longer appears in the list of personalization blocks available in Adobe Campaign.

   

Managing target extension data

You can also insert target extension data for personalization. Target extension data (also called ‘Target Data’), comes from enriching or adding data in a query in a campaign workflow for example. For more information, refer to the Creating queries and Enriching data sections.