Adobe Experience Manager desktop app release notes

The release information for the latest desktop app version 2.1 (2.1.2.0) is below. The release date is Mar 26, 2021. It is a minor release with an enhancement.

The supported Experience Manager versions are:

• Experience Manager as a Cloud Service. See release notes.
• Experience Manager 6.5.0 or newer, on Adobe Managed Services (AMS) or On-Premise. See service pack release notes.
• Experience Manager 6.4.4 or newer, on Adobe Managed Services (AMS) or On-Premise. See service pack release notes.
• Experience Manager 6.4.0 - 6.4.3 with the compatibility package installed, on Adobe Managed Services (AMS) or On-Premise.
• Experience Manager 6.3 (with compatibility package)
• Experience Manager 6.3.3.1 or newer with the compatibility package installed. Desktop app is not supported for Experience Manager 6.3.3.0 or previous versions.

Adobe Experience Manager desktop app is available for the following operating systems:

• macOS X 10.14 or newer, with the latest bug fixes. Mac computers with Apple silicon are not supported yet.
• Windows 10 with the latest service packs and bug fixes.

The download URLs for supported OS are:

Support for different assets and file types

The application supports assets stored in Experience Manager that represent binary file for its basic operations. Opening files in the native desktop application relies on the operating system association of the specific file types like PNG or JPG to specific applications like Mac Preview or Adobe Photoshop.

A few file types support placing linked assets in the binary. The application pre-downloads the linked assets if the asset is present in the Experience Manager repository when such binary files are opened using the desktop app. Currently supported file types are:

• Adobe InDesign files (INDD format)
• Adobe Illustrator files (AI format)
• Adobe Photoshop files (PS format)

The feature is supported with Adobe Creative Cloud 2018 and Adobe Creative Cloud 2019 versions of the above application. The app uses a heuristic, best-match approach to map the local desktop paths of linked assets to URLs on the Experience Manager server. It relies on a few assumptions:

• Paths to placed files in the native application use a global desktop path (placed from the local network share shown with Reveal option).

• Paths are stored in the file’s XMP record by the native app.

• Experience Manager has extracted the XMP record with the paths to the asset’s metadata record.

• The paths can be matched to assets in Experience Manager, that is, the placed files are also in Experience Manager under a matching path.

New features, enhancements, and bug fixes

To know the details, see What’s new in v2.0.

Update in app v2.1.2.0

• A new option to Clear Cookies is added to the main menu of the application. It helps with potential login issues, for example when changing connection from a server to another. See clear cookies before connecting.

Update in app v2.1.1.0

• An advanced setting lets the app emulate v1.10 app behavior when uploading folders. In v1.10, the node names created in the repository respect spaces and casing of the folder names provided by the user. The default behavior of v2.1 continues to remain same, that is, replace multiple spaces in folder names with a hyphen in the repository node name and convert to lowercase node names. See the app preferences.

Update in app v2.1.0.0

• To upload assets, users can now drag the files or folders on the application’s interface, directly from Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. This works in addition to the upload option previously available in the application.

Update in app v2.0.3

The bug fixed in the current version is:

• Fixed the login issue for app users on Windows who try to access the DAM repository on Adobe Experience Manager 6.5.5.0.

Updates in app v2.0.2

The bug fixes and updates are:

• Upload acceleration setting now made available to boost the upload performance. When this setting is turned on, the app uploads faster by using more local CPU threads and is more resource-intensive.

• Asset uploads when filenames or paths containing certain GB18030 characters is fixed.

• Sort by relevance option is available after switching to another sort type in the search results.

• Desktop app now lists sub-folders without the need to explicitly refresh.

• (Windows) Fixed a rare issue of unusable app interface on some Windows machines. Users cannot click on the app interface as it appears distorted with the click-area of interface elements ‘shifted’ sideway.

Updates in app v2.0.1

The bug fixes and updates are:

• Allow option to configure %Temp% directory to match %APPDATA% path.

• Allow users to log in on Experience Manager Author via Okta SAML authentication.

Installation instructions

To know how to install and configure the app, see Install Experience Manager desktop app.

If you are upgrading from a previous Experience Manager desktop app, you must follow these best practices for transitioning that are listed at upgrade from previous version.

Important notes about how the app works

It is important to understand the following about the application and how it works.

• The application provides full control over operations that require full transfer of asset binaries from and to Experience Manager (open, edit, upload changes, and upload assets).

  • If you want to work with the asset on desktop, you must explicitly Open, Edit, or Download to your desktop, either individually, in a folder, or via multi-selection.

  • If you want to get local changes to assets uploaded to Experience Manager, you need to select Upload Changes, either individually or via multi-selection.

  • The application is not a ‘sync client’ that synchronizes assets across the desktop and Experience Manager.

  • The application does not provide a network share that maps the Experience Manager repository as a virtual folder structure.

• The list of assets shown by the application is based on the status of the Assets repository. Any files downloaded locally and then renamed in the local files or cache folder are not displayed or managed by the application.

• If the app does not display the expected results, click refresh icon in the top bar.

• The local network share, shown when you use Reveal File action, only shows files (and folders) that are available locally. Reveal File and Reveal Folder pre-downloads assets to help get the right assets showing in the local network share.

• SMB (Mac) /WebDAV (Win) local network share is used when an Adobe Creative Cloud app reads the asset files linked/placed in a native file of the Creative Cloud app.

The following diagram illustrates the flow of assets and files from cloud to local file system and the opposite way, as initiated by user actions.

Known issues

User interface issues:

• At times, the interface of the desktop app might become blank. Right-click and click Refresh to reload the application. After such a refresh, you start at the root of the DAM repository. Updates to or statuses of your assets are retained.

• Difficult to navigate folders/search results without a track pad or mouse pointer. The scroll-bar might not appear with mouse devices without mouse wheel.

• Infrequently, the progress bar does not display correctly when the uploading asset changes.

• After applying and removing the filter to find all locally edited assets, the app does not take users to their search results or folder view that the users started with. The app displays the root folder of the DAM repository.

• At times, when you connect to a URL that doesn’t have Experience Manager server running, the connect screen becomes unresponsive. Exit the application and start it again.

CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) issues:

• Application tries to upload files even with invalid characters, might cause server-side upload failure.

• When uploading changes to an asset with comments, the comments are stored with the asset in Experience Manager but are not visible as versioning comments. This issue is resolved in Experience Manager 6.4.5 and Experience Manager 6.5.1. Adobe recommends installing the latest service packs.

• Asset transfers cannot be canceled by the user. If you triggered an unintended large transfer, exit the application and start it again.

Platform issues:

• At times, on Windows, an asset’s status may immediately change to Edited Locally after opening it, even though you may not have edited it. Click Refresh to update.