Share asset via a link

Last update: May 3, 2023

CREATED FOR:

  • User
CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

Adobe Experience Manager Assets lets you share assets, folders, and collections as a URL with members of your organization and external entities, including partners and vendors. Sharing assets through a link is a convenient way of making resources available to external parties without them having to first log in to Assets.

PREREQUISITES
  • You require Edit ACL permission on the folder or the asset that you want to share as a link.
  • To send emails to the users, configure the SMTP server details in Day CQ Mail Service.

Share assets

To generate the URL for assets that you want to share with users, use the Link Sharing dialog. Users with administrator privileges or with read permissions at /var/dam/share location are able to view the links shared with them.

  1. In the Assets user interface, select the asset to share as a link.

  2. From the toolbar, click the Share Link share assets icon . The link that will be created after clicking Share is displayed in advance in the Share Link field. The link is not yet created till you click Submit.

    Dialog with the Link Share

    Figure: The dialog to share assets as a link.

  3. In the email address box of the Link Sharing dialog, type the email ID of the user you want to share the link with. You can add one or more users.

    Share links to assets directly from the Link Sharing dialog

    Figure: Share links to assets directly from the Link Sharing dialog.

    NOTE
    If you enter an email ID of a user that is not a member of your organization, the words External User are prefixed with the email ID of the user.

  4. In the Subject box, enter a subject for the asset you want to share.

  5. In the Message box, enter an optional message.

  6. In the Expiration field, specify an expiration date and time for the link to stop working. The default expiration time for the link is one day.

    Set expiration date of shared link

  7. To let users download the original asset along with the renditions, select Allow download of original file. By default, users can only download the renditions of the asset that you share as a link.

  8. Click Share. A message confirms that the link is shared with the users via an email.

  9. To view the shared asset, click the link in the email that is sent to the user. To generate a preview of the asset, click the shared asset. To close the preview, click Back. If you have shared a folder, click Parent Folder to return to the parent folder.

    chlimage_1-546

    NOTE
    Experience Manager supports generating the preview of assets of only the supported file types. If other MIME types are shared, you can only download the assets and cannot preview.

  10. To download the shared asset, click Select from the toolbar, click the asset, and then click Download from the toolbar.

    Toolbar option to download the shared asset

  11. To view the assets that you have shared as links, go to the Assets user interface and click the Experience Manager logo. Choose Navigation. In the Navigation pane, choose Shared Links to display a list of shared assets.

  12. To un-share an asset, select it and click Unshare from the toolbar. A confirmation message follows. The entry for the asset is removed from the list.

Configure Day CQ mail service

  1. On the Experience Manager home page, navigate to Tools > Operations > Web Console.

  2. From the list of services, locate Day CQ Mail Service.

  3. Click Edit beside the service, and configure the following parameters for Day CQ Mail Service with the details mentioned against their names:

    • SMTP server host name: email server host name
    • SMTP server port: email server port
    • SMTP user: email server user name
    • SMTP password: email server password

    chlimage_1-548

  4. Click Save.

Configure maximum data size

When you download assets from the link shared using the Link Sharing feature, Experience Manager compresses the asset hierarchy from the repository and then returns the asset in a ZIP file. However, in the absence of limits to the amount of data that can be compressed in a ZIP file, huge amounts of data is subjected to compression, which causes out of memory errors in JVM. To secure the system from a potential denial of service attack due to this situation, configure the maximum size using the Max Content Size (uncompressed) parameter for Day CQ DAM Adhoc Asset Share Proxy Servlet in Configuration Manager. If uncompressed size of the asset exceeds the configured value, asset download requests are rejected. The default value is 100 MB.

  1. Click the Experience Manager logo and then go to Tools > Operations > Web Console.

  2. From the Web Console, locate the Day CQ DAM Adhoc Asset Share Proxy Servlet configuration.

  3. Open the Day CQ DAM Adhoc Asset Share Proxy Servlet configuration in edit mode, and modify the value of the Max Content Size (uncompressed) parameter.

    chlimage_1-549

  4. Save the changes.

Best practices and troubleshooting

  • Asset folders or Collections that contain a whitespace in their name may not get shared.

  • If users cannot download the shared assets, check with your Experience Manager administrator what the download limits are.

  • If you cannot send email with links to shared assets or if the other users cannot receive your email, check with your Experience Manager administrator if the email service is configured or not.

  • If you cannot share assets using link sharing functionality, ensure that you have the appropriate permissions. See share assets.

  • If a shared asset is moved to a different location, its link stops working. Re-create the link and re-share with the users.

  • If you want to share links from your Experience Manager Author deployment to external entities, ensure that you only expose the following URLs that are used for link sharing, for GET requests only. Block other URLs for security reasons.

    • http://[aem_server]:[port]/linkshare.html
    • http://[aem_server]:[port]/linksharepreview.html
    • http://[aem_server]:[port]/linkexpired.html

    In Experience Manager interface, access Tools > Operations > Web Console. Open the Day CQ Link Externalizer configuration and modify the following properties in the Domains field with the values mentioned against local, author, and publish. For the local and author properties, provide the URL for the local and the Author instances, respectively. If you run a single Experience Manager Author instance, use the same value for local and author properties. For Publish instances, provide the URL of the Experience Manager Publish instance.

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