DocumentationAEM 6.4Authoring Guide

Experience Fragments experience-fragments

Last update: Wed May 03 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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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AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated.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.

An Experience Fragment is a group of one or more components including content and layout that can be referenced within pages. They can contain any component.

An Experience Fragment:

  • Is a part of an experience (page).
  • Can be used across multiple pages.
  • Is based on a template (editable only) to define structure and components.
  • Is made up of one or more components, with layout, in a paragraph system.
  • Can contain other experience fragments.
  • Can be combined with other components (including other Experience Fragments) to form a complete page (experience).
  • Can have different variations, which may share content and/or components.
  • Can be broken down into building blocks that can be used across multiple variations of the fragment.

You can use Experience Fragments:

  • If an author wants to re-use parts (a fragment of an experience) of a page, they need to copy and paste that fragment. Creating and maintaining these copy/paste experiences is time-consuming and prone to user errors. Experience Fragments eliminate the need for copy/paste.
  • To support the headless CMS use-case. Authors want to use AEM only for authoring but not for delivering to the customer. A third party system/touchpoint would consume that experience and then deliver to the end user.
NOTE
Write access for experience fragments requires the user account to be registered in the group:
experience-fragments-editors
Please contact your system administrator if you are experiencing any issues.

When Should You Use Experience Fragments? when-should-you-use-experience-fragments

Experience Fragments should be used:

  • Whenever you want to reuse experiences.

    • Experiences that will be reused with same or similar content

  • When you use AEM as a content delivery platform for third parties.

    • Any solution that wants to use AEM as the content delivery platform
    • Embedding content in third party touchpoints

  • If you have an Experience with different variations or renditions.

    • Channel or context-specific variations
    • Experiences that make sense to group (for example a campaign with different experiences across channels)

  • When you use Omnichannel Commerce.

    • Sharing commerce-related content on social media channels at scale
    • Making touchpoints transactional

Organizing your Experience Fragments organizing-your-experience-fragments

It is recommended to:

Creating folders allows you to:

  • create a meaningful structure for your Experience Fragments; for example, according to classification

    note note
    NOTE
    It is not necessary to align the structure of your Experience Fragments with the page structure of your site.

  • allocate the allowed templates at the folder level

    note note
    NOTE
    You can use the template editor to create your own template.

The following example shows Experience Fragments structured according to Contributors. The structure used also illustrates how other features, such as Multi Site Management (including language copies), can be used.

CAUTION
The following screenshot was taken from the WKND site using Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service.

Folders for Experience Fragments

Creating and Configuring a Folder for your Experience Fragments creating-and-configuring-a-folder-for-your-experience-fragments

To create and configure a folder for your Experience Fragments it is recommended to:

  1. Create a folder.

  2. Configure the allowed Experience Fragment templates for that folder.

NOTE
It is also possible to configure the Allowed Templates for your instance, but this method is not recommended as the values may be overwritten upon upgrade.

Configure the Allowed Templates for your Folder configure-allowed-templates-folder

NOTE
This is the recommended method for specifying the Allowed Templates, as the values will not be overwritten upon upgrade.

  1. Navigate to the required Experience Fragments folder.

  2. Select the folder, and then Properties.

  3. Specify the regular expression for retrieving the required templates in the Allowed Templates field.

    For example:
    /conf/(.*)/settings/wcm/templates/experience-fragment(.*)?

    Experience Fragment Properties - Allowed Templates

  4. Select Save and Close.

Configure the Allowed Templates for your Instance configure-allowed-templates-instance

CAUTION
It is not recommended to change the Allowed Templates by this method, as the templates specified may be overwritten upon upgrade.
Please use this dialog for information purposes only.

  1. Navigate to the required Experience Fragments console.

  2. Select Configuration options:

    Configuration button

  3. Specify the required templates in the Configure Experience Fragments dialog:

    Configure Experience Fragments

  4. Select Save.

Creating an Experience Fragment creating-an-experience-fragment

To create an Experience Fragment:

  1. Select Experience Fragments from the Global Navigation.

    screen_shot_2018-04-05at92221am1

  2. Navigate to the required folder and select Create.

  3. Select Experience Fragment to open the Create Experience Fragment wizard.

    Select the required Template, then Next:

    xf-authoring-02

  4. Enter the Properties for your Experience Fragment.

    A Title is mandatory. If the Name is left blank it will be derived from the Title.

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  5. Click Create.

    A message will be displayed. Select:

    • Done to return to the console
    • Open to open the fragment editor

Editing your Experience Fragment editing-your-experience-fragment

The Experience Fragment Editor offers you similar capabilities to the normal page Editor. See Editing Page Content for more information on how to use it.

The following example procedure illustrates how to create a teaser for a product:

  1. Drag and drop a Category Teaser from the Components Browser.

    xf-authoring-04

  2. Select Configure from the component toolbar.

  3. Add the Asset and define the Properties as required.

  4. Confirm the definitions with Done (tick icon).

  5. Add more components as required.

Creating An Experience Fragment Variation creating-an-experience-fragment-variation

You can create variations of your Experience Fragment, depending on your needs:

  1. Open your fragment for editing.

  2. Open the Variations tab.

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  3. Create allows you to create:

    • Variation
    • Variation as live-copy.

  4. Define the required properties:

    • Template
    • Title
    • Name; if left blank it will be derived from the Title
    • Description
    • Variation tags

    xf-authoring-07

  5. Confirm with Done (tick icon), the new variation will be shown in the panel:

    xf-authoring-08

Using your Experience Fragment using-your-experience-fragment

You can now use your Experience Fragment when authoring your pages:

  1. Open any page for editing.

    For example: http://localhost:4502/editor.html/content/we-retail/language-masters/en/products/men.html

  2. Create an instance of the Experience Fragment component, by dragging the component from the Components browser to the page paragraph system:

    xf-authoring-09

  3. Add the actual Experience Fragment to the component instance; either:

    • Drag the required fragment from the Assets Browser and drop onto the component
    • Select Configure from the component toolbar and specify the fragment to use, confirm with Done (tick)

    xf-authoring-10

    note note
    NOTE
    Edit, in the component toolbar, operates as a shortcut to open the fragment in the fragment editor.

Building Blocks building-blocks

You can select one or more components to create a building block for recycling within your fragment:

Creating a Building Block creating-a-building-block

To create a new Building Block:

  1. In the Experience Fragment editor, select the components you want to re-use:

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  2. From the components toolbar, select Convert to building block:

    xf-authoring-13-icon

    For example:

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  3. Enter the name of the Building Block, and confirm with Convert:

    xf-authoring-14

  4. The Building Block will be shown in the tab, and can be selected in the paragraph system:

    xf-authoring-15

Managing a Building Block managing-a-building-block

Your building block is visible in the Building Blocks tab. For each block, the following actions are available:

  • Go to master: open the master variation in a new tab
  • Rename
  • Delete

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Using a Building Block using-a-building-block

You can drag your building block to the paragraph system of any fragment, as with any component.

The Plain HTML Rendition the-plain-html-rendition

Using the .plain. selector in the URL, you can access the plain HTML rendition.

This is available from the browser, but its primary purpose is to allow other applications (for example, third party web apps, custom mobile implementations) to access the content of the Experience Fragment directly, using only the URL.

The plain HTML rendition adds the protocol, host and context path to paths that are:

  • of the type: src, href, or action

  • or end with: -src, or -href

For example:

.../brooklyn-coat/master.plain.html

NOTE
Links always reference the publish instance. They are intended to be consumed by third parties, so the link will always be called from the publish instance, not the author.

xf-authoring-17

Exporting Experience Fragments exporting-experience-fragments

By default, Experience Fragments are delivered in the HTML format. This can be used by both AEM and third party channels alike.

For export to Adobe Target, HTML is used. See Target Integration with Experience Fragments for full information.

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