Experience Fragments experience-fragments
Within Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, an Experience Fragment:
- is a group of one or more components
- includes both content and layout
- can be referenced within pages
- can contain any component
An Experience Fragment:
- Is a part of an experience (page).
- Can be used across multiple pages (that are based on editable templates).
- Is based on a template (editable only) to define structure and components.
- This template is used to create the root page of the Experience Fragment.
- 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).
- One, or more, variations can be created, based on the root page.
- These variations 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.
Without Experience Fragments, the author would 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 user. - With Multi Site Management (MSM); as an Experience Fragment is part of a page. This applies to both the individual fragments and the folders they reside in.
- Content Fragments are editorial content, with definition and structure, but without additional visual design and/or layout. They can be used to access structured data, including texts, numbers, and dates, amongst others.
- Experience Fragments are fully laid out content; a fragment of a web page.
experience-fragments-editors
When Should You Use Experience Fragments? when-should-you-use-experience-fragments
Experience Fragments should be used:
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Whenever you want to reuse experiences.
- Experiences that are reused with same or similar content.
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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.
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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.
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When you use Omnichannel Commerce.
- Making touchpoints transactional.
Organizing your Experience Fragments organizing-your-experience-fragments
It is recommended to:
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use folders to organize your Experience Fragments,
Creating folders lets you:
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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 WKND project structures some Experience Fragments according to Contributors. The structure used also illustrates how other features, such as Multi Site Management (including language copies), can be used.
See:
http://localhost:4502/aem/experience-fragments.html/content/experience-fragments/wknd/language-masters/en/contributors/kumar-selveraj/master
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:
Configure the Allowed Templates for your Folder configure-allowed-templates-folder
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Navigate to the required Experience Fragments folder.
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Select the folder, and then Properties.
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Specify the regular expression for retrieving the required templates in the Allowed Templates field.
For example:
/conf/(.*)/settings/wcm/templates/experience-fragment(.*)?See:
http://localhost:4502/mnt/overlay/cq/experience-fragments/content/experience-fragments/folderproperties.html/content/experience-fragments/wknd
note note NOTE See Templates for Experience Fragments for further details. -
Select Save and Close.
Configure the Allowed Templates for your Instance configure-allowed-templates-instance
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Navigate to the required Experience Fragments console.
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Select Configuration options:
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Specify the required templates in the Configure Experience Fragments dialog:
note note NOTE See Templates for Experience Fragments for further details. -
Select Save.
Creating an Experience Fragment creating-an-experience-fragment
To create an Experience Fragment:
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Select Experience Fragments from the Global Navigation.
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Navigate to the required folder and select Create:
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Select Experience Fragment to open the Create Experience Fragment wizard.
Select the required Template, then Next:
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Enter the Properties for your Experience Fragment.
A Title is mandatory. If the Name is left blank it is derived from the Title.
note note NOTE Tags from the Experience Fragment template will not be merged with tags on this Experience Fragment root page. These are completely separate. -
Click Create.
A message is 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.
The following example procedure illustrates how to create a teaser for a product:
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Drag and drop the required component from the Components Browser.
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Depending on the component:
- Add any content and/or assets as required.
- Configure the properties as required.
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Add more components as required.
For example: http://<host>:<port>/editor.html/content/experience-fragments/wknd/language-masters/en/contributors/stacey-roswells/master.html
Creating An Experience Fragment Variation creating-an-experience-fragment-variation
You can create variations of your Experience Fragment, depending on your needs:
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Open your fragment for editing.
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Open the Variations tab.
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Create lets you create:
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Variation
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Variation as live-copy.
note note NOTE Creating an initial Variation as Live Copy will inherit the title by using the Live Copy Source as the Master Variation.
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Define the required properties:
- Template
- Title
- Name - if left blank it is derived from the Title
- Description
- Variation tags
For example:
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Confirm with Done, the new variation is shown in the panel.
Using your Experience Fragment using-your-experience-fragment
You can now use your Experience Fragment when authoring your pages:
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Open any page for editing.
note note NOTE The page must be based on an editable template. -
Create an instance of the Experience Fragment component, within the page paragraph system:
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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.
note note NOTE Edit, in the component toolbar, operates as a shortcut to open the fragment in the fragment editor.
For example: http://<host>:<port>/editor.html/content/wknd/language-masters/en/about-us.html
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 Building Block:
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In the Experience Fragment editor, select the components you want to re-use:
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From the components toolbar, select Convert to building block:
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Enter the name of the Building Block, and confirm with Convert:
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The Building Block is shown in the left tab (Local), and can be selected for further action:
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 root page variation in a new tab
- Rename
- Delete
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.
When editing an Experience Fragment available Building Blocks are displayed in the left-hanf tab. You can filter according to:
- Local - Building Blocks from the current Experience Fragment
- All - Building Blocks from all fragments
Personalization on your Experience Fragment personalization-experience-fragment
Personalization on your Experience Fragment allows you, as a marketer, to define target audiences for the Experience Fragment just once, then re-use the fragment in any page. This:
- eliminates the need to specify the required variations for each audience every time the fragment is used
- maintains styling across the offers
You can create an Experience Fragment with multiple components grouped inside this single fragment. You can also create variations of the fragment for each specific audience segment, then reuse these Experience Fragments across the required channels.
Personalization is achieved by defining the Personalization properties on either the Experience Fragment or variation, or the folder containing the fragments; this means that inheritance can override personalization properties.
Configuring these properties also enables the Targeting mode in the Experience Fragment editor.
Defining Personalization for your Experience Fragment defining-personalization-experience-fragment
To personalize your fragment:
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Navigate to the required location in the Experience Fragments console.
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Select either a folder or your fragment, then Properties from the toolbar.
note note NOTE Personalization properties defined on a folder are inherited by all child folders down through the sub-tree, and Experience Fragments (and variations) within that sub-tree. They can be overridden by breaking the inheritance. -
Open the Personalization tab to define and save your settings. For example, on a folder:
note caution CAUTION When a fragment is embedded in a Sites page, and Personalization has been configured, then only the personalization version of the page is used at page rendering time. For the targeting performed on the components in a fragment to work at page rendering, the following conditions must be met: The ContextHub Path selected in the Personalization tab must be either: -
the same path as the one configured for the page where the fragment is rendered
Or:
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a path that contains a subset of the stores defined in the ContextHub configured for the page
The Segments Path selected in the Personalization tab must be either: -
the same path as the one configured for the page where the fragment is rendered
Or
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a path that contains a subset of the segments configured for the page
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Defining Targeting for your Experience Fragment defining-targeting-experience-fragment
After the personalization properties are configured, the Targeting mode is available when the fragment is opened for editing.
This mode operates in the same manner as for page editing. See Targeting mode for the Page Editor for more details.
Details of your Experience Fragment details-of-your-experience-fragment
Details of your fragment can be seen:
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Navigate to the location of your Experience Fragments (do not navigate further down to the variations within the fragment).
Details are shown in all views of the Experience Fragments console, with the List View including details of an export to Target:
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When you open the Properties of the Experience Fragment:
The properties are available in various tabs:
note caution CAUTION These tabs are shown when you open Properties from the Experience Fragments console. If you Open Properties when editing an Experience Fragment, the appropriate Page Properties are shown. 
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Basic
- Title - mandatory
- Description
- Tags
- Total number of variants - information only
- Number of web variants - information only
- Number of non-web variants - information only
- Number of pages using this fragment - information only
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Cloud Services
- Cloud Configuration
- Cloud Service Configurations
- Facebook page ID
- Pinterest board
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References
- A list of references
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Personalization
- ContextHub Path
- Segments Path
- Brand
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The Plain HTML Rendition the-plain-html-rendition
Using the .plain. selector in the URL, you can access the plain HTML rendition from the browser.
Publishing Experience Fragments publishing-experience-fragments
Publishing your Experience Fragment is basically the same as publishing a page (though from the Experience Fragments console or editor).
Alternatively you can also publish to Preview (again from the Experience Fragments console or editor).
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, JSON can also be used. See: