What’s new in the December 2023 release of Adobe Experience Manager Guides as a Cloud Service

This article covers the new and enhanced features in the version December 2023 of Adobe Experience Manager Guides (later referred to as Experience Manager Guides as a Cloud Service).

For more details on the upgrade instructions, compatibility matrix, and the issues fixed in this release, view Release Notes.

Use variables in the PDF output

You can use variables to dynamically insert and manage reusable information. Experience Manager Guides helps you create, edit, and preview variables while you generate the PDF output. You can quickly modify the values of variables and make your documents portable and easy to update.

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Create and manage variables in the Web Editor.

You can also create variable sets that override the default values and assign alternate values to your variables. Insert these variables within the page layout and use the same PDF layout, you don’t have to create separate layouts for every set of values. For example, you can create a variable set for each product release. This variable set can consist of variables for different product details like product name, version number, and release date. Then, you can add different values for these variables.

Variable set 1: Adobe-set1

Variable set 2: Adobe-set2

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Generate the PDF output using variables in the PDF layout.

You can apply styles and use HTML markup to format the variables. You can also quickly update the values for any variables whenever required and regenerate the output. For example, if you need to update the details for a version, you can edit the value of the version in the VersionNumber variable and regenerate the output.

Learn more about how to use variables in the PDF output.

Revamped experience to edit the attributes

Now, you get a revamped experience to add or edit the attributes for an element from the Content Properties panel in the Web Editor.

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Add attributes from the Content Properties panel.

You can also easily edit and delete the attributes.

For more details, refer to the Content Properties feature description within the Right Panel section.

Edit metadata while authoring

Now, while authoring, you can update the file metadata tags using the dropdown from the File Properties in the right panel. You can also select Edit more properties to update more metadata.

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Update metadata and edit file properties from the right panel.

For more details, refer to the File Properties feature description within the Right Panel section.

Ability to publish content to the ServiceNow knowledge base

You can now also publish your content to the ServiceNow knowledge base platform.

With the December 2023 release, as an administrator, you can create a publish profile for the ServiceNow knowledge base server. Then, as an author or a publisher, you can choose that ServiceNow publish profile in the output preset to publish the output to the specified knowledge base.

This feature helps you publish content, like text, videos, and images, to the ServiceNow knowledge base platform and maintain a comprehensive repository.

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Create an output preset for the ServiceNow knowledge base.

Learn more about the Knowledge Base output presets.

Enhanced Map collection dashboard

Experience Manager Guides provides an enhanced Map collection dashboard. In a map collection, you can quickly configure the metadata properties in bulk for the DITA maps. This feature is handy as you don’t have to update the metadata properties for each DITA map individually.

Now, you can view the filename of the DITA map. You can also view the Baselines. This helps you quickly find the baseline used for a preset.

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View, edit, and generate output from the map collection dashboard.

Learn how to use Map Collection for output generation.

View key attributes in the Map View

When you define key attributes for the topic or map references, you can also view the title, the corresponding icon, and the key in the left panel. The key is displayed as key=<key-name>.

For more details, refer to the Map View feature description in the Left Panel section.

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View the key attribute in the Map View.

Ability to duplicate a baseline based on label

Experience Manager Guides now provides an enhanced user experience for creating the baselines from the Web Editor.
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Create baseline from the Web Editor.

It also allows you to duplicate a baseline based on the label. The reference version is picked based on the given label (if it exists) while duplicating, or else picks the version from the duplicated baseline.

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Duplicate a baseline based on a label or create an exact copy.

Learn more about how to create and manage baselines from the Web Editor.

Resolve cross-map links in the AEM Site output

Cross-map links (XREF with scope peer) getting rendered in the AEM Site output are now resolved as per the file title of the publishing context set for the generated map.

Configure the URL of the AEM Site output to use the document title

Experience Manager Guides allows you, as an administrator, to configure the URL of the AEM Site output. If the filename doesn’t exist or contains all special characters, you can configure to replace them with a separator in the URL of the AEM Site output. You can also replace them with the first child topic’s name. Learn how to configure the URL of the AEM Site output to use the document title.