This guide provides recommendations for Digital Asset Managers on creating and sharing intuitive, self-service learning tools for users. By proactively providing on-demand resources that anticipate user needs and empower users, you can boost adoption of Adobe Experience Manager Assets.

As a Digital Asset Manager, your job is to help users succeed with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) by making it easy for them to find, use, and reuse assets. It should be a self-service tool to ensure that your users are properly skilled up to use AEM easily and efficiently. To provide users with the resources they need, you need to show them how to use the tool and anticipate their needs by providing On-demand resources. The Best Buy DAM Managers put together self-service resources to allow users to learn on their own time and to find the answers to frequently asked questions.

Whether you are a Content Manager, DAM Librarian, Digital Asset Specialist, Content Author, Digital Asset Manager or Product Owner, this guide provides you with tips and best practices for enabling your users.

At Best Buy, I lead the DAM Asset Management team who manages the assets. The DAM Asset Management team receives asets from creators, loads them in the DAM, and adds all the necessary metadata, ensuring assets are properly categorized for easier discoverability.

When rolling out the Best Buy assets library, we created one-sheets (one page instructions sheets) and conducted group in-person trainings to educate users about AEM. But end users searching for assets- especially the creative teams - still struggled. They couldn’t find the assets they needed at times, so they ended up creating new assets, or they reached out asking asset managers to direct them to the right asset. Helping users search for assets 1:1 is not efficient and was not going to be sustainable for either team.

Taking a different approach, we introduced smaller-scale, self-service learning opportunities, and provided tailored options to meet the end users and how they want to learn. Below are resources created for our end users.

Enablement Resources

The AEM 101 PDF

This AEM 101 PDF is shared out to new users when they receive an Adobe Experience Manager license. The PDF describes initial log-in information, simple navigation directions and some tips for using the tool. An excerpt of the PDF is shown below:

AEM 101 in-person training

Primarily aimed at the creative team, the training was offered to any new hire or new user of AEM. Training was conducted as a 1:1 or small group session, with a demo on logging in, searching, downloading and rights management. For instance, the training includes a demonstration for how to search for holiday-themed assets and how to download them for use in marketing campaigns.

Suggested Agenda:

• Logging in
• Search/filter tips and tricks
• Downloading
• Collections
• Rights Management
• Projects
• If applicable: Workflows, Experience fragments

Pro-Tip videos

A training folder in AEM houses short, pro-tip videos that demonstrate simple tasks that can reinforce training. Most videos are less than 60 seconds and cover a specific topic, such as logging in, how to find and use filters, how to use rights managed assets. For example, one video shows how to filter to find high-resolution images for social media posts. DAM Managers can share links to specific training resources in response to questions.

The Training folder looks like the picture below and contains folders for each of these areas of enablement:

• How to navigate
• How to search for assets
• How to download assets
• How to use Collections
• How to use project folders
• Rights Managed informatoin
• Asset requirements

Here is an example of a Pro-Tip Video on Search Filters

Rights Management eLearning

After rolling out new Rights Managed functionality, we did a teach-out and also built a required eLearning module that all users had to take. This video covered the basics of Rights Managed, and included a 5-question quiz at the end. Users had to pass the quiz to avoid having their AEM license turned off.

The eLearning begins with a message from the Senior Vice President of Creative and Media, reminding users of why Rights Managed is important and their role in it. The eLearning continues on to explain how to identify rights-managed assets and the importance of adhering to usage rights.

Continuously reporting on how often eLearning is taken and directing any new users to take eLearning is a crucial.

The first page of the eLearning is below:

Monthly office hours / Lunch and Learns

Optional office hours for the Creative and Media department were held during the lunch hour each month. Sessions started with a feature demo and ended with a question-and-answer session. Each session was recorded and stored in AEM for future reference, alongside the pro-tip videos. Common scenarios included: how to create a smart collection, learn how to find and download rights managed assets, and tips and tricks related to searching.

Key Takeaways

1. Know your audience. Your training content should meet your end users in a way they want to learn. Start by asking for feedback, sending out surveys, or just reach out directly to your users to see how they want to learn.
2. Provide consistent communications. Whether it is monthly lunch-and-learns, or using the same location for all training videos, communicate to your users where and when to get the information they need. Find a rhythm and stick with it.
3. Find your focus. Based on end user input, users struggled with Rights Management. Creating a specific training for this topic saved the DAM librarian team time and provided end users with greater confidence when using AEM.

In summary, the Adobe Experience Manager User Adoption and Training initiative aimed to provide a self-service model for end-users to use AEM efficiently for searching, and to facilitate using and reusing assets. By offering a variety of resources, such as pro-tips videos and monthly office hours, the initiative ensured that users had the tools and knowledge they needed to succeed. This approach not only improved user experience but also made asset searching and use more efficient and sustainable for both the users and the training team.