This guide covers Adobe Experience Manager Assets, detailing the options for asset distribution portals with Adobe Experience Manager. It includes a comparison of your options and a recommendation from an AEM product expert on when to leverage each solution.
When to use asset distribution portals
During my first experience working with AEM Assets, I was thrown into a consulting project as the DAM Strategist and told 'a good DAM keeps the right people in and the wrong people out.' Without knowing much about AEM at the time, I held onto that fact as one of the few sentences I felt confident parroting in a meeting. Fast-forward several years, I can tell you a lot more about DAMs, and today, I’ll revisit that notion in terms of Adobe’s options for distributing your assets to the right people.
A good DAM allows proper access to all. I frequently encourage my customers to think of their content and all its touchpoints. A single asset could (and should) interact with a multitude of teams – Creative, Reviewers, Legal, Brand, Campaign, Marketing, Vendors, Agencies, Wholesalers, Partners – just to name a few. The DAM allows for your power users to have control over your assets, but it isn't feasible or optimal to give each team authoring access to the DAM. Even from a licensing standpoint that would get very expensive.
So, enter the need for an asset distribution portal. Simply put, an asset distribution portal is a place for users (who do not need access to AEM Author) to access approved assets and perform key activities like searching and downloading. In today's digital world, being able to access approved assets should not be a bottleneck for your business.
I enjoy discussing asset distribution portals with my customers for two reasons:
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Adobe has three quick-time-to-value options for asset distribution portals, empowering customers to select the one that makes the most sense for their business.
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I have witnessed customers create sophisticated and successful solutions with all three options, so I can confidently recommend each option.
Adobe's distribution options include Content Hub, Brand Portal, and Asset Share Commons. To boil it down to just the basics, think of these three solutions:
- Content Hub - Content Hub is the newest asset distribution offering that is self-deployable and comes free with AEM Assets Cloud Service licenses. Content Hub has a search-first browsing experience, and all innovations from Adobe's product team center on this solution.
- Brand Portal - Brand Portal is the predecessor of Content Hub, with a folder-based browsing experience. It is available to AEM Managed Service or On-Premise licenses.
- Asset Share Commons - Asset Share Commons is an open-source solution that uses Adobe Experience Manager Sites archetypes and components to allow your team to customize your distribution portal. It requires implementation.
From a glance, where does this asset distribution flow chart take you?
Focusing on each solution, let's discuss why your team would select each one, to give the right people access to your assets.
Content Hub
I encourage my customers to consider Content Hub first.
Why I'd recommend
- Quick time to stand up - Content Hub is a turnkey solution that is self-deployable and comes free with AEM Assets Cloud Service licenses. There are OOTB options to configure the UI to fit your needs.
- Highly performant infrastructure - Content Hub has 50x the ingestion speed of Brand Portal, with faster search, dynamic filtering, and download experiences.
- Innovations are going here - AEM's product team rolls out all enhancements and innovations to Content Hub (and not Brand Portal). If Content Hub currently does not have functionality that your team needs, submit it as feedback via your AEM UI for consideration for our roadmap.
- Connect with your Content Supply Chain - Content Hub uses AEM Assets as its single source of truth, meaning that integrating AEM with other Adobe tools such as Workfront or Creative Cloud allows those workflows to reflect in Content Hub.
- Asset-focused UX - We heard your feedback on Brand Portal's UX. Content Hub was designed to look more professional and focus the attention of the user on the assets themselves.
- Search-first experience - Users are shifting their focus to finding assets via a search-first experience, using keyword search or filters to find assets over navigating through a folder path or remembering naming conventions. Content Hub was designed to reflect that search-first experience.
- Opportunities to 'remix' assets - If your organization owns Adobe Express, users can edit assets straight from the UI, something new and not available to the other solutions.
When to choose something else
- If your team needs a bespoke portal
- If your team is on AEM Managed Service or AEM On-Premise (Content Hub is only available to Cloud Service customers)
Key features
- Users can search, view, create collections, download, and upload assets
- Insights dashboard for data on basic end-user behavior
- Publish via 'Asset Status' metadata field
- Permissions structure at the attribute level (metadata values)
- Faster infrastructure
- Easily configurable
- Ability for users to create new asset variations from the UI
- Opportunities for GenAI
Brand Portal
AEM customers on Managed Service or On-Premise can leverage Brand Portal for their Asset Distribution solution. Customers with Cloud Service are encouraged to consider Content Hub over Brand Portal, as Content Hub is its successor.
Why I'd recommend
- Quick time to stand up – Brand Portal is an OOTB solution designed for quick set up.
- Folder-based UI – Brand Portal looks just like AEM Assets, and users navigate to assets via the Folder Structure. If your end-users' processes are heavily dependent on a folder hierarchy, Brand Portal will be very compatible.
- Running AEM Managed Service or On-Premise – Since the introduction of Content Hub, Brand Portal is no longer included by default to Cloud Service customers and previously deployed tenants are encouraged to migrate. Brand Portal remains for Managed Service and On-Premise customers.
When to choose something else
- If your team is making an effort to modernize your distribution portal
- If your team needs a bespoke portal
Key features
- Users can search, view, create collections, download, and upload assets
- Permission structure at the folder level
- Publish via Publishing Workflow in AEM Author
- UI mimics AEM Author
- Ability for guest UI access (public exploring options)
- Ability for bulk-hierarchical folder downloads, maintaining structure
- Option to upload assets to "contribution folders"
- Add-on license to Managed Service or On-Premise customers (not included for new Cloud Service customers)
- The tool is in ‘maintenance mode’ - no new functionality will be introduced
Asset Share Commons
I recommend Asset Share Commons to any customer looking for a bespoke asset distribution portal and who has a development team ready to go.
Why I’d Recommend
- Ability to customize your portal - this solution is built by a development team and can adhere to any requirements you may have.
- Ability to leverage open-source code to expedite the development process - Asset Share Commons provides a free download of AEM Project archetypes and components to help expedite the creation of your portal.
- Compatible with any AEM instance - Customers on Cloud Service, Managed Service, or On-Premise can use Asset Share Commons.
- Opportunity for complex permission models and login experiences – Customers can develop their site to display different login experiences for different end-users and set up complex permission structures if need be.
When to choose something else
- If you're looking to stand up your asset distribution portal quickly
- When you don't have a development team on-hand to implement
- When you want something OOTB
Key features
- Users can search, view, and download assets
- Asset-focused UX
- Ability to customize the UX to fit your company's brand and requirements
- Free open-source reference for your implementation
- Requires a full implementation and costs for building and maintaining the site
Read more on Asset Share Commons
Of these three asset distribution portals, I hope you find one that meets the needs of your team and helps you accomplish the goal of keeping the right people in and out of your DAM, while allowing access for all necessary teams. I have a feeling your Adobe Account Manager would love to discuss or demo these options with you if you have any further questions.
Note that in order to be successful with any asset distribution portal, be sure to have a universal DAM strategy (folder structure, naming conventions, metadata schemas, and tagging hierarchies) in place in your AEM Assets author instance. Your team should also have developers available for testing and deployment. More information on getting started with asset best practices are linked below.
- Best practices for getting started with Assets
- Folder structure & naming
- Access & permissions
- Metadata, metadata schemas & metadata profiles
- Taxonomy and tagging
- Governance
- Training and enablement
Resources on asset distribution options
- Content Hub Overview
- Content Hub webinar - recording and presentation
- Content Hub getting started video
- Brand Portal Overview
- Asset Share Commons