Now that AEM 6.5 has finally been released at Adobe Summit 2019, we can talk about some of the new features and functions available in the product. Here are 5 new features I’ve already seen in exploring AEM 6.5.

Feature 1: Edit Folder Metadata

I am so excited to see this as a new feature in AEM 6.5. This was such a blatant miss in the previous versions of AEM. You could customize the metadata fields for assets and content fragments, but had no ability to configure folders.

To add a custom Folder Metadata field, open Tools (the Hammer) >> Assets and then select “Metadata Folder Schemas”

From there, you can create a new Folder Metadata configuration and apply it to a folder:

And voilà, you now have a custom field in your folder editor!

Feature 2: Touch UI Permissions Editor

In AEM 6.4, one of the few things you still couldn’t do in TouchUI was edit permissions. Clicking on edit permission still kicked you over to ClassicUI to the clunky old permissions editor. In AEM 6.5, this has been ported to the touch UI, cleaned up and made easier to use.

Feature 3: Distribution vs Replication

AEM 6.5 now features a distribution based publication to AEM Publishers vs the traditional CQ5 replication. Not only is this quite a bit more reliable and feature rich versus replication, but it’s implemented in Touch UI. At least for AEM 6.5, you can still use Replication, however Sling Content Distribution seems to be the preferred option.

Feature 4: New Integrations

The application selector in AEM 6.5 features new integrations with the Adobe Experience Platform and Magento Commerce. Of course, for these integrations to work, you will need to license and configure the solutions, but this shows how Adobe is integrating these solutions into a single cloud solution.

Feature 5: UGC Importer

One of the more intriguing features in AEM 6.5 is the User Generated Content (UGC) Importer. This allows authors to import content from internal UGC sources as well as social networks such as Instagram and Twitter.

AEM 6.5 includes a number of interesting and useful enhancements and tweaks over previous versions. Make sure to check back as we continue to unpack this exciting new release and drill down into all the new features in the latest version of AEM.