Integrating with Scene7

Adobe Scene7 is a hosted solution for managing, enhancing, publishing, and delivering rich media assets to Web, mobile, email, and Internet-connected displays and print.

To use Scene7, you need to configure the cloud configuration so that Scene7 and AEM Assets can interact with one another. This document describes how to configure AEM and Scene7.

For information on using all the Scene7 components on a page and working with video, see Using Scene7. 

AEM users have a choice between two solutions to work with dynamic media: Either integrating their instance of AEM with Scene7 or using the Dynamic Media solution that is integrated into AEM.

Use the following criteria to determine which solution to choose:

• If you are an existing Scene7 customer whose rich media assets reside in S7 for publishing and delivery, but you want to integrate those assets with Sites (WCM) authoring and/or AEM Assets  for management, then use the AEM/Scene7 point-to-point integration described in this document.
• If you are a new AEM customer who has rich media delivery needs, select the Dynamic Media option. This option makes the most sense if you do not have an existing S7 account and many assets stored in that system.
• In certain cases, you may want to use both solutions. The dual-use scenario describes that scenario. 

When you work with assets in this solution, you do one of the following:

• Upload assets directly to Scene7 and then access via the Scene7 content browser for page authoring or
• Upload to AEM Assets and then enable automatic publishing to S7; you access via Assets content browser for page authoring

AEM Dynamic Media is the unification of S7 features directly within the AEM platform.

When you work with assets in this solution, you follow this workflow:

1. Upload single image and video assets directly to AEM.
2. Encode videos directly within AEM.
3. Build image-based sets directly within AEM.
4. If applicable, add interactivity to images or videos.

The components you use for Dynamic Media are found in the Dynamic Media component area in Design mode. They include the following:

• Dynamic Media - The Dynamic Media component is smart - depending on whether you add an image or a video, you have various options. The component supports image presets, image-based viewers such as image sets, spin sets, mixed media sets, and video. In addition, the viewer is responsive - the size of the screen changes automatically based on screen size. All viewers are HTML5 viewers.
• Interactive Media - The Interactive Media component is for those assets, such as carousel banners, interactive images, and interactive video, that have interactivity on them such hotspots or image maps. This component is smart - depending on whether you add an image or a video, you have various options. In addition, the viewer is responsive - the size of the screen changes automatically based on screen size. All viewers are HTML5 viewers.

Out of the box, you can use both Dynamic Media and Scene7 integration features of AEM simultaneously. The Use cases table that follows describes when you turn certain areas on and off.

To use Dynamic Media and Scene7 simultaneously:

When you have both Scene7 and Dynamic Media enabled, there are the following limitations:

• Manually uploading to Scene7 by selecting an asset and dragging it to a Scene7 component on an AEM page does not work.
• Even though AEM-Scene7 synced assets are updated to Scene7 automatically when the asset is edited in Assets, a rollback action does not trigger a new upload, hence Scene7 would not get the latest version immediately after a rollback. The workaround is to edit again once rollback is complete.
• If you need to use Dynamic Media for one use case and Scene7 integration for another use case, so that the Dynamic Media assets do not interact with the Scene7 system, then do not to apply the Scene7 configuration to the Dynamic Media folder, or the Dynamic Media configuration (processing profile) to a Scene7 folder.

When integrating Scene7 with AEM, there are some important best practices that need to be observed in the following areas:

• Polling importer
• Test-driving your integration
• Uploading assets directly from Scene7 recommended for certain scenarios

In addition, please see known limitations.

The polling importer should only be turned on if you want to use AEM/Scene7 integration for video. It helps bring encoded video renditions and thumbnails that Scene7 created automatically back into AEM Assets.

In addition, see Known limitations for the polling importer.

Adobe recommends that you test-drive your integration by having your root folder pointing to a subfolder only rather than an entire company. 

You can upload assets either by using the Assets (digital asset management) functionality or by accessing Scene7 directly in AEM via the S7 content browser. Which one you choose depends on the following factors:

• S7 asset types that AEM Assets does not yet support have to be added to an AEM website from Scene7 directly, via the S7 content browser, for example, image templates.
• For asset types that are supported by both AEM Assets and Scene7, deciding how to upload them depends on the following:
  • Where the assets are today AND
  • How important managing them in a common repository is 

If the assets are already in Scene7 and managing them in a common repository is not as important, then exporting them to AEM Assets only to sync them back to Scene7 for delivery would be an unnecessary roundtrip. Otherwise, keeping assets in a single repository and syncing to Scene7 only for delivery may be preferable.

You can configure Scene7 and AEM for two-way synchronization of assets. Assets from a CQ target folder can be uploaded (automatically or manually) from AEM to a Scene7 company account. Conversely, assets from the Scene7 company account are polled on a specific interval and imported into the CQ target folder.

To configure Scene7 to integrate with AEM, you need to complete the following steps:

1. Define a cloud configuration, which defines the mapping between a Scene7 folder and an Assets folder. You need to complete this step even if you only want one-way (AEM Assets to Scene7) synchronization.
2. If you want to configure AEM Assets to import assets from Scene7, you configure the polling importer. This is an automated process. AEM polls Scene7 according to the interval you specify. The minimum interval is 300 seconds (5 minutes). 
3. If you want AEM assets to automatically upload to Scene7, you need to turn that option on and add Scene7 to the DAM update asset workflow. You can also manually upload assets.
4. Adding Scene7 components to the sidekick. This allows the users to use Scene7 components on their AEM pages.
5. Map the configuration to the page in AEM. This step is required to view any video presets that you have created in Scene7. It is also required if you need to perform a publish an asset from outside the CQ target folder to Scene7.
   

This section covers how to perform all of these steps and lists important limitations.

When setting up AEM Assets and Scene7 synchronization, it is important to understand the following:

• There is a designated synchronization folder in AEM for Scene7 uploads. 
• Uploads to Scene7 can be automated if the digital assets are placed in the designated synchronization folder.
• The folder and subfolder structure in AEM is replicated in Scene7.

• There is a designated synchronization folder in AEM for Scene7 downloads (it is the same folder for uploads).
• Uploads to AEM Assets are automated with the polling interval setting. Manual uploads from Scene7 to AEM Assets are currently not supported.
• The folder structure in Scene7 is replicated in AEM.
• Proxy renditions all the display of some unsupported asset types in AEM.

There is a 1-to-1 relationship between the CQ target (synchronization) folder and the Scene7 company account. The following illustrates the relationship visually:

With the synchronization between AEM Assets and Scene7, there are currently the following limitations/design implications:

If you run AEM behind a proxy or have special firewall settings, you may need to explicitly enable the hosts of the different regions. Servers are managed in content in /etc/cloudservices/scene7/endpoints and can be customized as required. Click a URL and then edit to change the URL, if necessary. In previous versions of AEM, these values were hard-coded.

If you navigate to /etc/cloudservices/scene7/endpoints.html, you see the servers listed (and can edit them by clicking on the URL):

A cloud configuration defines the mapping between a Scene7 folder and an AEM Assets folder. It needs to be configured to synchronize AEM Assets with Scene7. See How Synchronization Works for more information.

To configure AEM to be able to publish assets to Scene7, perform the following steps:

You can make assets from Scene7 available directly in the Adobe Digital Asset Manager. AEM uses a polling importer that you need to configure to make Scene7 assets available.

Each Scene7 cloud configuration has a set of properties used to configure the associated polling importer. After you configure the polling importer, AEM automatically pulls assets from Scene7 on the specified delay interval.

The following are known limitations for the polling importer (synchronization from Scene7 to AEM Assets):

Assets from Scene7 cannot be imported into AEM Assets if:

• The Scene7 asset is located in the ad-hoc folder for that configuration.
• The asset type is Fxg or MbrSet.
• The asset type is image sets, spin sets, swatch sets, mixed media sets, eCatalogs, and vignettes.
• The asset is an associated asset for a Template (image layers) or a Video (rendition). 
  • For video, the original video file is imported with the various renditions generated in Scene7 made available as proxy renditions. The various renditions of that video generated in Scene7 are not imported (and not visible in AEM Assets), but are available as proxy renditions for the original video used during playback.
    
  • For Scene7 Template type assets, only the original template file is imported into AEM Assets. The associated extracted layers are not imported.

The import process can take a very long time to complete, depending on the size and number of assets that need to be imported from Scene7. See Canceling a Running Import if you need to stop the import.

To configure AEM Assets to import from Scene7:

If, for any reason, a running import process from Scene7 needs to be aborted, do the following:

You can configure AEM Assets so that any digital assets that you upload to the digital asset manager are automatically updated to Scene7 if the assets are in a CQ target folder.

If properly configured, when an asset is added into AEM Assets, it will automatically be uploaded and published to Scene7.

To configure autouploading from AEM Assets:

If you are pushing assets from AEM Assets to Scene7, you can either publish them automatically (default behavior) or push them to Scene7 in an unpublished state.

You may not want to publish assets immediately on Scene7 if you want to test them in a staging environment before going live. You can use AEM with Scene7's Secure Test environment to push assets directly from Assets into Scene7 in an unpublished state.

S7 assets remain available via secure preview. Only when assets are published within AEM do the S7 assets also go live in production.

If you want to publish assets immediately when pushing them to Scene7, you do not need to configure any options. This is the default behavior.

However, if you do not want assets pushed to Scene7 to publish automatically, this section describes how to configure AEM and Scene7 to do this. 

Before you can push assets to Scene7 without publishing them, you must set up the following:

1. Contact Scene7 Customer Care (s7support@adobe.com) to enable secure preview for your Scene7 account. 
2. Follow directions to setup secure preview for your Scene7 account.
   

These are the same steps you would follow to create any secure test setup in Scene7.

If you use this feature, please note the following limitations:

• There is no support for version control.
• If an asset is already published in AEM and a subsequent version is created, that new version will be immediately published live to production. Publish upon activation only works with the initial publish of an asset.

To set the state of assets pushed to Scene7 as unpublished:

Enabling Secure View means that your assets are pushed to the secure preview server unpublished.

You can check this by navigating to a Scene7 component on a page in AEM and clicking Edit. The asset will have the secure preview server listed in the URL. After publishing in AEM, the server domain in the file reference gets updated from the preview URL to the production URL.

Enabling Scene7 for WCM is required for two reasons:

• To enable the drop-down list of universal video profiles for page authoring. Without this, the Universal Video Preset drop-down is empty and cannot be set.
• If a digital asset is not in the target folder, you can upload the asset to Scene7 if you enable Scene7 for that page in the page properties and drag and drop the asset on a Scene7 component. Normal inheritance rules apply (meaning that child pages will inherit the configuration from the parent page).

When enabling Scene7 for the WCM, note that as with other configurations, inheritance rules apply. You can enable Scene7 for WCM in either the touch-optimized or classic user interface.

To enable Scene7 for WCM in the touch-optimized UI:

To enable Scene7 for WCM in the classic UI:

If you have multiple Scene7 configurations, you can specify one of them as the default for the Scene7 content browser.

Only one Scene7 configuration can be marked as default at a given moment. The default configuration is the company assets that display by default in the Scene7 Content Browser.

To configure the default configuration:

As part of the Scene 7 integration, it is a best practice to exclude the master video (F4V, MP3, or OGG) from any adaptive video set that you create. To do this, you need to edit three scene7 nodes in CRXD Lite.

To exclude master videos from adaptive video sets:

You can configure the folder that assets are uploaded to in Scene7 when the asset is not located in the CQ target folder. See Publishing assets from outside the CQ target folder.

To configure the adhoc folder:

To configure Universal Presets for the video component, see Video.

You can enable configurable Scene7 upload jobs parameters that are triggered by the synchronization of Digital Asset Manager/Scene7 assets.

Specifically, you configure the accepted file format by MIME type in the OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative) area of the AEM Web Console Configuration panel. Then, you can customize the individual upload job parameters that are used for each MIME type in the JCR (Java Content Repository).

To enable MIME type-based assets:

If you are having trouble integrating AEM with Scene7, see the following scenarios for solutions.

If your digital asset publishing to Scene7 fails:

• Check that the the asset you are trying to upload is in the CQ target folder (you specify this folder in the Scene7 cloud configuration). 
• If it is not, you need to configure the cloud configuration in Page Properties for that page to allow uploading to the CQ adhoc folder.
• Check the logs for any information.

If your video presets do not appear:

• Ensure that you have configured the cloud configuration of that page through Page Properties. Video presets are avaialble in the Scene7 video component.

If your assets from Scene7 do not appear in the Scene7 browser:

• Ensure that you have configured the polling importer.
• Refresh the panel to update the results.

If your video assets do not play in AEM:

• Ensure that you used the correct video component. Scene7 video component is different than the foundation Video component. See Foundation Video Component versus Scene7 Video Component. 

If the polling importer is taking too long:

• Depending on the size of the Scene7 folder, importing a root folder can take a long time. In addition, Scene7 data could exceed the AEM storage. Ensure you are importing the correct folder.
• If you need to configure multiple folders, consider creating multiple configurations.

If new or modified assets in AEM do not automatically upload to Scene7:

• Ensure that the assets are in the CQ target folder. Only assets that are in the CQ target folder are automatically updated (provided you configured AEM Assets to automatically upload assets).
• Ensure that you have configured the Cloud Services configuration to Enable Automatic Uploading and that you have updated and saved the DAM Asset workflow to include Scene7 uploading.
• When uploading an image into a subfolder of the Scene7 target folder, ensure you do one of the following:
  • Make sure that the names of all assets regardless of location are unique. Otherwise the asset in the main target folder is deleted and only the asset in the subfolder remains.
  • Change how Scene7 overwrites assets in the Setup area of the Scene7 account. Do not set Scene7 to overwrite assets regardless of location if you use assets with the same name in subfolders.

If your deleted assets or folders are not synchronized between Scene7 and AEM:

• Assets and folders deleted in AEM Assets still show up in the synchronized folder in Scene7. You must delete them manually.