Using Adobe Technology to Make Your Creative Team More Efficient

For many businesses that use Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets, one of the biggest struggles they face is managing workflows pertaining to the creation, use, storage, and dissemination of their digital assets. This can stem from a number of reasons, ranging from siloed teams to differing workflow methodologies, but they typically result in inconsistent practices that muddy the waters when trying to find and utilize digital assets. 

The overarching strategy to address these problems is to agree on a single source of truth for inputting metadata and storing assets. This will allow your organization to standardize workflows to make the content more searchable and accessible to your internal teams regardless of what platform they’re in, making it more functional and efficient for your business as a whole. This is why many businesses that already use AEM Assets are turning to Workfront to manage the workflows related to their digital assets. 

Businesses who are experienced in using AEM Assets, but are new to Workfront can often be daunted by the prospect of developing, launching, and maintaining a new asset management system tied to work management. Hoodoo Digital built the original connector between Workfront and AEM, and when Adobe acquired Workfront, they built upon the functionality of the original connector. It is now called the Workfront for Experience Manager enhanced connector, and it shares assets and their metadata between Workfront and AEM to simplify asset creation and management. We have helped many businesses navigate this integration, and we have found that there are three plug-ins you should take into consideration that will help make your integration more successful.

1. Set up and configure Adobe Asset Link:
   Adobe Asset Link is a plug-in that connects AEM Assets to Adobe’s Creative Cloud technologies, like Photoshop or InDesign. This plug-in allows creatives to work directly with digital assets stored in AEM without ever leaving their creative application - removing the need for them to download the asset to their local drive, make the required edits, and then upload an entirely new version to Assets. Not only does this make your team more efficient, but it also helps with quality control, versioning control, and company-wide asset accessibility. In terms of the integration, Adobe Asset Link ensures that assets stay up to date in the Digital Asset Manager (DAM), thus ensuring that Assets and Workfront are both referencing the most current version.
   
   
2. Install the Workfront for Creative Cloud plugin for your creatives:
   The Workfront for Creative Cloud plug-in works similarly to Adobe Asset Link, but instead of connecting to Assets, it connects these four Creative Cloud products directly to Workfront: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and XD. This allows creatives to manage workflows directly from the Creative Cloud app they are using. Rather than working back and forth between Workfront and Creative Cloud to share assets and manage their workflows, they can manage Workfront requests, reviews, and delivery without ever leaving Creative Cloud.
   
   
3. Ensure that the Workfront for Experience Manager enhanced connector is configured properly for your business needs (ie., make sure you do it right):
   This configuration is crucial to tying the two plug-ins (mentioned above) together. While businesses may have similar processes or work within the same markets, the fact is, your processes and how you reach your markets are unique to your business. The Workfront for Experience Manager enhanced connector needs to be configured to the unique workflows and processes that work best for your organization. Configuring this connector for your specific business needs is crucial to maximizing your ROI in your Workfront + AEM Assets integration. This is something that a certified implementation partner, like Hoodoo Digital, can help with.

By integrating Workfront and AEM Assets, you can not only make your team more efficient in delivering assets, but you can create standardized processes for people throughout your company to more effectively create, find, and distribute your digital assets. However, using these three plug-ins effectively as part of your integration can help optimize efficiencies and ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.