FAQ
Can I use DA in production?
Yes. DA is an Edge Delivery Services document-based content provider just like SharePoint and Google Drive. It is considered an Adobe early-access technology preview but you are encouraged to use it in production if it fits your needs.
Note: if you choose to use DA in production context:
- AEM Edge Delivery Services still provides 99.99% uptime for the delivery of your site.
- Please reach out on Slack, Discord, or Teams to ensure you are supported through the lifecycle of your project.
Who is working on and supporting this?
Several teams across Adobe working in collaboration with Adobe partners. You can see the full list:
https://github.com/adobe/da-live/graphs/contributors
https://github.com/adobe/da-admin/graphs/contributors
Do I have to do another migration if I'm already on Google Drive or SharePoint?
It's a bit nuanced, but the short answer is no. DA stores content in the same format as AEM Edge Delivery Services. This has the following implications:
- There's no transformation of content that needs to be done.
- No changes to your project codebase need to be done.
- If you decided DA does not fit your project, your content can be moved back to SharePoint or Google Drive easily.
Where is DA content stored?
DA content is stored within the same infrastructure as AEM Edge Delivery Services. It is stored free from other cloud providers like SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
Does this mean SharePoint or Google Drive go away?
Probably not.
First, both systems are almost always used when making content that funnels into your web content management system (WCMS).
Also, depending on the persona, the familiarity of SharePoint or Google Drive may still be the preferred authoring tool. If you have multiple projects, you may find SharePoint or Google Drive is a better fit for some authors.
What is your roadmap?
The current roadmap is based on blocking issues for VIP customers and items that improve operational efficiency. You can visit: https://da.live/roadmap to see what the team has committed to, and https://da.live/ideas to see what the community is thinking about, but we have not necessarily committed to.
What are the licensing costs?
At the time of writing, DA is available to all Edge Delivery customers as an early-access technology preview.
Does this mean AEM authoring tools (Touch UI, Universal Editor, etc.) go away?
No.
We believe there's a lot of different use cases to cover, and DA is only one path. DA is not meant to be an SPA editor or an in-context (wysiwyg) editor. It's un-apologetically a document-based editor meant to be compatible with CMD + A, CMD + C, CMD + V workflows from Word or Google Docs.
What started this?
While many projects can benefit from the approachability of known content management systems, other projects can benefit from the tools and technologies provided by the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem. DA was built to provide a familiar document authoring interface and pair it with content management APIs backed by Adobe services.
Does DA plan to have approval workflows similar to what AEM Author provides?
Our current approval workflows are solved via AEM Snapshots. We hope to expand to more complex use cases (notifications, multi-step, etc.) via Workfront, but we are waiting on a customer to need this before building anything.
Any reason to still go with XWalk over DA, especially as it relates to customers with MSM requirements?
XWalk is still the most stable expression of Universal Editor. It is also the only path that allows you to bring existing AEM code to parts of the Edge Delivery stack.
If you only need in-context authoring (Universal Editor) and not the benefits of JCR, we recommend AB + DA + UE.
On the MSM topic: AB + DA is currently the only path to support "MSM-like" features natively. AB + UE does not support this, yet. So, if you want guided authoring + MSM, XWalk is the better path. If you want document-based authoring + MSM, AB + DA is the best path.
In bullet point form:
- Bring existing Java stack but deliver through Edge Delivery = XWalk
- MSM + in-context authoring = XWalk
- Most stable version of in-context authoring = XWalk
- da.live for everything else.
For spreadsheets that use Excel formulas (e.g. AEM Forms), is it still recommended to use Sharepoint/Google for this specific use case?
If you have complex sheet needs (formulas, conditional formatting, more than 5,000 rows), we recommend a content overlay architecture where you store. You can link out to your complex sheets in DA for a seamless experience. https://da.live > browse > New > Link
- fstab.yaml / config service (javascript)
"content": {
"source": {
"url": "https://geometrixx.sharepoint.com/:f:/r/sites/outdoors/docs/website",
"type": "onedrive"
},
"overlay": {
"type": "markup",
"url": "https://content.da.live/geometrixx/outdoors/"
}
}
If you have forms needs, you are encouraged to get off the deprecated "Helix 4" Forms solution and use something else instead.
For customers with an 6.5 AMS license that are considering EDS + DA, can they still use the Assets Selector that points to their 6.5 instance?
There is research being done on this topic for a customer. We will update this when we have more to share.
What translation providers do you support?
As of now, the only publicly available translation providers we support are: Google Translate & Smartling. We know the documentation is extremely light on this topic. If you have specific needs (including a different provider), please get in touch.
Is there any documentation around configuring blocks component-model.json in the UE, specifically for DA?
You are encouraged to look at our reference implementation here: https://github.com/aemsites/da-block-collection