Basic Handling basic-handling

This document is designed to give an overview of basic handling when using the AEM author environment.

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Keyboard shortcuts are available throughout AEM. In particular when using the sites console and the page editor.
For authoring AEM content for Edge Delivery Services, click here.
Authoring AEM content for Edge Delivery Services

A Touch-Enabled UI a-touch-enabled-ui

AEM’s user interface is enabled for touch. A touch-enabled interface lets you use touch to interact with the software through gestures such as tap, tap-and-hold, and swipe. Because the AEM UI is touch-enabled, you can use the touch gestures on your touch devices such as your mobile phone or tablet. However mouse actions on a traditional desktop device are also available, giving you flexibility in how you choose to author your content.

First Steps first-steps

Immediately after logging in you arrive on the Navigation panel. Selecting one of the options opens the respective console.

Navigation panel

To get a good understanding of the basic use of AEM, this document is based on the Sites console. Select on Sites to get started.

Product Navigation product-navigation

Whenever a user first accesses a console, a product navigation tutorial is started. Take a minute to select through to get a good overview of the basic handling of AEM.

Navigation tutorial

Select Next to advance to the next page of the overview. Select Close or select outside of the overview dialog to close.

The overview will restart the next time you access a console unless you either view all slides or check the option Don’t show this again.

You can navigate between the consoles using the global navigation panel. This is triggered as a full-screen drop-down when you select the Adobe Experience Manager link at the top-left of the screen.

You can close the global navigation panel by clicking or tapping Close to return to your previous location.

Navigation panel top bar

Global navigation has two panels, represented by icons at the left-margin of the screen:

  • Navigation - Represented by a compass and the default panel when you log in to AEM
  • Tools - Represented by a hammer

The options available on these panels are described below.

The Navigation panel:

Navigation panel

The title of the browser tab will update to reflect your location as you navigate through the consoles and content.

From Navigation the consoles available are:

Console
Purpose
Projects
The Projects console gives you direct access to your projects. Projects are virtual dashboards that can be used to build a team. You can then give that team access to resources, workflows, and tasks, thus allowing people to work towards a common goal.
Sites
The Sites console let you create, view, and manage sites running on your AEM instance. Through this console you can create, edit, copy, move, and delete pages, start workflows, and publish pages.
Experience Fragments
An Experience Fragment is a stand-alone experience that can be re-used across channels and have variations, saving the trouble of repeatedly copying and pasting experiences or parts of experiences.
Assets
The Assets console lets you import and manage digital assets such as images, videos, documents, and audio files. These assets can then be used by any site running on the same AEM instance. You can also create and manage Content Fragments from the Assets console.
Personalization
This console provides a framework of tools for authoring targeted content and presenting personalized experiences.
Content Fragments
Content Fragments allow you to design, create, curate and publish page-independent content. They allow you to prepare structured content ready for use in multiple locations/over multiple channels, and ideal for both page authoring and headless delivery.

Tools Panel tools-panel

In the Tools panel has a side panel containing a range of categories, that group together similar consoles. The Tools consoles provide access to several specialized tools and consoles that help you administer your websites, digital assets, and other aspects of your content repository.

Tools panel

The Header the-header

The header is always present at the top of the screen. While most options in the header remain the same no matter where you are in the system, some are context-specific.

Navigation header

  • Global Navigation - Select the Adobe Experience Manager link to navigate between consoles.

    Global navigation

  • Search - You can also use the shortcut key / (forward slash) to invoke search from any console.

    Search icon

  • Solutions - Select this to access your other Adobe solutions.

    Solutions button

  • Help

    Help button

  • Notifications - This icon is badged with the number of currently assigned incomplete notifications.

    Notifications button

  • User Properties - Select this to change your user settings.

    User Properties button

Accessing Help accessing-help

There are a number of help resources available and a few ways to access it.

  • Toolbar - Depending on your location, the Help icon opens the appropriate resources:

    Help icon

  • Console - The first time you navigate the system, a series of slides introduce AEM navigation.

    Tutorial

  • Page Editor - The first time you edit a page a series of slides introduce the page editor.

    Editor tutorial

  • Tools Console - From the Tools console you can also access the external Resources:

    • Documentation - View the Web Experience Management documentation
    • Developer Resources - Developer resources and downloads
TIP
You can access an overview of shortcut keys available at any time using the hotkey ? (question mark) when in a console.
For an overview of all keyboard shortcuts see the following documentation:
recommendation-more-help
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