Troubleshooting Common Issues with Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is the most powerful content management system upon which companies across the world look to build, manage, and optimize digital experiences. With AEM, retailers may provide the best customer experiences across channels, from personalized websites to enterprise-level digital campaigns. But even if AEM is good for most of your digital experiences, there are many situations in which teams can be faced with issues arising from workflow failures and, therefore, delayed publishing of content, lost productivity, and, in fact, even the crawling speed of the entire team.

Get a clear insight into the most common AEM issues, all Adobe Experience Manager resolutions for every problem, and a few next steps that will help teams get back to delivering uninterrupted high-performance digital experiences.

Understanding the Most Common AEM Issues

The complexity of AEM has provided for a strong tool; however, being a digital working usage can create barriers from time to time. Having an idea of common Adobe Experience Manager challenges can help administrators troubleshoot situations that may arise.

1. Slow Page Load Performance

No one enjoys slow page load times. From a user’s perspective it is annoying or upsetting, and even more importantly, this key indicator of performance can not only hurt user experience but may also hurt your SEO ranking. A couple of common issues are as follows:

• Heavy use of components/modules.
• Large images that have not been optimized.
• Server resources are stretched during peak volume time.

2. Component Issues

Custom components can allow for dynamically rich functionality, but if not configured properly, coding issues or dependencies can result in broken layouts or even a “missing component” error.

3. Replication Issues

It is especially important that content gets updated and is consistent. Replication issues occur when pages or assets are not replicated from an authoring environment to the publishing environment. This is an issue, as it will not be populated across all your digital properties.

4. User Permission Issues

User permissions are especially important, and if not configured in a proper manner, this can block users from editing or publishing content.

5. Asset Upload Issues

Adobe Experience Manager allows you to house a considerable number of media in the Digital Asset Manager (DAM), but uploads can fail due to the type, size, or storage capacity.

Frequently Occurring AEM Issues and Their Solutions

Our Adobe Experience Manager Solutions

Adobe Experience Manager issues usually can be solved through troubleshooting and the application of the right tools. These AEM solutions will fix the problem and allow you to avoid it in the future.

Increasing the Speed of Slow-Loading Pages

Slow performance is the most common and obvious of the Adobe Experience Manager problems. In solving this issue, a solution may provide the following:

Image and asset compression: Compress images and various assets, particularly for webpages, at lower file sizes with minimal loss of quality.

Clear and optimize dispatcher caches: Cached pages and assets need to be served effectively to users.

Monitor server performance: Check CPU and memory and network levels during peak load times to identify sources of performance degradation.

Use AEM reports and monitoring tools: The built-in dashboards will help you identify which pages are slow and which components are consuming high resources.

Combine Tip: Users can combine AEM’s built-in reporting and dashboards with third-party tools to provide pre-failure alerts before performance requires user action.

Repairing Broken Components

When a component does not render, it will impact user experience and page structure. The following resolutions can help:

• Examine the Logs from the AEM Web Console: You can find errors with the component rendering or missing dependencies.
• Check that Client Libraries are Properly Working: You need to make sure that all JavaScript scripts and styles are required and loaded in the proper sequence.
• Debug Your JavaScript and Back-End Code: You want to start by looking for syntax errors or other script conflicts.
• Redeploy the Component Bundle: After you have made changes to components, redeploying will make sure that the latest versions work conflict-free when the template renders it.

Tip: By simply auditing your custom components regularly, you will reduce the chances of component failures after an update or template changes and renders.

Dealing with Replication Failures

Having smooth publishing of the content is key to providing a consistent digital experience.

If replication fails:

• Check Replication Agent Settings: Agents tend to be misconfigured in the first place.
• Check Connectivity and Authentication: Make sure the communication is okay between the author and publishing servers.
• Reset or Recreate Agents: If replication seems stuck, clear the queue and restart the agents.
• Perform Routine Maintenance: Regularly clear the replication queue to allow replication to continue and not fail due to backlogs in the queues.

Pro-Tip: Include replication monitoring on workflow automation so replication failures can be noticed faster.

Overcoming Asset Upload Challenges

The DAM in AEM supports a range of file formats, but sometimes an asset upload may fail, courtesy of an unsupported file format, file size, or storage size limitations on the Asset Management Console. Solutions, nonetheless, include:

• Compress or Resize Before Uploading: This will result in minimized failed uploads and a better user experience or upload speed.
• Check Your File Type: Review documentation available within AEM to verify file types are supported
• Increase Storage by Deleting Files or Archiving Files: It is good practice to have sufficient storage during your upload process.

Pro tip: Build and implement an automatic checker for file size and format before allowing uploads to the DAM, reducing repeated mistakes.

Best Practices to Avoid Common AEM Issues

Take these precautions to reduce how often you encounter problems with Adobe Experience Manager:

• Make System Audits: Establish a regular schedule for check-ups on your configurations, component dependencies, and user permissions to spot issues later.
• Monitor Performances: Rely on AEM health dashboards and couple them with third-party monitoring tools to stay ahead of putative slowdowns or systematic bottlenecks.
• Document & Train: Keep documentation clear, accurate, and current, and train your editors and administrators on a regular basis to limit the chances of human error.
• Update in a Timely Fashion: Apply patches and updates quickly, consistently, and on time to limit security vulnerabilities and compatibility issues.
• Backup & Recovery Plan: Back up servers regularly and test the recovery plan frequently to minimize the impact of sudden, unexpected failures.
• Setup Role based Access: Better define the role of each user to improve security and reduce workflow interruptions.
• Automated Alerts & Notifications: Set up alerts when replication queues are lagging, when disk usage approaches capacity, or when system performance falls below specified thresholds to detect issues more efficiently.

Improve your Experiences with Evolvous

Ongoing Adobe Experience Manager challenges do not have to disrupt your business. Whether it is slow load time, incorrect or missing components to the overall package, or replication failures, using a systematic approach can troubleshoot issues effectively and allow your digital business to continue to move forward.

For a long-term solution, Evolvous had created an adaptive AEM solution meant to specifically solve your organization’s challenges. We continuously monitor, optimize, and maintain systems to fix problems and, more importantly, prevent them from future occurrences.

When you combine our proven approach to troubleshooting Adobe Experience Manager with Evolvous’ expertise, we simplify even the toughest challenges. The result will be more agile, more efficient workflows, and increased customer experience completed at an efficient pace.