Catalog Producer catalog-producer

CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

Learn how to use Catalog Producer in AEM Assets to generate product catalogs using your digital assets.

With the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets Catalog Producer, you can create catalogs for your brand products using InDesign templates imported from an InDesign application. To import InDesign templates, first integrate AEM Assets with an InDesign server.

Integrating with InDesign server integrating-with-indesign-server

As part of the integration process, configure the DAM Update Asset workflow, which is suited for integration with InDesign. In addition, configure a proxy worker for the InDesign server. For details, see Integrating AEM Assets with InDesign Server.

NOTE
You can generate InDesign templates from InDesign files before importing them into AEM Assets. For details, see Working with files and templates.
You can map the elements in your InDesign templates to XML tags. The mapped tags are displayed as properties when you map product properties with template properties in Catalog Producer. To learn about XML tagging in InDesign files, see Tagging content for XML.
NOTE
Only InDesign files (.indd) are used as templates. Files with the extension .indt are not supported.

Creating a catalog creating-a-catalog

Catalog Producer uses product information management (PIM) data to map product properties with the XML properties displayed in the template. To create a catalog, perform these steps:

  1. From the Assets user interface, tap/click the AEM logo, and go to Assets > Catalogs.

  2. In the Catalogs page, tap/click Create from the toolbar, and then select Catalog from the list.

  3. In the Create Catalog page, enter a name and description (optional) for the catalog and specify tags, if any. You can also add a thumbnail image for the catalog.

    create_catalog

  4. Tap/click Save. A confirmation dialog notifies that the catalog is created. Tap/click Done to close the dialog.

  5. To open the catalog you created, tap/click it from the Catalogs page.

    note note
    NOTE
    To open the catalog, you can also tap/click Open in the confirmation dialog mentioned in the previous step.
  6. To add pages to the catalog, tap/click Create from the toolbar, and then choose the New Page option.

  7. From the wizard, select an InDesign template for your page. Then, tap/click Next.

  8. Specify a name for the page and an optional description. Specify tags, if any.

  9. Tap/click the Create from the toolbar. Then, tap/click Open from the dialog. The properties for the product are displayed on the left pane. The predefined properties for the InDesign template appear on the right pane.

  10. From the left pane, drag the product properties to the InDesign template properties, and create a mapping between them.

    To view how the page appears in real time, tap/click the Preview tab on the right pane.

  11. To create more pages, repeat steps 6-9. To create similar pages for other products, select the page and tap/click the Create similar pages icon from the toolbar.

    create_similar_pages

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    NOTE
    You can only create similar pages for products with similar structure.

    Tap/click the Add icon, select products from the product picker, and then tap/click Select from the toolbar.

    select_product

  12. From the toolbar, click/tap Create. Tap/click Done to close the dialog. Similar pages are included in your catalog.

  13. To add any existing InDesign file to your catalog, tap/click Create from the toolbar, and choose the Add to existing page option.

  14. Select the InDesign file, and tap/click Add from the toolbar. Then, tap/click OK to close the dialog.

    If the metadata of the products that you reference in the catalog pages is changed, the changes are not automatically reflected in the catalog pages. A banner labeled Stale appears on the product images in the referencing catalog pages, indicating that the metadata for the referenced products is not up-to-date.

    chlimage_1-117

    To ensure that the product images reflect the latest metadata changes, select the page in the Catalog console and click/tap the Update page icon from the toolbar.

    chlimage_1-118

    note note
    NOTE
    To change the metadata for a referenced product, navigate to the Products console (AEM Logo > Commerce > Products), and select the product. Then, click/tap the View Properties icon from the toolbar and edit the metadata in the Properties page of the asset.
  15. To rearrange the pages in catalog, tap/click the Create icon from the toolbar and then choose Merge from the menu. In the wizard, the carousel on top allows you to reorder pages by dragging them. You can also remove pages.

  16. Tap/click Next. To add an existing InDesign file as a cover page, tap/click Browse beside the Choose Cover Page box, and specify the path for the cover page template.

  17. Tap/click Save, and then tap/click Done to close the confirmation dialog.
    On selecting the Done option, a dialog box opens to select whether you want .pdf rendition.
    export to pdf
    If Acrobat(PDF) option is selected, a pdf rendition is created in /jcr:content/renditions in addition to indesign rendition. You can download all the renditions by selecting “Renditions” checkbox in download dialog.

  18. To generate a preview for the catalog you created, select it in the Catalogs console, and then click the Preview icon from the toolbar.

    chlimage_1-119

    Review the pages in your catalog in the preview. Tap/click Close to close the preview.

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