What’s new in the 5.0.0 release (March 2025)
This article covers the new and enhanced features introduced with version 5.0.0 of ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager Guides.
For the list of issues that have been fixed in this release, view Fixed issues in the 5.0.0 release.
Learn about upgrade instructions for the 5.0.0 release.
Revamped Experience Manager Guides UI for enhanced productivity and experience
ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager Guides now features a revamped design and enhanced features to help you work faster and more efficiently than ever before. The new UI brings an intuitive and enhanced user experience, with an all-new home page, a cleaner and more organized editor toolbar, dedicated map console, and enhanced features.
The key highlights are as follows:
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Introducing Home page: Experience Manager Guides now features a Home page that offers an intuitive welcome screen experience, including a quick view of the files that you recently accessed, collections, and more.
For more details, view ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager Guides Home page experience.
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New Editor experience: Now, experience the Editor in a new look and feel. The revamped editor interface features a cleaner and more organized toolbar, seamless navigation, and an overall intuitive experience to help author documents faster and more efficiently.
Get to know the Editor features.
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Dedicated Map console: Introducing Map console, a dedicated console where all the map management and publishing features are clubbed. Now, you get options to generate output, translate content, create reports, and more - all within one interface.
Learn more about map management and publishing.
Integration with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront for robust work management capabilities
Experience Manager Guides now integrates seamlessly with ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront, giving you access to robust project management features on top of Experience Manager Guides core CCMS capabilities.
With this integration, you can create and manage ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront tasks directly from Experience Manager Guides. For example, as an author, you can create a review task (with one or more DITA topics or maps added) directly within the Experience Manager Guides interface and assign it to a reviewer. As a reviewer, you can work on assigned tasks in the Experience Manager Guides Review UI and return them to the author with comments. Similarly, you can create a publishing and translation task, and then assign it to the users who are required to work upon it.
The integration also provides you with the ability to monitor your work queues, ensuring you stay organized and on top of all your tasks (assigned tasks). It also enables project managers to leverage the power of ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Workfront for in-depth project management within Experience Manager Guides.
For more details, refer to Workfront integration.
Faster and scalable New AEM Sites publishing engine
Experience faster and scalable publishing to AEM Sites with the all-new publishing engine, optimized with composite component mapping for faster page creation and rendering. It is available with new, out-of-the-box editable templates which can be customized as per your requirements using the AEM Template editor. The templates utilize a mix of WCM core components and specialized Guides components to ensure that your end users get the best experience on your AEM Sites pages. You can also customize your existing templates to leverage the power of this new publishing engine.
Learn more about AEM Sites publishing.
Seamlessly publish standalone content to AEM Sites with Single topic publishing
Introducing single topic publishing to AEM Sites pages that allows you to publish individual topics directly to AEM Sites pages without needing to publish an entire map. This streamlines the publishing process, making it more efficient when working with standalone content, such as marketing content, technical bulletins, or any other standalone content. It also simplifies content maintenance by eliminating the need to create maps for publishing single topics.
For more details, view Publish AEM Sites pages.
The all-new Markdown editor for rich authoring experience
Now, experience a cleaner, more efficient, and powerful way to author markdown topics. Experience Manager Guides introduces a new Markdown editor interface with a well organized toolbar and advanced features, including a Side-by-side view to author and preview content at the same time. It also enables seamless publishing of Markdown topics that are a part of a map, to multiple channels.
For more details, refer to Markdown authoring.
Editor enhancements
The following Editor enhancements have been made as part of the new release:
Enhancements to Table insertion
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Ability to configure the default values for header rows, body rows and columns in the table or simpletable insertion dialog.
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Ability to configure the table settings to paste tables copied from external sources as simpletable or a table.
For more details, view the Tables section in Know the Editor features.
Enhanced the friendly name feature for DITA elements
The friendly name feature for DITA elements has been improved. Now, default enumerated values are retained when a friendly name is assigned to an element, and the updated name is reflected in breadcrumbs, Content properties, the Reusable content panel, the Glossary panel, and other relevant locations.
Enhanced experience for filtered searches
The asset display limit for filtered search results in the ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager Guides Repository has been increased. The search results now return all relevant assets or files that match the search criteria. You can scroll through the list to load more results, eliminating the need to perform repeated searches to locate the required assets.
Alternate text for images now added as an element
Images now use the <alt> element for alternate text, as per the latest DITA standards. The use of @alt attribute for alternate text has been deprecated but remains supported in earlier DITA versions.
Customizing Cross-reference in the editor toolbar
Now, create a custom toolbar button for Cross-reference to directly access one of the menu options. For example, you can configure this option to directly jump to a web link, email link, file reference, or any other available option as per the requirement.
For more details, view customizing the topbar and toolbar.
Review enhancements
The following Review enhancements have been made as part of the new release:
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Now, when creating a review task, you can type in a project name to quickly locate and select it in the Project drop-down list. This enhancement removes the need to scroll through lengthy project lists, making it faster and more efficient to assign review tasks, especially when managing multiple projects.
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In the Editor and Review UI, the review Reply box now support multi-line entries. You can use Shift+Enter to go to the next line. You can also expand the comment box while writing the comment.
For more details, view Review topics.
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Now, authors can access the review comments in the Editor even when the review task is marked closed. With the latest enhancements, the Review panel features both active and closed review tasks for each project in the Editor. When you select a closed review task, the corresponding comments are displayed in the Comments panel on the right, ensuring continuous access to important review comments even after a task is closed.
For more details, view the Review section of the Know the Editor features.
Publishing enhancements
The following publishing enhancements have been made as part of the new release:
Enhancements to the Native PDF
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Ability to include the metadata from a topic’s
prologelement, such as copyright, author, and other details, into the page layouts when generating Native PDF output. This ensures the generated PDFs are more detailed and provide essential context, making them more informative for the reader.For more details, view Add fields and metadata in page layout.
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Introduced an option to enable or disable the DITA-OT preprocessing for Native PDF output. Enable this option if your content requires DITA-OT-based normalization or custom DITA-OT plugins during processing. This gives you greater control over how content is processed for PDF generation. By default, the setting is set to Enabled.
For more details, view Working with PDF output preset
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The Print settings for Native PDF output generation have been moved from the Templates setting to the Native PDF Output preset for better usability. You can now use the same template for online and print PDFs with different print settings such as color profile.
For more details, view Native PDF output preset
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Ability to add a bookmark for the TOC page in the Native PDF output for seamless page navigation, especially in long PDFs.
For more details, view Add a custom bookmark in PDF output.
Content management enhancements
The following content management enhancements have been made as part of the new release:
Custom metadata fields in reports
This feature allows you to configure custom metadata fields for reports through Settings. Once configured, you can view these fields under Columns in the Filter panel of the Reports, where you can select or deselect them to control their visibility.
For more details, refer the DITA map report from the Map Console.
Refresh button in the Translation UI
Introducing a Refresh button in the Translation UI that allows you to refresh the translation dashboard with updated files and status.
Enhancement to Asset post-processing workflow
The support for Asset post-processing has been provided via the REST API as well as the API SDK. Now, the Asset processing event would be triggered and can be listened to define further workflow.
For more details, view Post-processing event handler.
Deprecated features
Quick Generate
Experience Manager Guides no longer supports the Quick Generate feature to generate output directly from the Repository view or Map view.
This feature has been removed from both the Repository and Map view panels. It is recommended to use the Map console for all map management and publishing related actions.
For more details, view Map management and publishing.
Pass root map metadata arguments to DITA-OT command line
The ability to pass root map metadata arguments through DITA-OT command line has been deprecated as part of the release. Now, it is recommended to use the File property or Metadata field in the Preset to pass the required DITA-OT metadata.
To continue passing the metadata in DITA-OT command line, you need to update the pass.metadata.args.cmd.line in the Config.Manager.
For more details, view Configure output generation settings.