Bridging creativity and workflow — how AEM Edge Delivery Services and Workfront can automate content review at enterprise scale

Adobe Experience Manager Edge Delivery Services (DA.live) is redefining modern content delivery — lightweight authoring, instant preview, and performance built for today’s digital experiences. While EDS empowers content creators, real-world enterprise workflows often require approval, governance, and collaboration across marketing, legal, and creative teams.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, content creation doesn’t end at authoring. For most enterprise teams, the real challenge begins after the page is ready — aligning marketing, legal, and brand stakeholders to review, approve, and publish efficiently.

That’s where this integration comes in. By extending Adobe Experience Manager Edge Delivery Services (AEM EDS) with a custom Sidekick plugin, we enable content authors to instantly trigger structured review workflows inside Adobe Workfront, powered by Workfront Fusion automation.

This approach unites content authoring, review, and publishing into a single seamless process — without manual emails, spreadsheets, or status confusion.

Why We Built This?

For marketers and enterprise content teams, time is critical. A single piece of content often passes through multiple checkpoints — compliance, SEO validation, creative review, and brand alignment — before it goes live.

Traditionally, these reviews happen over fragmented channels like emails, chat threads, or shared documents. That means:

• Missed deadlines
• Version confusion
• Lack of traceability

By connecting AEM EDS and Workfront, we eliminate those friction points. Every page that’s ready for review automatically becomes a trackable, auditable workflow in Workfront — with clear owners, due dates, and approvals.

How It Works — End-to-End Flow

At a high level, the integration works in two layers:

Part 1 — Extending the AEM Sidekick: “Send For Review”

Inside AEM Edge Delivery Services, the Sidekick is a floating toolbar that helps authors manage their content — with actions like Edit, Preview, Publish, etc.

We extended this Sidekick by adding a new action button called “Send For Review.”

Here’s what happens when the author clicks it:

1. The button collects details like the page title, page name, Preview URL, author name, and timestamp etc..
2. It sends this data securely to a Workfront Fusion Webhook as a JSON payload.
3. The author receives an immediate confirmation inside DA(Document Authoring) and the page status changes to Submitted for Review.

From a business perspective, this turns a simple click into a fully traceable review initiation. It’s lightweight for authors, yet powerful enough to drive enterprise-grade governance behind the scenes.

This button acts as the bridge — linking content creation in AEM to workflow automation in Workfront.

Part 2 — Workfront Fusion Automation: Turning Reviews Into Projects

Once the webhook receives data from DA(Document Authoring), Workfront Fusion takes over — automatically transforming that information into a structured Workfront Request and Project.

Here’s the sequence of what happens next:

1. A Workfront Request is created with the page title and preview link from AEM.
2. Fusion immediately converts this request into a Project using a predefined template — pre-loaded with tasks like Content Review, SEO Validation, Legal Approval, and Publish to Live.
3. Reviewers are automatically notified through Workfront, email, or Teams integration.
4. As each task completes, the workflow advances until the marketer finally approves and publishes the content to production.
5. Once, the Marketer publish the page using Publish Action, fusion automatically publish the page using Admin API’s and update the Live URL of the page to the project and complete the project.
6. In a Separate Dash Board/Report we can track the Content Publishing workflows status/metrics.

For marketing operations, this creates visibility — everyone knows what stage a page is in, who owns the next step, and when it’s ready to go live.

The Business Impact

This integration is not just about automation — it’s about connecting the creative and operational sides of marketing.

*This image is generated using the Firefly services**

With this approach:

1. Content creators can focus on authoring, not logistics.
2. Marketing managers get real-time visibility into what’s ready for review.
3. Legal and compliance teams receive automatic notifications with context-rich preview links.
4. Executives can track progress and measure efficiency across teams.

In short, this bridges speed and governance — two goals that rarely coexist easily in enterprise content production.

Seamless Collaboration Within the Adobe Ecosystem

What makes this solution powerful is that it’s 100% native to Adobe’s Experience Cloud ecosystem:

**AEM Edge Delivery Services** handles authoring and content delivery.

**Sidekick Plugin** provides the interactive review trigger.

Workfront manages workflow, approvals, and tasks.

**Workfront Fusion** connects the dots through smart automation.

There’s no external middleware or third-party app — everything happens securely within Adobe’s ecosystem.

What’s Next

This article provides the strategic and business view of the integration — how it transforms collaboration between content and marketing teams.

In the upcoming posts, I’ll dive into the technical blueprint that makes this possible:

Part 1: Building the Custom Sidekick Plugin — how we add the “Send For Review” button, configure the Sidekick, and generate the payload to the webhook.

Part 2: Automating Review Workflows in Workfront Fusion — how the webhook creates projects, assigns tasks, and closes the review loop automatically.

Together, these two articles will walk through the full implementation — from code to configuration — to help teams replicate this integration in their own AEM and Workfront environments.