Access Control Tool (AC Tool) Integration with AEMaaCS
Automating and scaling AEM permission management using YAML-driven ACL configuration.
Background
Managing access control in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) becomes increasingly complex in enterprise environments. Traditional approaches rely heavily on manual configuration through CRX or scripts, leading to inconsistencies, scalability challenges, and maintenance overhead.
The client needed a structured and scalable approach to manage permissions across environments while ensuring consistency, reusability, and alignment with DevOps practices.
Task
The objective was to implement a robust solution for managing Access Control Lists (ACLs) in AEMaaCS with the following goals:
- Automate ACL creation and management
- Ensure consistency across environments (author & publish)
- Enable version-controlled permission configuration
- Reduce manual effort and configuration errors
- Support runmode-based permission handling
Solution
- Integrated Access Control Tool (AC Tool) into AEMaaCS project
- Designed a YAML-based configuration model for defining groups and permissions
- Created a dedicated module (ui.content.acls) to manage ACL configurations
- Configured Maven build pipeline to deploy ACLs using FileVault plugin
- Implemented install hooks to apply ACL configurations during deployment
- Defined user groups such as:
- demo-everyone
- demo-global
- demo-global-pa
- Configured fine-grained permissions using YAML:
- Path-based access control
- Restriction-based permissions (rep:glob)
- Runmode-aware configuration
- Ensured seamless integration with AEM deployment pipeline
Results
- Successfully automated ACL management across environments
- Eliminated manual permission configuration in CRX
- Improved consistency and governance of access control
- Reduced configuration errors significantly
- Enabled DevOps-friendly, version-controlled security model
- Provided scalable framework for future permission enhancements