Asset Selector dialog in AEM with NextGen Dynamic Media and a large number of assets

[YegorKo]

We are looking for recommendations on how to effectively use the Asset Selector dialog in AEM with NextGen Dynamic Media and a large number of assets, like 1M+. We use Asset Selector with the AEM core components and the OOB search is very rudimentary: you can only search by keywords and filter by file and mime types.

1. Folders aren't supported. In AEM it takes Log(N) number of clicks to drill down into the hierarchy and select an asset. With the Asset Selector it can easily take minutes, and it's way less intuitive. We understand that internally NextGen Dynamic Media uses a non-hierarchical storage where assets are keyed by UUID, but if the origin (AEM) supports hierarchies it would be great to support it in Asset Selector.
2.  Collections aren't supported either. There is a Collections tab in the dialog but it says "Collections not supported" no matter what. 
3.  The keyword search does not support all metadata fields, like IPTC, Camera Data and custom. It seems to support only the filename, dc:title and tags. For example, searching for "Adobe Photoshop" returns results in the AEM Assets UI but not in Asset Selector. It would be great to make all the searches consistent.
4.  Smart Tags are inaccurate for us. They can supplement search, but not be the default and the only option.
5.  We have a corporate taxonomy and apply it to the assets, but there is no way to filter by tag hierarchy. You can only search by tag titles.

What would be the approach for customizing Asset Selector? Would it be a change in AEM, e.g. overlaying  /libs/cq/gui/components/authoring/dialog/fileupload/clientlibs/fileupload/js/fileupload-polaris.js , or would we need to use App Builder? 

[Abie · Accepted solution]

Hi  @YegorKo 

We had been in a similar situation wherein the downstream application (non-Adobe) had to search and select assets from Adobe DAM, however, the OOTB search capabilities are indeed limited. Based on our learning, I would indeed create a custom app to navigate through the folder structure and let user select tags. If you are on DM with OpenAPI, I would use that API because of various reasons - its Graph based, it supports various parameters and it doesn't search on your AEM instance but on the delivery instance.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/assets/dynamicme...

https://developer.adobe.com/experience-cloud/experience-manager-apis/api/stable/assets/delivery/#ope...

Thanks,
Abhey

[YegorKo]

Thanks Abhey,

We have non-AEM clients too, and they will use the DM OpenAPI to list/discover images. 

I more concerned about the OOB AEM widget to select assets. Implementing a custom micro-frontend is doable, but it will take time and dev efforts and so far we've been trying to avoid it. 

Regards,

Yegor

[Saravanan_Dharmaraj]

@YegorKo We also noticed the asset selector UI is very limited. If you are having multiple line of business and multi domain assets in AEM Assets and there is no way to restrict the search by folder in UI then it not usable.