India AEM User Group Recap: Working Smart with AEM – Practical Insights & Tools

[divanshug]

What a Kickoff!

Over 100 AEM fans from across India came together—virtually and in spirit—for our first-ever AEM India User Group meetup on July 10. The chat was buzzing, the vibes were high, and the energy?  Let’s just say…you had to be there!

This wasn’t just another tech session—it felt like the start of something bigger: a local community of smart, curious, and generous AEM professionals ready to share ideas, tools, and inside tips.

Highlights You Don’t Want to Miss:

 “Why we’re here”

One of our AEM champions, @divanshug, Senior AEM Consultant at TechX, shared the real reason behind this initiative:

“India has one of the largest AEM user bases in the world—so why not build a local space to learn, share, and grow together?”

Tools and takeaways didn’t disappoint either:

AEM Fiddle from ACS Tools

Seen it in docs? Now you’ve seen it live. This dev-fave lets you test Use scripts, troubleshoot servlets, and run JCR queries—all without a full deployment cycle.

                  “This literally shaved hours off my day,” said one excited dev in the chat.

AEM Quick Links Chrome Extension

Demoed by @arko_martech , Senior AEM Developer at OneTrust and AEM Champion 2024–25. Safe to say, the one-click interface for touching everything from author to CRX rocked the room.

                  “Wait—you mean I don’t have to type the author URL every day?!” (Yes, someone said that. Out loud.)

Hands-on using the WKND site:

As one member shared:

                  “This is how I got unstuck when learning AEM—just clicking around WKND until I broke it (then fixed it).”

Pure, practical goodness.

Favourite Moments

• When someone asked if AEM Sidekick could work with Google Docs—and Arko showed us how it blends right into your writing flow.
• The unexpected “aha!” reactions once people saw how Fiddle can replace packaging + redeploy cycles.
• The AEM Quick Links Chrome extension stole the show—imagine an instant control panel for all your go-to AEM consoles!

 What’s Next?

This was just Session One. Upcoming meetups will dive into real workflows, feature live community demos, and open the floor for YOUR use cases. If you’ve built something cool, come show it off!

• Presentation slides & session recording link coming soon
• Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

What’s one AEM trick, tool, or workflow tip you wish you’d learned earlier?

Or maybe you’re struggling with a thorny issue? Drop your thoughts in the comments—whether you attended or not, we want your voice in the mix.

If you missed the session, you can watch the recording here: 

To join and engage with the community: AEM India User Group

Presentation slides and additional resources: Event Page

[LaurenClev]

This sounds like a fantastic event with a lot of "a-ha" moments!

Thank you for hosting @divanshug and helping our community in India learn. 

[kautuk_sahni]

Thanks so much @divanshug and @arko_martech for hosting such a fantastic session and sharing this awesome recap! The energy was great, and the demos were super practical, especially AEM Fiddle and the Quick Links extension. Really appreciate you both taking the time to put this together.

A couple of quick questions for you:

• Can AEM Fiddle be used for front-end debugging, too, or is it mostly for backend use cases?

• For the Quick Links extension, are there any plans to add more shortcuts or customize them?

Looking forward to future sessions and learning more from the community!

[divanshug]

Thanks so much, @kautuk_sahni, really appreciate the kind words and your thoughtful questions!

Can AEM Fiddle be used for front-end debugging, too, or is it mostly for backend use cases?

AEM Fiddle is primarily targeted at backend use cases like script testing (HTL, JSP, Groovy), service invocation, and content traversal. However, we’ve seen developers also use it for mocking data for frontend templating (especially HTL) and quick prototyping. So while it’s not a front-end debugging tool per se, it can support frontend devs in rapid templating experiments and mock output generation.

Quick Links extension – any plans to add more shortcuts or allow customisation?

That’s a great question! Tagging @BrianKasingli  here – he’s the creator of the Quick Links extension and has been continuously evolving it. From what I know, there are ongoing considerations around making the shortcuts more customizable and perhaps even user-configurable in a future update. Would love to hear more from Brian on that.

Thanks again for the support! We’re excited to keep building and sharing with this awesome community.

– Divanshu

[BrianKasingli]

Hey @arko_martech & @divanshug, 

Wow thanks for the re-cap, this session you had was so excited.

For the AEM Chrome Extension (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/aem-chrome-extension-sour/ebhapiodakbafkjhegnfcmohjccfedkm?...) At the moment there are no customizations, however in the future, there would be.

The biggest plan right now are the beta features which some notes were posted on Linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=%23aemchromeextension&origin=HASH_TAG_FROM_FEE... 

Only after when the BETA features, are released, more customizations will be added to this tool.

Please contact me on linkedin if you like to try out these BETA features

[Jagpreet_Singh_]

Big Congrats to @divanshug  and@arko_martech  for hosting the first AEM India User Group session and for collaborating with the Experience League team

Looking forward to the next one!

[Michelle_Baack]

Great session @arko_martech  and @divanshug!
Any chance you could share the links to the extensions here? There doesn't seem to be a way to download the session deck to be able click through your links and resources shared there.