Troubleshoot Adobe Asset Link

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This document contains troubleshooting information to solve problems you may encounter while using Adobe Asset Link.

About the Adobe Asset Link panel

Adobe Asset Link is installed as an extension in your Adobe Creative Cloud apps- Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and XD.

Once installed and configured, you can open the Adobe Asset Link panel in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign by choosing Window > Extensions > Adobe Asset Link.

To open the Adobe Asset Link panel in Photoshop, choose Window > Extensions (legacy) > Adobe Asset Link.

To open the Adobe Asset Link panel in Adobe XD, choose Plugins > Adobe Asset Link.

Use Adobe Asset Link to access, use, and edit digital assets stored in Adobe Experience Manager Assets. You can upload new assets in Experience Manager Assets. Know more about managing assets using Adobe Asset Link.

Note:
  • If you can't see asset thumbnails while browsing but can view asset previews, contact the admin to update Adobe Experience Manager Managed Services (AMS) with the latest service packs.
  • If you cannot access the Adobe Asset Link panel, contact your administrator for guidance around troubleshooting steps.

Before you begin troubleshooting

If you are unable to use the Adobe Asset Link panel, perform these steps before you start troubleshooting a specific error.

  1. To refresh the cache in Creative Cloud apps, close the apps before installing/reinstalling Adobe Asset Link.

  2. Check if Adobe Asset Link is installed in the folder com.adobe.assetlink at the following location:

    • macOS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions.
    • Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CEP\extensions.

    If you encounter issues, try removing the existing versions of Adobe Asset Link before reinstalling or installing the new version. To remove the existing version, delete the com.adobe.assetlink folder. Then, install the latest version of Adobe Asset Link.

  3. Verify that the assetlink-settings.json file is present in the following location:

    • macOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions
    • Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions

  4. Make sure that you are signed in with an Enterprise ID or Federated ID in the Creative Cloud desktop app.

  5. Ensure that file sync is enabled in the Creative Cloud desktop app.

  6. Using the Activity Monitor (for macOS) or Task Manager (for Windows), ensure that a process named CoreSync is running.

  7. If you are an administrator, ensure the following:

  8. If you are using Adobe Asset Link with Experience Manager 6.5.5 (or later) deployed with S3 as the datastore, check whether Platform API is functioning properly.

    Access https://<server>:<port>/platform/content/dam to check for any connection issues. If the Platform API functions properly, the response is a JSON representation of the top-level DAM objects. Any Platform API malfunction generates an error with response code 500, and Adobe Asset Link fails to connect with Experience Manager. To resolve the error, upgrade the S3 datastore connector to version 1.10.12, or later.

  9. For Adobe Asset Link to be compatible with Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and XD on Apple M1 devices, upgrade Adobe Asset Link and Adobe Asset Link for XD to the latest version. Adobe Asset Link supports Adobe Photoshop on M1 devices in Rosetta emulation mode. To learn how to run Photoshop in Rosetta, see Photoshop for Apple Silicon.

Error scenarios

Here are a few error scenarios that you may encounter while using the Adobe Asset Link panel and the steps to solve them.

Error

Abort trap: 6 error appears when you install the extension using the Adobe Extension Manager command-line tool (ExManCmd).

Reason

Adobe Asset Link fails to install on macOS. On Windows, the installation fails without any error.

To fix the issue, do the following.

  1. Exit Creative Cloud for desktop.

  2. Delete ExMan.db from the location:

    macOS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Extension Manager CC/Configuration/DB.

    Windows: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Extension Manager CC\Configuration\DB.

  3. Relaunch Creative Cloud for desktop, and sign in with the same credentials you used in step 1.

  4. Reinstall the package that contains the Adobe Asset Link extension. The Adobe Asset Link panel is installed.

Error

Sign in to  your Creative Cloud account with an Enterprise ID or a Federated ID to access this service. Contact your IT administrator if you don't have a Creative Cloud enterprise account.

Reason

This error appears when either you are signed out of Adobe Creative Cloud, or the Adobe Asset Link panel is unable to access your identity.

To fix this error, do the following:

  1. Ensure that you are signed in to your Creative Cloud application.

  2. Quit and relaunch the Creative Cloud app that you are working with.

  3. Check if you are able to open the Adobe website.

Error

Adobe Asset Link only supports Business, Enterprise, or Federated users. If you are signed in with an Adobe ID, sign out and sign in again with an Enterprise ID or a Federated ID. For information on Adobe-supported identity types, see Manage identity types.

Reason

This error appears if you try to sign in and access Adobe Asset Link with an Adobe ID. If you don't have a Creative Cloud for enterprise account, contact your IT administrator.

Error

If you do not have access to this service, contact your IT administrator to gain access.

Reason

This error appears if you don't have the required permissions to access the Experience Manager server.

To fix this error, contact your IT administrator if the Experience Manager server is up and running.

Error

The Experience Manager Assets server that you are trying to reach is unreachable. Contact your Adobe Experience Manager administrator for further details.

Reason

This error appears if the network connection breaks while connecting to the Experience Manager server or the Experience Manager server is unavailable.

To fix the error, ensure that you are connected to the Internet and do the following:

  1.  Check if the Experience Manager server is up and running.

  2. Quit and relaunch the Creative Cloud app that you are working with.

  3. Launch the Asset Link panel.

Error

Your Creative Cloud for enterprise account may not have permission to access this Experience Manager Assets server. Contact your Adobe Experience Manager administrator for assistance.

Reason

This error appears if your Creative Cloud for enterprise account does not have permission to access the Experience Manager Assets server.

Authorization error can also occur if one or more settings within your local assetlink-settings.json file are incorrect (see documentation for details). Contact your Experience Manager administrator for assistance. In particular, this error occurs in the following scenarios:

  • The user is not authorized to access the Experience Manager server.
  • The user account is not added to IMS group configured in Experience Manager.
  • The IMS group added to user account doesn't match the Experience Manager IMS group.
  • The assetlink-settings.json file includes an incorrect aemPort.
  • The value of aemServer is missing in the assetlink-settings.json file.
Note:

Customers that have proxy environments are blocked from using Adobe Asset Link. Proxy environments are not yet supported with Adobe Asset Link.

If the user isn't authorized to access Experience Manager, or their account isn't added to or it doesn't match an IMS group in Experience Manager:

  1. On the Users page of the Admin Console, search for user account.

    1. From the list of users, click the name of the relevant user.

    2. Under User Groups, verify if the associated IMS group matches with Experience Manager.

      You can check the Experience Manager group mappings under aem-instance/system/console/configMgr > Adobe Granite OAuth IMS Provider > Group Mappings.

      Note:

      For Experience Manager 6.4 and above, if group mapping is not defined, ensure that IMS user group is part of dam-users group in Experience Manager.

    3. If the user is not associated with IMS group in Experience Manager, edit User Groups and assign the User Group that Experience Manager is configured with.

      For more information, see Create user group.

See Configure the assetlink-settings.json file and add to all devices, to ensure that the values of aemPort and aemServer in the assetlink-settings.json file are correct. If you still see an error, contact your IT administrator to verify the following:

  • You have the right permissions to access the Experience Manager server.
  • You are added to the IMS group configured in Experience Manager.

As new user, if you see the Add New Environment view (instead of Home view) when you launch Adobe Asset Link, do one of the following:

  • Update to the latest build of Adobe Asset Link.
  • Ensure that the CEP > extensions folder is present at the following location on your machine, depending upon the operating system. Create the folder if it is not already present.
    • Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions
    • macOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions

Error

The Experience Manager Assets server that you are trying to reach is not responding. Contact your Adobe Experience Manager administrator for further details.

Reason

This error appears when you are unable to connect to the Experience Manager server.

To fix the error, contact your IT administrator to check if the Experience Manager server is up and running,

Error

No Internet Connection.

Reason

This error appears when you are not connected to the Internet.

To fix the error, ensure that your computer is connected to the Internet.

You can encounter the following error when using the Placed Linked option from the Adobe Asset Link context menu within InDesign 2020 or later. Verify that the InDesign Client ID, InDesignAem2, is added in the approved list directly within the Experience Manager server.

For information on how to add the Client ID to the approved list, see Configure Experience Manager using the configuration package.

Note:

This is not required if you have an Experience Manager Assets as a Cloud Service instance. It applies to AMS and on-premise instances of Experience Manager Assets only.

Changes to linked assets on Experience Manager are sometimes not visible to users in InDesign unless they delete the local InDesign cache. The issue may be due to insufficient permissions on the metadata of linked assets.

To resolve this issue, ensure that the user has 'modify' access in the /content/dam/dam:batch node in CRxDe.

If asset searches in Experience Manager Assets and Adobe Asset Link return different results, then try performing a visual similarity search for consistent results. 

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in as an admin in AEM Author instance and delete the AEM user having check-in issue.

    Delete all other entries (if any) for this user.

  2. The user needs to sign in again to the AEM author instance using their credentials, and try to check-in assets in Adobe Asset Link. This updates the latest user information from IMS.

Enable client-side logs

Enabling client-side logs helps in debugging connection issues because you require both client and server logs to diagnose connection errors.

It's easy to enable client-side logging at DEBUG or TRACE level for the Adobe Asset Link extension in Creative Cloud apps: Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. Simply, create a single-line text file assetlink-override.json.

The file just includes the following line of code for DEBUG-level logging:

     {"LOG_LEVEL":"DEBUG"}

To enable TRACE-level logging, change the value to trace, as follows:

     {"LOG_LEVEL":"TRACE"}

Place the file in the same location as your assetlink-settings.json file. 

  • macOS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions
  • Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions

In this case, username is your login ID on your machine.

Restart your Creative Cloud application (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator). When Adobe Asset Link reopens, it creates a log file in the temporary directory with the appropriate logging level. 

Depending upon the operating system, the temporary directory is available at the following location:

  • macOS: /tmp
  • Windows: %TEMP% (which usually resolves to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp)

The name of the log file is adobe-assetlink-APPN-99.9.9.log.

APPN is one of these names PHXS, IDSN, or ILST. The 99 digits are the version number of the Creative Cloud app. Here is a sample filename for Photoshop.

     adobe-assetlink-PHXS-19.1.2.log

The log file is only few kilobytes in size.

The client log helps in debugging connection issues because both the client and server logs are required to diagnose connection errors.

To enable client-side logging at DEBUG or TRACE level for Adobe Asset Link in Adobe XD, create a single-line text file assetlink-override.json.

The file just includes the following line of code for DEBUG-level logging:

     {"LOG_LEVEL":"DEBUG"}

To enable TRACE-level logging, change the value to trace, as follows:

     {"LOG_LEVEL":"TRACE"}

Place the file in the same location as your storage.json file. 

  • macOS: ~/Library/Application/Support/Adobe/UXP/PluginsStorage/SPRK/External/61d229b9/PluginData
  • Windows:  C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\UXP\PluginsStorage\SPRK\External\61d229b9\PluginData

In this case, username is your login ID on your machine.

Restart Adobe XD. When Adobe Asset Link reopens, it creates a log file at the following location with the appropriate logging level:

  • macOS:  ~/Library/Application/Support/Adobe/UXP/PluginsStorage/SPRK/External/61d229b9/PluginData/logs
  • Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\UXP\PluginsStorage\SPRK\External\61d229b9\PluginData\logs

The name of the log file is adobe-assetlink-XD-4X.X.XX.XX.xxx.log.

The log file is only few kilobytes in size.

Note:

The value of X varies based on the Adobe XD version that you are using. However, you must use Adobe XD version 41.0 or higher.

Manually configure endpoints using assetlink-settings.json

For new users, you can provision a machine before the user's account is created. Depending upon your operating system, copy the assetlink-settings.json file in one of these locations:

  • macOS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions.
  • Windows: \Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CEP\extensions.

When the new user launches Adobe Asset Link, it scans for the settings file in the system location. Then, depending upon the operating system, it copies the file to one of the following user areas:

  • macOS: ../Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions
  • Windows: ..\AppData\Adobe\CEP\extensions (Windows)

Ensure that users have read permissions to the folder that contains the assetlink-settings.json file. Also ensure that future users of the deployment machine have read access to the folder.

Note:

If the folder path is not available on a device, create the CEP > extensions folder manually.

  1. Download the sample assetlink-settings.json file, and open it in a text editor.

  2. Modify the file to include one or more Experience Manager Assets endpoints.

    {"aemServer":"SERVERNAME","aemPort":"SERVERPORT","aemScheme":"PROTOCOL"}

    Parameters

    Description

    SERVERNAME

    Name or URL of the Experience Manager server

    SERVERPORT

    Port number for the Experience Manager server

    PROTOCOL

    Protocol scheme of Experience Manager server URL. Use either HTTP or HTTPS.

    For example, if your Experience Manager server URL is: http://content.demo.com:4502, the .json file should include the following code:

    • {"aemServer":"content.demo.com","aemPort":"4502","aemScheme":"http"}

    Here are some more samples of .json files:

    • {"aemServer":"author.customer.com","aemPort":"443","aemScheme":"https"}
    • {"aemServer":"localhost","aemPort":"4502","aemScheme":"http"}
    • {"aemServer":"author-nossl.customer.com","aemPort":"80","aemScheme":"http"}

Adding Experience Manager environments in Adobe Asset Link for XD using json file

To add Experience Manager environments in Adobe Asset Link for XD, update the assetlink-settings.json file with the URL of the specific environment.

Configure the assetlink-settings.json file to point to the new Experience Manager instance. Launch Adobe XD, and open the storage.json file from the following location:

  • macOS: Users/<username>/Library/Application/Support/Adobe/UXP/PluginsStorage/SPRK/External/61d229b9/PluginData
  • Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\UXP\PluginsStorage\SPRK\External\61d229b9\PluginData

The file includes the entry 

               {"aemEnvironments": [{  "root": url, "title": title }],

                "activeAemEnvironmentRoot": url,

                "viewMode": "grid}

Replace "url" with the URL of your Experience Manager Assets instance. Enclose the URL within quotes. Save and close the file. Exit and relaunch Adobe XD for it to connect to Experience Manager Assets.

Note:

If the assetlink-settings.json file is different, Adobe Asset Link for XD is redirected to the discovery service workflow.

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