[Share your AEP Onboarding feedback] Show and tell your Community

The ADLS instructor led trainings were invaluable in my onboarding: https://learning.adobe.com/learn-by-product/experience-platform.html

I’m a hands on learner- these gave me a great understanding of the platform- from a high level to a very granular/tactical level. 

The experience league documentation was helpful later on to help me understand more specific topics. 

Well, I don’t have a specific asset to share, but I can share my experience from implementing Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) completely from scratch.

As soon as we signed the contract and started the implementation, we quickly realized that not everything promised during pre-sales aligned with the real-world setup. It became a deep, hands-on learning journey — a lot of trial and error, discovery through documentation gaps, and late nights on the keyboard.

Our biggest sources of help were Experience League and peer conversations. These proved invaluable for practical guidance and learning from others’ real implementations. Through this process, we successfully provisioned multiple sandboxes, established solid architecture standards, implemented IAM best practices, and built governance guardrails.

However, the adoption curve was slow, largely because of the steep learning curve and limited “end-to-end” implementation references that connect all pieces (data ingestion, identity, activation, and governance).

What worked well:

Hands-on experimentation and reverse-engineering from Experience League content.

Peer discussions and community forums for troubleshooting real use cases.

What didn’t work as well:

Lack of prescriptive, scenario-based implementation guides.

Limited architectural blueprints that reflect multi-sandbox enterprise governance.

What’s missing / what I wish I had:
A comprehensive “AEP from Zero to Production” playbook — something that bridges conceptual documentation with the real operational sequence: provisioning → schema design → identity setup → data onboarding → activation and monitoring.

Hi AEP Community,

For my community contribution, I focused on creating a space where Adobe practitioners and data strategists can share ideas around how AI and data intersect to drive intelligent personalization.

Who it’s for:

This community is designed for Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) users, consultants, and marketing engineers, people who are passionate about making data actually work to create real-time, human-centered experiences.

What works well:

• The best part has been the collaborative exchange, seeing how others apply AEP in completely different industries really sharpens your own perspective.

• The supportive tone within the community also stands out. It’s not just about tools or features, but about learning from practical stories and wins.

What could be better / what’s missing:

• Sometimes discussions stay too product-focused. I’d love to see more use case storytelling showing outcomes and impact instead of just features.

• It would also help to have cross-community bridges, where Adobe experts can learn from parallel ecosystems like Salesforce, Google, or Tealium.

What I wish we had:

A structured AI Agent knowledge hub inside the community, where members can test-drive and co-create use cases for Adobe’s AI agents and GenAI features as they evolve.

Here are some of the perspectives from my onboarding experiences - 

🧩 1. Prerequisites

Before onboarding , here are some of the steps my company followed along with help of Adobe team - 

• The organization is provisioned for Adobe Experience Platform (or connected apps such as Real-Time CDP, Journey Optimizer, Customer Journey Analytics, etc.).
• Since I was the system admin, I was provisioned with Admin Console access.

👤 2. Adding the User in the 

Adobe Admin Console

1. Go to adminconsole.adobe.com.
2. Select your organization (tenant).
3. Navigate to Users → Add User.
4. Enter the user’s email address and name.
5. Choose the product:
   → Adobe Experience Platform
   → or Adobe Journey Optimizer / Real-Time CDP / CJA depending on the license.
6. Assign them to a Product Profile).

🧭 3. Assign Roles & Permissions in AEP

After the user logs in to experience.adobe.com:

1. Go to Adobe Experience Platform → Permissions (if you have admin rights).
2. Assign Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) permissions
3. Map the user’s profile to the correct sandbox.

🧠 4. Configure Sandboxes .

what worked was the documentation provided by Adobe. But time was of the essence .

We needed simplified documentation for onboarding for new user. Along with simplified functionalities .

i wish we had a marketer vs Dev vs D&A persona documentation for onboarding such users 

When I was a new AEP customer the Experience League documentation & the Adobe Learning portal were my initial reference points as well as any video content via YouTube & the Adobe channels.

• Goal: AEP overview & understanding
• Who: New users - business, technical, marketing, etc..
• What worked: Definitions, reference points & visuals
• What did not work: Unique business use cases & instance implementation for me specifically
• What was missing: Context to how our team was deploying & approaching AEP - this has been improved over the years

Asset:

A custom screen-recorded walkthrough (simple Loom-style video) created in-house, using our own data, schemas, and use cases instead of Adobe’s sample environment.

Goal of the asset:

Introduce AEP from the ground up, but in the context of how we are using it. Not a product tour — a “this is what it looks like here” baseline.

Who it’s for:

Marketing practitioners who need to understand how segments and profiles come to life in campaigns

Data engineers who need clarity on ingestion, identity stitching, governance, and data flows

What works well:

• Uses real datasets and fields, so people immediately understand the relevance
• Gives a shared vocabulary early (schema, dataset, identity, activation, etc.)
• Organized with timestamps so different teams can jump to what they need
• Hosted on an internal page that can be updated with new versions as the implementation matures

What doesn’t work well:

• Becomes outdated quickly unless someone owns revision updates
• Doesn’t replace foundational learning for people completely new to CDPs
• Only works if paired with a structured onboarding plan for new hires

Supporting learning materials we used:

LinkedIn Learning for general CDP concepts

Experience League for product-level depth

Internal wiki + documentation library

What’s still missing / what I wish we had:

• A role-based learning track (Marketer Day 1 vs Engineer Day 1 vs Analyst Day 1)
• Standard playbooks for common tasks like QA’ing identity stitching or building multi-event segments
• Real examples of operating models from other companies (not just sanitized decks)
• A template for aligning people, process, and tech up front — instead of backfilling governance later

Hey Stephanie - when we were originally implementing we were very reliant on Consulting and Experience league - good news: information has since become way more accessible!

One hidden gem I've discovered is the Adobe Experience Lab YouTube Channel!

The goal of this channel is democratizing knowledge, and giving additional tips and tricks that may not be included in the Experience League documentation.

The topics and learnings discussed are such a great creativity starter and have inspired many thoughts I may have not had without watching the videos.

There are also so many perspectives, recorded webinars, and venues for making the information accessible nowadays.

When I first started with AEP, most of my learning came from hands-on exploration paired with Experience League documentation. I’d dive into a topic, try it out, and then use the docs to fill in gaps or confirm what I was seeing.

Asset: Adobe Experience Platform overview

Goal: Step-by-step guidance across all AEP capabilities

Who it’s for: Anyone implementing or exploring AEP

What worked best for me was experimenting directly in AEP and connecting with Adobe’s Support and Ultimate Success Team whenever I hit a wall. I even reached out to a few PMs and engineers at times, and everyone was super generous with their insights.

If I could add one thing, it would be a guided, end-to-end walk-through showing how all the pieces connect across AEP. The certification exam prep guide has actually become a great structured way for me to revisit everything in order!

Hi Adobe Experience Platform Community!

When I first onboarded to AEP, I found that hands-on, visual learning made the biggest difference in understanding how all the components connect.

🎥 Asset: My YouTube walkthrough — “Getting Started with Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)”

Goal of the asset:
To provide a step-by-step overview of setting up AEP from scratch — including schema creation, dataset setup, data ingestion, and validation. It’s designed to help new users confidently move from the UI basics to actual implementation.

👥 Who it’s for:
Anyone new to AEP — especially data engineers, marketing ops teams, or analysts beginning their first build in a sandbox environment.

✅ What works well:

• Simple explanations of AEP concepts like schemas, datasets, and identity stitching

• Practical walkthroughs instead of theory-heavy training

• Covers common issues (like data ingestion errors or schema validation problems)

🔍 What could be improved:
I’m planning to add real-world integration examples — like connecting AEP with Marketo and Snowflake — to help show full ecosystem workflows.

💡 What’s missing / what I wish I had:
A guided, end-to-end project template that ties ingestion → identity → activation together with test data. That would make it easier for new users to see how AEP’s pieces connect in practice.

I’d love to hear what resources helped you the most or what topics you think deserve deeper coverage — this way, we can co-create even stronger onboarding content for future AEP users.