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16-Pearl
July 22, 2026
Question

Alternatives to Adobe AEM for Coversheets generation

  • July 22, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 60 views

Since the support for Adobe Experience Manager is being deprecated I’m looking at the workflows dependant on PDF publishing with AEM.

 

I had a look at the free trial of the WEX coversheets extension and it’s fine but I’d need to make a few changes before it would be a drop-in replacement for the coversheet generation customisation we have with AEM currently.

 

Has anyone found any alternatives?

 

At the moment AEM converts html files to PDF and merges them with a PDF of the primary content to create the PDF representation file, the primary content can be any office file. AEM does this via a SOAP webservice which you can inspect via it’s WSDL and it seems AEM has far more capabilities than Windchill actually needs so I’m wondering whether to try replacing it with a service that does the html/PDF conversion and merging with a simpler app based on plain java HttpServer and openhtmltopdf?

 

I ran TCPMON to capture the requests and responses between Windchill and the AEM Assembler Service and it seems Windchill is only ever calling one of three services, the WSDL, invoke or invokeOneDocument - so it should be possible to create an app that pretends to be AEM and provides the same SOAP responses?

 

Appreciate any thoughts

4 replies

Catalina
Community Moderator
August 7, 2026

Hi ​@rhart 
 
Thank you for your question.  
 
Your post appears well documented but has not yet received any response. I am replying to raise awareness. Hopefully, another community member will be able to help. 
 
Also, feel free to add any additional information you think might be relevant. It sometimes helps to have screenshots to better understand what you are trying to do. 

Thanks, 

Catalina | PTC Community Moderator
jbailey
18-Opal
August 13, 2026

What’s the enhancements needed for WEX Coversheet?

rhart16-PearlAuthor
16-Pearl
August 14, 2026

WEX adds the coversheet to the primary content file, but in our workflow the primary content is an office document and the coversheet is added to the representation.

I’ve replaced the AEM with a Java Httpserver which mimics the AssemberService for now.

 

jbailey
18-Opal
August 14, 2026

So the limitation is that the trial expired?