Introducing Adobe Developer App Builder: Build Cloud Native Adobe Apps to Meet Business Needs

Adobe solutions are incredible tools to help enterprises meet their marketing and business goals. Enterprise developers, however, know that sometimes an out-of-the-box solution just won’t do — every enterprise needs their systems to be agile and flexible to respond to changing market conditions and gain the biggest competitive advantage. Adobe Developer App Builder is a complete framework for building cloud-native apps, tailor-made to the business and workflow needs of a particular company, and it’s the best way to achieve that competitive advantage. App Builder provides everything you need to build custom web apps that extend the functionality of Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, using Adobe I/O Runtime, Adobe’s serverless platform.

At its core, App Builder is a set of open source developer and automation tools to rapidly extend your enterprise. It contains all the resources you need to build single page applications with React Spectrum (Adobe’s UI toolkit), create microservices, and orchestrate APIs in Adobe Experience Cloud. With App Builder, you’ll be able to quickly execute your app development workflow, going from concept to final product, ready for your team to use in a matter of hours or even minutes.

Right now, App Builder is in developer preview. Enterprise developers will have the chance to preview the technology and try building an app themselves. We'll then gather feedback and deliver it to our product team, who will use the information to further shape the development of the product.

Apply to be part of the free developer preview here, and read on for more details on what App Builder is and how it can help you build a custom app to achieve your specific goals.

Adobe Developer App Builder: Front-end and back-end developer tools for end-to-end custom app production

App Builder is a collection of resources, all accessible in one framework. By using all of those resources together, you’ll be able to create the custom web app you need, from the start of production to final deployment. App Builder is made up of the following parts:

• Adobe Developer Console — Our console is home base for your custom app development, letting you develop and manage projects while accessing all the tools and APIs you need to create plugins and integrations.
• Developer Tools — Our tools — CLI, debugger, SDKs for authentication and for Experience Cloud APIs, React Spectrum, CI/CD — allow you to easily build custom apps. We firmly believe that open source is the best way to grow developer tooling and libraries, and we welcome the community to provide feedback and contributions.
• App Builder Services — Use Adobe I/O Runtime to take advantage of our serverless platform and hosting of your infrastructure, and Adobe I/O Events for event-based integrations and the ability to publish/consume custom events. We also provide out-of-the-box support for storing data and files.
• Adobe Exchange & Adobe Experience Cloud — Submit your custom app for review to Adobe Exchange where your System Admin can review, manage, and publish your app. Then it can be found alongside other Experience Cloud apps.

Using App Builder to build your custom app comes with considerable advantages. Since App Builder operates on Adobe I/O Runtime, our serverless platform, you’re able to build secure, scalable apps without the worry of infrastructure overhead. Integrate and orchestrate different systems and run custom code, free of app or user limits and their corresponding resource costs. If you’re already working with Adobe solutions, it also makes perfect sense to extend them within the Adobe universe, close to your data. There’s no need to switch contexts or authenticate with different usernames and passwords when building custom apps, now and into the future.

App Builder is also secure. You’re able to quickly set up API authorization and easy-to-manage user access controls. If you’re already used to handling user access control in other Adobe solutions, you’ll be able to jump right into user access control for your custom apps, as this is managed entirely with the Adobe Admin console. All of this should save you considerable time in setting up, deploying, and managing your custom app.

Breaking down your custom app workflow in Adobe Developer App Builder

So, how do all the tools in App Builder work together? Since App Builder is a complete framework, the focus is on giving you everything you need to build and distribute a custom app from start to finish. Below is a sample workflow, stretching across different teams and stakeholders, of what goes into building a custom app with App Builder:

Since all of this is happening within I/O Runtime’s serverless framework, close to your existing Adobe solutions and data, it represents the quickest and most efficient way to extend Adobe solutions. Using App Builder, you can create custom apps like:

• Custom dashboard or decision-making support tools — Build apps that use data to empower your teams to make the right decisions
• Custom experiences of Adobe solutions — Build customized versions of Adobe tools that allow teams to use solutions the ways they need and want.
• Custom integrations with Adobe tools — Integrate Adobe’s tools into your home-grown solutions or favorite third-party systems.
• Extensions of Adobe solutions — Extend Adobe’s built-in functionality for use in your own solutions.

“With App Builder, we were able to create a lightweight, custom application that integrates with Adobe technologies without ever losing momentum on our idea,” said Ray Blaak at Ensemble, who used App Builder to build a better way to track campaign codes for use with their customers.

“App Builder enabled us to integrate with Adobe solutions and deliver a custom web app with better performance, higher security, a lower cost to scale, and a better developer experience.”

To learn more about Adobe Developer App Builder, check out the overview videos below:

• Following the End-to-End User Journey: Adobe Developer App Builder Guides
• A Breakdown of App Builder’s Architecture, Tools, and Services: Adobe Developer App Builder Guides
• A Full Security Overview: Adobe Developer App Builder Guides

Help us build the future of extensibility at Adobe: Apply for the developer preview today

App Builder represents the next big step forward in extensibility at Adobe. With App Builder, we know developers will be able to simplify their workflows while obtaining better results with the custom apps they build for their organizations.

We need your help to make sure App Builder becomes the best tool possible. If you’re an enterprise developer and you build apps (or want to build apps) that extend Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, apply to take part in our free developer preview and continue to watch the Adobe Tech Blog for more news, resources, and stories about App Builder. We’ll share how developers across the globe are using it to create custom apps that improve business outcomes. To learn more, head over to the App Builder homepage.