Launches at scale
Purpose: Use AEM Launches for large coordinated content changes — annual premium updates across every PHI plan page — without go-live-day surprises.
Who this page is for
| Audience | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|
| All engineers | Supporting big content events |
| Content ops | Operators |
The scenario
Regulatory premium changes affect every plan page, disclaimers and rate PDFs, all live at 00:00 on a set date. Editing production pages directly is not an option. Launches are the product answer: a synced future copy of the affected tree, edited safely, promoted at the moment of truth.
Operating launches at scale
| Practice | Why |
|---|---|
| Scope the launch tree tightly (the plans section, not the site) | Sync cost and conflict surface scale with size |
| One launch per business event, named with date + purpose | "prem-2027-04-01", not "test2" |
| Keep "live sync" on so production edits flow into the launch | Divergence discovered at promote-time is the failure mode |
| Review conflicts weekly (source page changed AND launch page changed) | Conflicts only grow |
| Rehearse the promote on stage with a prod content refresh | Promotion of a big launch is the untested code path otherwise |
| Promote → then publish, as separate controlled steps | Promotion updates author; publication goes live — schedule the publication tranche deliberately |
Go-live mechanics for midnight changes
Two viable patterns:
- Promote ahead + scheduled activation: promote the launch during business hours, publish with on-times set to 00:00. Verify dispatcher TTLs/invalidations honour the flip (session 9 on-time caveats).
- Promote-and-publish at the hour: a manned window; slower but observable. Choose for the first cycle, automate toward pattern 1.
Engineering support checklist
- Bulk verification tooling: crawl launched pages pre-promotion (broken references, missing fragments).
- Cache plan: which trees invalidate at flip, expected cold-cache load (capacity ⚡ cold-row math).
- Rollback: the pre-promotion versions of affected pages (version restore at tree level is tooling you want tested beforehand).