The Assembler interacts with the Experience Manager tool in Workbench to expose content configuration to business users.

Experience Manager instantiates each content item from its content XML. In an unconfigured cartridge, this XML is identical to the cartridge template (including any default values specified in the template). When a business user opens and modifies a cartridge in Experience Manager, their settings are saved in the content XML. In an authoring environment, this XML is stored in the Workbench. In a production environment, it is read from the path configured using configurationPath property of FileStoreFactory.

At runtime, the Assembler deserializes the content XML to create the appropriate content item object, and passes it to its corresponding cartridge handler for processing.

In addition to creating instances of front-end application components in this manner, the business user can also use structural content item templates (such as the Three-Column Navigation Page template) to create the organizational elements of a site. For example, your business user can create an "About Us" page, a "Frequently Asked Questions" page, and other static elements of a site by selecting and populating suitable cartridge templates.