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SitecoreWhat To Look Forward To…

October 19, 2016

Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA)

• A new Sitecore add-on module that is downloaded and installed like any other Sitecore modules

Accelerates…

Brochure ware

Content Production

Information Architecture

Branding

Multisite

Neutral…

System Integration

Heavy Customization

Single Page App

SXA Features

• 70+ components

• Template structures

• Experience Editor first; drag and drop approach to building website

• Theming

• Creative Exchange

• Multisite support

Creative Exchange

SXA – Value Proposition

Develop Wireframe

Site Design

Content Entry

Export Wireframe

Import Design / Theme

Finished Site

…enabling multiple teams to work in parallel (agencies, developers, content authors)

SXA – Wireframes

• Build wireframes directly in Sitecore’s Experience Editor

Creative Exchange – Exporting and Importing Site Design

SXA – Few additional points

• Architected, designed and implemented with adherence to Helix principles

• Developers can build custom components adhering to SXA architecture and design

• Currently tied to the 960 Grid system

• Lookout for:

• Supporting other CSS frameworks through a plug-in based architecture

• Additions to the component library?

• Needs a separate license

Publishing in Sitecore – Challenges

• Very expensive to run publishing; performance issues on large scale implementations

• Even with parallel publishing…

• Even more long to complete a publish when having

• Multiple languages

• Multiple publishing targets, with geo-located targets making it worse

• Dedicated publishing instance required extra Sitecore license

Sitecore Publishing Service

• A new, ground-up developed add-on solution from Sitecore providing high-speed publishing

• Default Sitecore installation will continue to use the legacy approach

• Installed as a standalone service – IIS or Console app• Does the actual publishing• Creates new tables and SPs in the database• Built on .NET Core

Sitecore Publishing Service

• Installed on Sitecore instance as any standard module• Provides publish dialogs, publishing dashboards• Communicates with publishing service endpoint

Sitecore Publishing Module

Solution Breakdown

• Move away from “single content item publish” to a “bulk publish” approach

• 8753 API calls to 11 API calls for a single item publish

• Watch-out: any custom publish pipeline processors will no longer work; can hook into publish completion events

• Parallel promote

• Move media and items together

• Publish to targets in parallel

• Transactional capability; rollback on failure

Publishing Dialogs

Publishing Dashboard

Sitecore Publishing Service – Lookout For…

• Ability to run Publishing Service as a Windows Service

• High availability of publishing service through Warm Standby option

• More documentation around extensibility / customization?

Sitecore on Azure

• First class support for Sitecore on Azure coming in the next few months

• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates being made available for the following Sitecore deployment configuration:

• Session State – Azure Redis Cache

• Search – Azure Search

• Database – SQL Azure

• Logging and Telemetry – Application Insights

• Support for various scalable deployment topologies

xConnect

• Capture interactions and events across online and offline touchpoints

• Collect and act on any information about any individual – from any channel at any time

• Unified API to interact with Contacts and their Interactions; so any interaction with xDB will be using xConnect

Sitecore Commerce

• Current Sitecore Commerce offerings

• Powered by Commerce Server – since v7.2

• Powered by Microsoft Dynamics – since v8.0

• Sitecore Commerce vNext

• Completely ground up development of commerce capabilities in Sitecore and built on ASP.NET Core

• No more “powered by” Commerce Server or Dynamics AX

• Integral partner of Sitecore Experience Platform

• Continues to use the Commerce Connect API

• Plan to be released by end of the year / early next year

Sitecore Commerce Engine

Data Exchange Framework

• A new framework to support exchanging data between Sitecore and any external systems

• The intent is to have everyone build integrations in a consistent / standardized way

• Product catalog import into Sitecore CMS from Sitecore Commerce vNext uses the Data Exchange Framework

Example Source Target

Read contacts from a CRM and create contacts in xDB CRM Sitecore

Update a contact in CRM using information from a contact in xDB Sitecore CRM

Create items in Sitecore that represent products in a catalog PIM Sitecore

Sitecore Data Services

• Content as a Service (CaaS) through OData compliant micro services and token based authentication

• Sitecore’s attempt to enter into the “Headless CMS” space

• Based on .NET Core

Item Web API• Legacy approach

Sitecore Services Client• More of a framework to build

RESTful services

Data Services• OData compliant

Helix and Habitat

http://helix.sitecore.net/ Helix• Principles, conventions, design patterns and recommended best practices for modular and

multi-tenant Sitecore implementations• Sitecore advises you to follow Helix principles, but not mandated• Sitecore also trying to internalize this and is evident with the SXA implementation

which uses Helix principles

https://github.com/sitecore/habitatHabitat• A reference implementation to demonstrate the use of Helix principles• Not meant as an accelerator; for that, consider SXA

Sitecore Nuget Feed

• Sitecore libraries are now available through a public NuGet repository

• Feed for Sitecore version 7.2 and above are available, including a few add-on modules

• This is only for Sitecore assemblies and not for Sitecore items

• Can leverage this in Build and Deployments tasks

• https://sitecore.myget.org/gallery/sc-packages

.NET Core Strategy

• Sitecore appears to make attempts to align all their ground-up development with .NET Core

• Publishing Service, Sitecore Commerce vNext, Data Services and xConnect (?) are a few examples

• Do not expect core Sitecore product to be converted to .NET Core anytime soon; it would be a huge undertaking

References

• Content and images in some of the slides have been referred from:

• Decks used in Sitecore Symposium, 2016

• Sitecore Developer Portal