xm-cloud

Sitecore Symposium Summary and Final Thoughts #SitecoreSYM

/ sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / Leave a comment

Still unwinding from one of the best weeks I have spent in Nashville. It was the only week I ever spent there. I am sure the Sitecore Symposium made it better than any other week.In this blog I will break down some of the highlights and give you my final thoughts. The them for the Symposium was The Power to Build. That is something that rings true.

Food Tour

One of the best things I did in Nashville was the food tour. It was well organized by Chet. Learned some good history and had some great food.

MVP Summit

I can’t share much yet, but as always a great time. Learned a lot and got a lot of questions answered. I got to meet my mentee in person so that was really exciting. He is doing great things and I have no doubt he will be a future MVP.

Sitecore Stream

AI is the current and the future hottest technology. With Sitecore Stream AI will be part of the DNA in all of Sitecore products. We have probably heard a lot already about Sitecore Stream. Here are some of the things I believe it will offer. To find out more go here.

  • AI Enhanced Workflows
  • Consistent content and branding.
  • Faster website page creation.
  • Content remains the property of the customer.

XP

It not be the new shiny ring, but it sure has not lost its luster.

  • Updates are released through various versions of Sitecore prior to XP, minimizing the potential for breaking changes.
  • XP will also gain from Sitecore Stream and Copilot (AI features).
  • XP will continue to get support.
  • Copilot AI will be integrated into the Content Editor. It will help in generating textual content, like titles and descriptions. It will also correct grammar and spelling errors.
  • There will be a choice to use Sitecore Search instead of SOLR.
  • MVC to Headless Migration Tooling will be provided.

Content Hub

  • More AI features added.
  • Sharing of assets between DAM and CMP.
  • Can use your own AI.
  • AI Integration: The focus is on injecting AI into business processes, particularly in content creation and marketing functions. Discussions revolved around challenges with using off-the-shelf AI tools and the need for business-specific logic.
  • Content Strategy: The aim is to enhance the quality of photography from various partners. It also aims to increase the quantity while addressing issues like licensing costs. Another focus is on ensuring brand alignment.
  • Feedback Mechanism: A system for feedback on generated images was proposed. Users evaluate assets. They give feedback to improve the AI model’s accuracy and effectiveness.

Sitecore Search

  • Modernize search experiences, ensuring consistency across diverse business units while focusing on user requirements and data governance.
  • Highlighted the need for flexible search solutions that can adapt to various content types and user needs.
  • They have merged Discover (Commerce based Search) and their non-commerce-based search into a single product now.
  • Has OOTB development kit which supports React.

XM Cloud

  • XM Cloud is now HIPPA compliant. That is huge news.
  • Many more frontend stacks supported and starter kits.
  • Retirement of Experience Editor and shift to Page Editor.
  • XM Sites – Dashboard which helps manage a multi-site tenant.

Unified Tracking

Capable of keeping track across SaaS product like Connect, Personalize and CDP. Tracking and privacy will be much smoother.

Marketplace

Marketplace is coming back.
Will have starter installations that will help get things up and running the way customers want.
Open to Sitecore and Trusted Partners.

Katie Ledecky

What an amazing athlete. Great hearing what she had to say. I never knew the medals have a piece of the Eiffel tower.

Brendan Hunt

You heard me many times quote Ted Lasso. It was an honor to see Coach Beard in the flesh. Remember to “Be Curious Not Judgmental”.

Teammates

Working from home it was great to see people that I haven’t seen a while in person. Most of all my teammates.

Swag

Got some really great stuff from the store. My chocolate lab Murray is modeling his new Sitecore collar.

Final Thoughts

I feel like Sitecore that I fell in love with over ten years ago is back. They are posed to really overtake the market. There is so much to learn. I plan to stay with the products that I know best. I will expand my knowledge for sure and hopefully start looking into products I haven’t used much before.

Sitecore Symposium Day 4 – Sitecore Stream, Breakout Sessions and Katie Ledecky. #SitecoreSYM

/ sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / Leave a comment

Let me first say how excited I am about all the new stuff coming soon. Today was a great day.

Sitecore stream is really going to revolutionize the way things are done. Stretching AI across all Sitecore products is going to be amazing. Find out more here.

Breakout Sessions were Fantastic as always. Here are some of the highlights of the ones I attended.

Continuous improvement with Content Hub

Great session were I learned how a real world Content Hub implementation was done. Doing things right in the DAM from the start is essential. This approach will help you down the road. Especially with other parts of the Content Hub.

Content Hub Roadmap

I missed pat of this, but was able to capture a slide.

Developer Experience in XM Cloud

This one was exciting to hear. Lots of great features coming to XM Cloud development. Liz Nelson did a great job explaining it. The new offerings will help developers tremendously.

Last, but not least a fireside chat with Katy Ledecky. I found out that part of the medal is made with the Eiffel Tower.

Almost forgot I ran too.

#Sitecore 10.4 is Here

/ sitecorerunner (@reilleyweb) / Leave a comment

You will probably see a lot of blogs about the new release. I wanted to highlight some of the things that pertain to clients and content authors that I know makes this release exciting and will have clients wanting to upgrade based on my experience.

Content Editor

One of things I know is big with our client is accessibility. Not only for a website, but for content entry as well. The content editor gets some great exciting new updates:

  • Easier expand items on the content tree.
  • Content area selecting fields is easier.
  • W3C ARIA Authoring Practices Guide, enabling users to seamlessly navigate with a keyboard through ribbons, the content tree, and various field types.
  • Able to listen to information about UI elements through assistive technology.

Example of an item that the tab stop has landed on:

Tabbing example:

SaaS Product Integration

Many clients are not ready to go full XM Cloud. However now you can have the best of both worlds.

  • A new migration tool that can be used to migrate content, media and users from an XM instance to an XM Cloud instance.
  • A new migration tool to transfer xDB to CDP. This can include contact facets for CDP, Personalize and also Sitecore Connect to external systems. Having this in place will help make the jump to a full SaaS environment when a company is read.

Miscellaneous Updates (copied from the release notes)

  • Added audit logging for Sitecore logins via Identity Server.
  • Added audit logging when unlocking an item in the Content Editor Review tab – My Items.
  • Added a new module called Codeless Schema Extension, enabling business users to extend the xConnect schema without requiring code development.
  • You can now target specific audiences more effectively by adding custom languages, combining any ISO language code with a country/region code. This includes the ability to use nonstandard country/region codes, such en-EU.
  • Added the ability to create a custom or regional language directly in the Content Editor, such as en-EU, which extends beyond those ISO language formats that are registered in .NET.

More Information

There are a lot of major/minor changes with this release. To find out more and how to download the latest version of Sitecore follow this link.