What’s New in Sitecore 9.1?

Yesterday I’ve attended a Sitecore Partner Enablement Series In which Sitecore has announced that they are going to introduce some exciting features in Sitecore 9.1. I am going to point out some of them here in this article.

• Version 9.1 has new innovation in headless (Sitecore Omni) and Machine Learning (Sitecore Cortex), enhancements and deeper integration with salesforce marketing cloud.
• Sitecore cortex is available only in XP 9.1, Offering content tagging to improve SEO results and ROI, and suggested recommendations to take the guesswork out of testing and optimization.
• Sitecore Omni only available in 9.1, customers can expand on Sitecores’ headless capabilities to deliver ‘No Compromise Headless’ – Meaning marketers obtain all personalized data from headless applications (Unlike other headless architectures in the market) for the most comprehensive view of their customers across all channels.
• Sitecore has co-developed and enhanced its connectors for salesforce CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud for deeper data exchange and future compatibility.

Unlock Sitecore Admin user account

If you have access to database you can run the below query to unlock your sitecore admin or any other user account using SQL Management Studio –

UPDATE aspnet_Membership
SET
IsLockedOut = 0,
FailedPasswordAttemptCount = 0
WHERE
UserId IN (SELECT UserId FROM aspnet_Users WHERE UserName = ‘sitecore\Admin’)

Setting Sitecore Database Permissions

In one of my projects, client decided to change the infrastructure. During this process I got some new things to learn. Here in this article I am going to share the experience about Sitecore Database permissions.

While moving your databases from one server to another you need to check for the permissions provided to those databases so that it has enough access to work. Below is the list of Databases and minimal permissions to work –

 

Roles/Permissions	Core	Master	Web	Sessions	Analytics
db_datareader	√	√	√	√	√
db_datawriter	√	√	√	√	√
public	√	√	√	√	√
aspnet_Membership_BasicAccess	√
aspnet_Membership_FullAccess	√
aspnet_Membership_ReportingAccess	√
aspnet_Profile_BasicAccess	√
aspnet_Profile_FullAccess	√
aspnet_Profile_ReportingAccess	√
Execute	√	√	√	√	√

 

Sitecore Workflows – Part 2 (Workbox)

As it is already explained in my previous article Sitecore Workflows – Part 1  that a workflow is a series of predefined states that reflect the work processes and procedures. A workflow consists of states, commands and actions and the number of states may vary based on the requirement. Once the item is assigned in the workflow in sitecore it comes into workbox automatically. In workbox you can see item’s current workflow state, item’s history in workflow and other details like filtering the items based on the assigned workflows.

Below is the dashboard for workbox-

 

In the ribbon we have a chunk which consist a list of all the workflows which we have created in the sitecore.

 

Here we can see that we can sort the items to be displayed on the dashboard of workbox by selecting or deselecting the checkbox of workflows list available –

In the above example we can see that we have selected “News Workflow” and “Sample Workflow” from the list. In News Workflow we have 3 states displayed here and it includes one “Final State” as well. As final state is “Auto Published” hence it’s the last state and will not display here. Same applied for “Sample Workflow”.

In the next section we can set the number of items we want to see in our workbox.

We can refresh the list of items in the workbox by clicking the refresh button –

In workbox we can find below features –

• Workflow state
• Preview Item
• Open
• Compare different versions of the same item
• Approve/Reject Single Item
• Approve/Reject Multiple Items
• Particular version’s last change details.
• It allows you to set up an RSS feed which enables receiving notifications when there are changes made to an item or when a version of an item enters or leaves a specific workflow state.

 

 

Sitecore Workflows – Part 1

In sitecore one of “out of the box” features is “Sitecore Workflow”. A workflow is a series of predefined states that reflect the work processes and procedures for creating web content in your organization. For example, your workflow states could correspond to the creation, review, and approval stages that items must go through before they are published on your website.

Above is the diagrammatic representation of “Sample Workflow” Provided by Sitecore in the content tree by default.

In the above example the workflow contains –

• States –

1. Draft
2. Awaiting Approval
3. Approved

 

• Commands

1. Submit
2. Approve
3. Reject

• Actions

1. Auto Publish

 

In Sitecore, the workflows are easily customizable. The minimum requirement for workflow is you must have at least two workflow states and as maximum you can keep any number of states, Commands or Actions.

An example of a workflow:

Sitecore Workflow is not over yet. You can see article on Sitecore workbox in the next article Sitecore Workflows – Part 2 (Workbox).

Sitecore Translator

As we all know that Sitecore supports multilingual sites and as your site supports multiple languages you need to enter data for all these languages. Leaving content in Sitecore and inviting translators into the Content Editor is risky. It requires training and denies your translators access to their specialized tools. Using these tools, provides you tremendous efficiencies – hence you really want your translators to use them. So certainly – it’s widely agreed that the content must be sent over to your translation firm. And while the vast majority of clients resort to a manual copy and paste approach – for larger scale or quick turn-around projects – this approach typically fails. Fortunately sitecore supports “Translation” of the text entered in specific language.

When multiple versions of a site have to be created, the way that most content editors go about doing it is by navigating through each content tree where that item is in the Spanish version, the French version, and the Japanese version. Individually and separately, the content will be manually translated by the content editor and updated as each item is found in the content tree.

Sitecore does have an integration with a translation service, but you have to pay per translation.

What’s even better is that it gives you a side-by-side view of both content pieces – the one in English next to the item in French or Japanese or Spanish.

Navigate to: Content Editor –> Versions –> Translate

Archive a Sitecore item automatically on a scheduled date

Here I am going to explain about Sitecore’s one more stunning feature which is archiving an item on a scheduled date.

Right next to the Reminder Wizard in the Review Tab, there’s an Archive Wizard button. Clicking it will permit you to archive a particular item after a certain date.

Navigate to: Content Editor –> Review –> Archive Button

Marketers and content editors can create content and have it set to automatically archive itself after a certain date. This is perfect for pieces of content that are associated with a specific campaign or a spur of the moment call-to-action on the website.

Archiving an item does not delete the item. If the item needs to go live again because it has important information that you don’t want to lose, then no worries!

Setting Reminders in Sitecore

Did you ever realize the necessity of setting up a reminder for “Content Editors” in sitecore to make their life easy? In Sitecore these reminder can be used in below conditions –

• Release a certain piece of content on a specific day?
• To update an item?
• To launch a campaign within Sitecore?
• To remind someone to approve a piece of content right before it’s about to go live?

Behold the Reminder Wizard that you can use directly from the content editor!

Navigate to: Content Editor –> Review –> Reminder Button.

After clicking the Reminder button, opt to “Set Reminder” and voila! You can set the message, the date, time, and necessary email addresses that the reminder should be set to.

 

What is a CMS web site?

A CMS or a ‘Content Management System’ quite literally allows you to control and manage the content within your web site – without technical training. Using this uncomplicated system you can very easily add, delete images and edit text in your web site on the fly. You can also have an unlimited number of pages and a full site-search engine.

If you have just a little experience with Microsoft Word then you will be able to manage the content of your own web site very easily indeed. You need have no programming or HTML experience. Editing can be done with any normal web browser from anywhere in the world – or with your mobile device 🙂