Basics of Sitecore 8.0

Challenge:

Yesterday, Sitecore Folks provided early access of Sitecore 8 Technical Preview to all MVPs [One more reason, Which inspires you to be a Sitecore MVP? Not sure, How to be? Here’s my gift for you!] Yes, you are reading it right I said Sitecore 8 [The way Sitecore guys are releasing the updates, its tough to keep up the peace with them :-). When you go for sleep it was X version and when you wake up its Y! Jokes apart, It’s really good. It shows the Vision and dedication of Sitecore Teams! — Great stuff champs! Keep it up!]

Disclaimer — All Information in this Blog is using Sitecore 8 Technical Preview. So, it may change upon final release

So, If you are MVP, and already tried your hands on it OR If you’ve already been at Sitecore Symposium and saw its preview. Then this post might not help you.

But If you are an MVP. But haven’t got a chance to get your hands on it. OR Not an MVP OR haven’t had a chance to attend Sitecore Symposium and can’t resist yourself to see, What’s NEW in Sitecore8. Then this post is for you!

Please fasten your belts, We are going for a fast paced journey on Sitecore’s Upcoming Version! Which so fewer people on this planet have seen! Please hold your nerves!

Solution:

We all are Visual! [A picture is worth a thousand words] So, before you read about features. Here’s a sneak peek for you:

Login Page

Sitecore Launch Pad

Sitecore Launch Pad

Desktop Mode

Sitecore Start Menu in Desktop Mode

Content Editor

Publish Dialog

Publish Dialog Confirm

Experience Editor [Formerly Known as Page Editor]

Control Panel

Security Editor

Looks fantastic?! Promising?! Happy and Excited?!

What’s New?

1. Platform Changes : Lot of Visual Changes! Windows 8.0 Experience! [Now, No more Windows XP Experience! :-)], Login Screen, LaunchPad — It’s Really a Launch Pad! Great Feature is : “Version Layouts” [Provides the ability to have a different presentation set on different versions of different languages for the same item., A new field “final renderings” was created, containing renderings of the specific version of an item, Layout details dialog enhanced to work with Shared and Final layouts.] — Good Read :  And yes, Now, We all have to learn “HOW TO SPEAK?!” — All Dialogs has been refreshed to SPEAK UI — No more XAML! 🙂
2. SPEAK : Lot of Good Fixes. And aligned to new Visual Design. New components [New arms in your armory!]
3. Experience Editor (formerly the Page Editor) : Ribbon in SPEAK!, New Testing options, ‘Rename item’ added, Possible to assign ‘Goals and Attributes’ on individual pages! Great Feature is : New ‘Experience Explorer’ mode available within the editor to simulate visitor experience and test marketing automation without publishing sites
4. Email Experience Manager (EXM) : Integration with List Manager, and lot of new features
5. Experience Analytics : 50+ OOB [Out of Box] Reports, 30+ dimensions
6. Experience Profile : Record an interaction with any channel, See user’s Journey!, Make Visitor a Customer!
7. Federated Experience Manager (FXM) : New Web API that captures and delivers external site visitor information into the xDB[Experience Database]
8. Experience Optimization / Content Testing : Lot of automatons like, Automatically test content changes, personalization rules and components with one click, Automated test winner email notification etc.
9. List Manager : Centrally manage lists of contacts, based on manually curated ‘Contact”’ lists or dynamically generated ‘Segmented’ lists. Can be imported from CSV
   
10. Path Analyzer : Path analysis on every item, to understand how people came to an item and where they went, and the effectiveness of those paths. — You know Skynet? Machine Learning? This is an implementation of this technology!
11. Social : Extend Experience Profile with social data — It means you can see your customers or visitors Twitter, G+, LinkedIn and FB data from social login! [Know your customer!], Social Connected is an integrated part of Sitecore 8.0

To be honest, there is a LOT, Yet to read and explore. But thought to share with you [Because, Best is the enemy of Good] So, you also get feel of Sitecore 8.0!

As per my view, Sitecore 7.5 was a game changer because of xDB in the CMS World – It was a good investment in back-end. And Now, In Sitecore 8.0 Sitecore folks, have fetched those data and provided in New Intuitive UI – They call it Visual Design!. So, it feels fresh to us. And we get all the information as organized as we can, and as personalized as we can. Just Imagine a scenario. One of your visitor came to your website, and he bought something from you. And he publishes about his positive Feedback on Social Media Channels. And as you are using Sitecore. You can see all information. So, When Next time he/she visits you. You can treat them personally! [In REAL WORLD, We always go to a Shop/Hotel/Anything (Even-though, It’s far away than our nearest option), Whose seller knows us personally and takes time to understand our likes and dislikes! Isn’t it?!] — And we all wanted to say Good Bye to old CE — Correct? Current one still needs some ironing. But we always keep evolving!

Quotable Quote :  If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.” ~Simon Sinek

There is lot more to do yet from my side:

1. Explore more and Share more with you!
2. Update Sitecore Version History
3. Sitecore 8 got new set of Performance Counters. So, update Performance Counters List

Nice Video Active Commerce and the Experience Explorer (Sitecore 8 Technical Preview) by Nick Wesselman  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnei3faKTI&feature=youtu.be

Thank you Dan Brown and Pieter Brinkman for all the efforts!

Happy Sitecoring! 🙂