Introduction to FDO and How It works Applications _ Richard at FIDO Alliance.pdf
XM Cloud Demystified - Adam Seabridge
1. XM CLOUD DEMYSTIFIED
A d a m S e a b r i d g e
M a n c h e s t e r S i t e c o r e U s e r G r o u p - 1 5 . 1 1 . 2 0 2 2
2. ADAM SEABRIDGE
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• Freelance Sitecore Developer & Consultant -
Worked with Sitecore since 2013
• Based in the UK
• Manchester SUG Organizer
• 5x Sitecore Technology MVP 2018-2022
3. 3
WHY XM CLOUD?
Sitecore XM / XP are Monolithic
PROS
• All features & functionality in one platform *
• Fully integrated set of features
• Similar/Familiar interfaces
CONS
• Complex to upgrade
• Complicated architecture
• Difficult to maintain and support
• Slow, outdated tech stack
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4. 4
WHAT IS XM CLOUD?
“A fully managed self-service deployment platform for developers
and marketers to efficiently launch engaging omnichannel
experiences in the Cloud using Sitecore’s headless CMS”
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• A new CM to create and deliver content fast
• Omni-channel
• Geo-distributed
• Fully Managed & Hosted service
• Not just traditional Content Management
• Generally available now
5. 5
XM CLOUD BENEFITS?
• Fast, modern editing interface reduce compromises re
customisation
• Provides Developer agility for FE Development
• Infinitely Scalable
• Upgrades done for you automatically
• Patches / Bug fixes automated
• Maintenance handled
• Rapid Deployments
• Flexible Pricing
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6. 6
ACQUISITIONS
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SaaS Platform Name Previous Name Functionality
Sitecore Content Hub Stylelabs Marketing
Content Hub
DAM / PCM
Sitecore Discover Reflektion AI Search
Sitecore Order Cloud Four51 Commerce
Sitecore Personalise &
CDP
Boxever Personalisation
Sitecore Send MooSend Email
Sitecore XM Cloud - -
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WHATS INCLUDED?
• Sitecore Portal (One cloud portal for all SaaS services)
• Pages - New Content Authoring interface
• Sites & Headless SXA (multi-site deployments tool)
• Components (drag and drop)
• Content Explorer - Pure Headless CMS
• Content Editor - Traditional CM instance
• Edge Tenant - Experience Edge / SaaS CD
• XM Cloud Forms builder (embed forms)
• Personalisation (light version of Personalise & CDP)
• Sitecore Search (based on Discover)
• XM Cloud Deployment App & Sitecore CLI , Sitecore Serialize
• Headless Services, SXA, JSS, Next.js SDk
• Containers Support (including local dev)
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NOT INCLUDED / CHANGES?
• No CD Servers
• No Traditional Search / Custom Search Indexes
• No XP/xConnect/xDB functionality
• No Marketing Applications
• No EXM
• No SXA MVC and SXA Search Components
• No Sitecore Forms
• No Identity Server
• No Sitecore Publishing Service
• No Universal Tracker
• Customisations work Differently
• No MVC - Everything is Headless
• No Device detection, IP Geolocation or Update Center
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9. 9
SOME THINGS ARE CLOUD ONLY
• Sitecore Cloud Portal
• XM Cloud Deploy App
• Pages
• XM Apps and Dashboard
• Content Explorer
• Components Builder
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10. 10
MIGRATING TO XM CLOUD?
• Depends on your implementation & current customisations
• Content, Users, Roles/Security, Templates, Layouts, Renderings,
Workflow
• No Migration Path for MVC Sites
• Headless & SXA sites might be able to migrate some elements
• Personalisation is done completely differently in CDP / Personalise
so can’t be migrated either
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15. 15
DEPLOYMENT OPTIONS
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1.
2.
Using the Deployment App - Create a project using the
starter kit or your existing source code.
With this approach, you host your code repository on
GitHub.
Using the Sitecore CLI - useful when you have a pre-
existing XM Cloud-compatible solution with the
repository hosted on version-control platforms other than
GitHub or you prefer a CLI-based workflow.
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WHAT ABOUT CUSTOMISATIONS?
• Should be avoided inside XM Cloud where possible
• Customise on the head instead where possible
• Supported Customisations:
• Configuration Files
• CM Configuration
• Webhooks
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17. 17
WEBHOOKS
• OnEnd - default option. executed at the end of the
publishing job.
• OnUpdate - includes the entity changes that caused the
webhook to execute.
“A webhook is a way for XM Cloud to provide other
applications with real-time information. A web request
using the information included in the webhook”
21. THANK YOU
A D A M S E A B R I D G E
@ b i l l y j a v a
a s e a b r i d g e @ f l u x d i g i t a l . c o m
@ a s e a b r i d g e
Hinweis der Redaktion
Hello Everyone...and welcome to my talk on XM Cloud Demystified
XM Cloud was officially released in July but only to select partners and customers. It’s now available for all customers with a subscription.
I’ve heard a lot about it over the past 12 months or so but it wasn’t really clear to me what was included, how it works and how you deploy and customise it so this talk aims to answer those questions.
I’m Adam Seabridge, I’m a Freelance developer & consultant based in the UK
I’ve worked with Sitecore for about 9 years now and have been an Sitecore MVP for the last 5 years
Why does XM Cloud exist?
We all know Sitecore is an monolithic application and there are various pros and cons of this
XM Cloud aims to solve some of these issues
- XM Cloud is a new CM to create and deliver content fast using SaaS
- Omni-channel / quick / similar authoring experience to Classic
- Geo-distributed
- Fully Managed / hosted service - SLAs - don't need to worry about deployment and management
- Not just traditional CM – personalisation, search, headless functionality
- take advantage of popular frontend frameworks to rapidly build new digital experiences
Lots of Acquisitions over the past few years that have now become re-branded and integrated Sitecore SaaS products
Can edit access rights, projects, deployments and xm cloud environments (dev/uat/prod etc)
Unified Identity - SSO used to sign into all Products
Pages is the new WYSIWG editing interface – replaces Symphony and was Horizon (now discontinued for XM/XP apparently)
Light version - 30 days of user history, and does only a subset of the types of personalisation the full product allows
The personalization is executed at the edge using Next.JS Middleware.
This light version of CDP will also surface basic web analytics and page performance metrics within the XM Cloud portal.
XM Cloud Environments
CM Instance - two flavours:
headless cms pure cms / content modeling / publishing
CM instance were used to content modeling, authoring, personalisation
Edge Tenant (Experience Edge / SaaS CD) - CDN endpoints for published data. graphql endpoint to query data / json endpoint - geolocated
Pages - CM
Quite a few things are different or functionality provided by other SaaS products instead now
Experience Edge replaces CD servers
No Solr or Azure Search Support. Nowhere to run the search code used previously – Sitecore Search Instead
Marketing applications - Experience Analytics, Experience Profile, FXM, Experience Optimization, List Manager, Campaign Creator, Path Analyzer, Marketing Automation and the Marketing Control Panel
Webhooks and Configuration
No Head Provided. Just Editor Interface and Graph QL
Run exclusively in the cloud and are not setup to run locally. Requires XM Cloud Subscription.
For team members that want to run much of this local, there are ways to configure your local rendering host with a reverse proxy and a little work.
new product and not just a new version of XM/XP, the feature set is different. Some features you had previously are either different or not there at all.
Sitecore Cloud Portal
Dashboard
Pages
Content Explorer
Content Explorer - XM Cloud Explorer is an editing tool that lets you work with content independent of presentation
Components – visual component builder, configurable data sources, re-usable components
Personalise – pre-built templates, configure targeting rules, page variants
XM Cloud comes with the deployment services, cm instances and publishing to experience edge (other edge vendors are available)
Experience Edge for Experience Manager (XM) is an API-based service from Sitecore that gives you globally replicated, scalable access to your Sitecore Experience Platform items, layout, and media
Removes infrastructure complexity - remove or reduce the need for hosting Content Delivery servers in your Sitecore infrastructure.
Scalability - globally replicate and scale your Sitecore content delivery.
Reaches customers across all channels - publish Sitecore content to any device or channel (watches, phones, tablets, voice-controlled devices, and so on).
Integrates with any platform - all applications that are able to make API calls out can pull content in from GraphQL.
There a limitations on customisations you can deploy to XM Cloud
Various configuration options
A new customsation option called Webhooks is available
e.g static site generation, cache clearing, trigger a FE deployment and other automated activities that support webhooks
Created, updated on Edge Admin API
If you're working on customizing XM Cloud, you probably are going to setup local Docker containers for the customization bit, and then somebody will need to validate your changes (might be yourself) in the portal with Pages.
front-end developer, you probably just need access to the org to connect your local rendering host on your machine to the hosted environment so you can build your site.
Two different github repos with examples of xm cloud implementations
Take a look at them and try and get them running locally to understand more about developing for xmcloud
I’ve setup the github repo for XM Cloud local development and I’m going to show you it quickly
Unfortunately as I don’t have an XM Cloud Subscription yet I can’t demo everything
Thanks for listing to my presentation.
You can find me on Twitter, Sitecore Slack or on Email.
Hopefully you found it useful, if you have any questions I’m happy to take them.