Madhu Anbalagan's Blog

Optimizely

Optimizely CMS 12 on .NET 10: Fixing a Siteimprove TypeMismatchException

Recently, while upgrading an Optimizely CMS 12 solution from .NET 8 to .NET 10, we encountered a frustrating exception that initially looked like a CMS compatibility issue. After several rounds of troubleshooting with Optimizely Support, dependency analysis, debugging, and elimination testing, the root cause was eventually traced back to the Siteimprove Optimizely plugin.

This blog shares the journey, findings, root cause, and final resolution to help others who may encounter the same problem during their CMS 12 modernization efforts.

The Upgrade Journey

As part of our modernization initiative, we upgraded:

  • Optimizely CMS from 12.34.3 to 12.34.5
  • Application runtime from .NET 8 to .NET 10
  • Supporting CMS packages and dependencies
  • Development environment to Visual Studio 2026

Most of the upgrade activities went smoothly. We successfully resolved issues related to:

  • TinyMCE initialization
  • Language Manager gadget visibility
  • Dependency scanning problems
  • .NET 10 compatibility adjustments

However, another issue surfaced immediately after the upgrade.

The Exception

Whenever editors attempted to open any block in the CMS editor, Optimizely threw the following exception:

EPiServer.Core.TypeMismatchException:
 
Content with id ‘1652_3366’ is of type
‘Castle.Proxies.LinkBlockModelProxy’
 
which does not inherit required type
 
‘EPiServer.Core.PageData’
 
The exception originated from:

EPiServer.Core.Internal.DefaultContentLoader.Get<T>()
 

and appeared before any custom block code was executed.

At first glance, this looked like:

  • Database corruption
  • Content type mismatch
  • Invalid content references
  • CMS core regression

All reasonable assumptions.

Unfortunately, all of them turned out to be wrong.

Initial Investigation

The first suspicion was corrupt CMS data.

Optimizely Support referenced earlier cases where similar exceptions were caused by invalid fkContentTypeID values in the database. They recommended comparing content records between healthy and failing environments.

To validate this theory, we:

  • Restored multiple database backups
  • Created fresh blocks
  • Tested newly created content
  • Verified content type mappings

Surprisingly, the issue persisted even on fresh databases.

This effectively ruled out data corruption as the primary cause.

 

The Breakthrough

During the investigation, Optimizely’s development team performed deeper tracing and discovered something interesting.

Their analysis revealed:

“It’s a bug in the package SiteImprove.Optimizely.Plugin which subscribes to contextChange and gets PageData for all content without checking the type.”

This was the clue we needed.

The Siteimprove plugin was making an assumption that all CMS content could be safely treated as:

PageData
But when editors opened blocks, the content being processed was actually:
 
LinkBlockModel or another block type.

Under .NET 10 and the newer CMS version, this incorrect type handling became visible and resulted in:

TypeMismatchException instead of silently passing through.
 

The Root Cause

The Siteimprove Optimizely integration was subscribing to content context change events.

During those events, it attempted to retrieve content using logic that effectively expected: PageData for every content item.

The plugin did not properly verify whether the content was:

  • PageData
  • BlockData
  • MediaData
  • Other CMS content types

before casting or loading it.

Confirming the Cause

One of the most valuable debugging techniques during upgrades is dependency isolation.

We tested by removing the Siteimprove package entirely.

The result was immediate.

The TypeMismatchException disappeared. 

Even Optimizely support confirmed that after retesting, the exception was no longer reproducible once the problematic plugin code path was removed.

At this stage the evidence was conclusive.

The upgrade itself was not the root cause.

The Siteimprove plugin was.

The Fix

After engaging Siteimprove support and raising a GitHub issue, their development team investigated and released an updated package:

SiteImprove.Optimizely.Plugin 4.3.5

The updated version addressed the compatibility issue.

After upgrading and smoke testing, the problem was resolved.
 
Happy Optimizing!
 
 
October 9, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely Opti ID Integration: Why the API Key Was Missing from the DXP Management Portal

While working on an Optimizely CMS 12 Opti ID integration recently, we ran into an issue that initially appeared to be related to SSO authentication but turned out to be an environment-specific configuration requirement.

The Problem

We needed to configure API key authentication for an Optimizely integration. However, when accessing the DXP Management Portal (PaaS Portal), the expected API key details were not visible.

At the same time, the team was investigating issues accessing the Admin Center and Support Portal through Opti ID SSO, which made it seem like the problems might be related.

What We Learned

After engaging Optimizely Support, the key piece of information was that:

The API for local configuration only works for the Integration environment. To view and use the API key configuration within the DXP Management Portal, Opti ID must first be enabled for the Integration CMS environment.[docs.devel…mizely.com]

This was not immediately obvious and explained why the API key details were not appearing even though the environment was otherwise accessible.

Resolution

Once Opti ID was enabled for the Integration environment:

  • The DXP Management Portal began displaying the API key details.
  • We were able to retrieve the required credentials.
  • The API key was configured in the application.
  • Functional testing could proceed successfully.

As confirmed during testing:

We have enabled Opti ID for the integration environment and the PaaS portal now shows the API key details. We configured the API key details in our code and started testing the functionality.

Key Takeaways

When working with Optimizely Opti ID integrations:

  1. Verify that Opti ID is enabled for the Integration CMS environment before attempting to retrieve API key details.
  2. If API keys are missing from the DXP Management Portal, check environment configuration first.
  3. Avoid assuming SSO authentication issues and API key visibility issues have the same root cause.
  4. Engage Optimizely Support early when certificate or authentication behavior appears inconsistent.
  5. Complete API key validation in Integration before promoting any configuration to higher environments.

Final Thoughts

A simple environment prerequisite prevented the API credentials from being displayed, and identifying that dependency quickly moved the team from investigation back into testing.

Happy Optimizing!

September 18, 2026
0
Sitecore

Sitecore : Dynamic Tag Enhancement for Algolia Search Provider

Sitecore-Blog-Hero-Image-3.png

While integrating Sitecore with Algolia Search Provider, I encountered a scenario where I needed to add many fields dynamically. The field name and value are both dynamic based on the content page.

Initially, I thought of it as a computed field, but then the field name is dynamic, and I was wondering how to add dynamic fields to the Index records.

The TagProcessor comes to the rescue – The existing Tag Processor ensures that tags are dynamically added, structured, and optimized before indexing, which outputs _tags in the indexing record.

Algolia Record Search:

 

Sitecore-Algolia-Serach-Provider-Tag-Processor-Computed-Fields-1.png

 

The config for the existing tag processor looks like this –

AlgoliaConfiguration.sc1021.config:

 

 

CategoryDataProcessor:

  • Since we needed to incorporate dynamic tags into our project, I began exploring the functionality of AlgoliaTagsProcessor. Creating another Tag processor, for example, CategoryDataProcessor –allowed us to generate dynamic tags efficiently.
  •  The ProcessDocument method ensures that the Sitecore items being processed match the expected Category Listing Template.
  • After Processing, the extracted data is added dynamically to the JObject doc to the Alglolia Index record.

 

 

  • However, this overwrites the existing_tags in Algolia index. I’m looking for a way to make both work together while also allowing the flexibility to add more dynamic tags in the future if needed.
  • Adding a wrapper class – AlgoliaCustomTagProcessor, which should loop through each Processor and call the ProcessDocument method.
  • This will ensure that each TagProcessor is called and doesn’t overwrite the existing _tags.

AlgoliaCustomTagProcessor:

 

AlgoliaDocumentBuilder:

Modify the AlgoliaDocumentBuilder to process both tag documents – 

  • Initialize the new CustomTagProcessor in the Constructor.
  • Add the GenerateCustomTags() method, which should call ProcessDocuments in the CustomTagProcessor class.

The following is the modified AlgoliaDocumentBuilder code – 

 

AlgoliaConfiguration.sc1021.config:

  • Let’s add the new CustomTagProcessor to the config file.
  • Now, we have two tag processors nested into each other and wrapped into our CustomTagProcessor class.
  • It can be extended to any dynamic Tags we want in the future.

 

The final dynamic category tags were added to the Algloia record, yay! 

It worked!

 

Sitecore-Algolia-Serach-Provider-Tag-Processor-Computed-Fields-2.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

September 10, 2026
0
Optimizely / Sitecore

Optimizely CMS 12 and .NET 10 Upgrade: Resolving a TinyMCE Dependency Injection Exception

Framework upgrades often expose hidden compatibility issues that have remained dormant for years. While upgrading one of our Optimizely CMS solutions to .NET 10, we encountered a runtime exception that initially appeared to be a dependency injection problem but ultimately turned out to be an outdated TinyMCE package.

This post documents the issue, the investigation journey, and the surprisingly simple fix.

The Problem

After upgrading our solution to:

  • .NET 10
  • Optimizely CMS 12.34.4

the application failed during startup with the following exception:

AggregateException: One or more errors occurred.
 
Unable to resolve service for type
‘EPiServer.ServiceLocation.ServiceAccessor<EPiServer.Cms.TinyMce.Core.TinyMceConfiguration>’
while attempting to activate
‘DXP.Core.Model.TimelineBlockXhtmlStringEditorDescriptor’.

 

The exception pointed to our custom TinyMCE editor descriptor:

[EditorDescriptorRegistration(
TargetType = typeof(XhtmlString),
EditorDescriptorBehavior = EditorDescriptorBehavior.OverrideDefault,
UIHint = UIHint)]
public class TimelineBlockXhtmlStringEditorDescriptor
: XhtmlStringEditorDescriptor
{
public const string UIHint =
"TimelineBlockXhtmlStringEditorDescriptor";
 
public TimelineBlockXhtmlStringEditorDescriptor(
ServiceAccessor<TinyMceConfiguration> tinyMceConfiguration)
: base(tinyMceConfiguration)
{
}
public override void ModifyMetadata(
ExtendedMetadata metadata,
IEnumerable<Attribute> attributes)
{
// custom implementation
}
}

At first glance, it looked like a service registration or dependency injection issue.

Environment Details

The key package versions at the time were:

  • Optimizely CMS 12.34.4
  • EPiServer.CMS.TinyMce 4.8.3
  • .NET 10

The application had been working correctly before the framework upgrade, which made the issue particularly challenging to diagnose.

Initial Investigation

Our TinyMCE registration was straightforward:

services
.AddCmsAspNetIdentity<ApplicationUser>()
.AddCms()
.AddTinyMce();

and custom configuration was registered using:

services.Configure<TinyMceConfiguration>(config =>
{
// custom TinyMCE settings
});

Everything appeared to be configured correctly.

Testing on Alloy

To isolate the problem, we reproduced similar TinyMCE configuration in a clean Alloy solution running on .NET 10.

The result:

  • CMS started successfully

  • TinyMCE loaded correctly

  • No dependency injection errors

This immediately suggested the problem was not a generic Optimizely or .NET 10 issue.

Reviewing Custom Editor Descriptors

Since the exception referenced:

TimelineBlockXhtmlStringEditorDescriptor

we spent considerable time reviewing:

  • Editor descriptor registrations
  • Dependency injection registrations
  • Startup ordering
  • TinyMCE configuration extensions

Everything looked valid.

Checking Service Registration Order

We also reviewed whether .NET 10 had introduced behavioural differences in service registration and startup initialization.

Multiple registration orders were tested:

services.AddCms();
services.AddTinyMce();
services.Configure<TinyMceConfiguration>();

and

services.Configure<TinyMceConfiguration>();
services.AddCms();
services.AddTinyMce();

No change.

The Root Cause

After eliminating configuration and dependency injection possibilities, attention shifted to package compatibility.

EPiServer.CMS.TinyMce 4.8.3

Although the package had worked successfully before the upgrade, it was clearly not behaving correctly in the .NET 10 environment.

The Fix

We upgraded TinyMCE from:

EPiServer.CMS.TinyMce 5.0.3

After upgrading:

  • Application started successfully
  • TinyMCE initialized correctly
  • Dependency injection exception disappeared
  • Custom editor descriptors continued to work
  • CMS editor experience was fully restored

Happy Optimizely!

September 4, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely : Missing Language Manager Gadget Fix in CMS 12 After Upgrading to .NET 10

Recently, while upgrading an Optimizely CMS solution to .NET 10, we came across an issue where the Language Manager gadget completely disappeared from CMS Edit Mode.

The application was functioning normally, content editing worked as expected, and there were no build or startup errors. However, editors noticed that the Language Manager gadget was no longer available.

What made the issue difficult to troubleshoot was the complete absence of meaningful error messages.

In this blog, I will walk through the issue, the troubleshooting journey, and the simple configuration change that ultimately resolved it.

Environment

The affected solution was running the following versions:

  • .NET 10
  • Optimizely CMS 12.34.4
  • EPiServer.CMS.UI 12.34.4
  • EPiServer.Labs.LanguageManager 5.5.3

Immediately after the upgrade, the Language Manager gadget disappeared from the CMS editing interface.

Symptoms

Editors reported the following:

  • Language Manager gadget missing from Edit Mode
  • Gadget not available in the “Add Gadgets” list
  • Reinstalling the package did not help
  • Browser cache clearing had no effect
  • Application started successfully without errors

The issue was consistent across environments and users.

Initial Checks

As part of the troubleshooting process, we verified the obvious areas first.

Verify Package Installation

The Language Manager package was installed correctly.

<PackageVersion Include="EPiServer.Labs.LanguageManager" Version="5.5.3" />

No package restore issues were identified.

Verify Language Configuration

We confirmed that all required languages were enabled within Optimizely Admin Mode.

Since multilingual content was configured correctly, the problem was clearly elsewhere.

What Was Causing the Issue?

After working with Optimizely Support, the investigation pointed towards a .NET build configuration setting that was affecting assembly discovery.

The application itself was running correctly, but dependency information required by certain Optimizely add-ons was being trimmed during the build process.

Because of this, Language Manager was not being initialized correctly, resulting in the gadget disappearing from the CMS UI.

The tricky part was that there were:

  • No compilation errors
  • No startup failures
  • No obvious exceptions

The feature simply disappeared.

The Fix

The issue was resolved by adding the following property to the project file:

<PropertyGroup>
<TrimDepsJsonLibrariesWithoutAssets>false</TrimDepsJsonLibrariesWithoutAssets>
</PropertyGroup>
 

After adding the setting:

  1. Rebuild the solution
  2. Redeploy the application
  3. Restart the site

The Language Manager gadget immediately became visible again.

Happy Optimizing! 
August 2, 2026
0
Optimizely

Unlock AI-Ready Experiences with Optimizely

Over the past few months, almost every customer conversation has shifted from SEO to AI readiness.

The questions are no longer just:

“How do we rank higher on Google?”

They’re becoming:

“How do we make sure ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Claude can find and understand our content?”

If you’re running an Optimizely website, the good news is that you don’t need a complete redesign. A few small improvements can make your content much easier for AI systems to discover and consume.

In this post, I’ll walk through a few simple changes we’ve been discussing with customers, including:

  • Upgrading the Stott Security RobotHandler
  • Adding an llms.txt file
  • Structuring content for AI
  • Improving metadata
  • Preparing your Optimizely implementation for the next generation of search

Why AI Readiness Matters

Search engines return links.

LLMs return answers.

That means AI systems need to understand your content, not just crawl it.

If your website has:

  • messy content
  • outdated metadata
  • poor internal linking
  • no structured information

then AI assistants have a harder time understanding what your organization actually offers.

Fortunately, most of these improvements are things we should already be doing.

Step 1 – Upgrade Stott Security RobotHandler

We are currently using Stott.Security.Optimizely.RobotsHandler 3.x – CMS PaaS 12 

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with version 3, but if you’re actively maintaining your solution, it’s worth upgrading to the latest release to benefit from ongoing fixes, compatibility improvements, and newer Optimizely support.

Updating is straightforward.

Remove the old package:

dotnet remove package Stott.Security.Optimizely.RobotsHandler

Install the latest version:

dotnet add package Stott.Security.Optimizely.RobotsHandler

After upgrading, verify that:

  • robots.txt is still generated correctly
  • your sitemap is referenced
  • custom rules still work
  • different environments behave as expected

It only takes a few minutes but keeps an important part of your site’s crawl configuration up to date.

Step 2 – Add an llms.txt File

You have probably heard about llms.txt recently.

Think of it as the AI equivalent of a sitemap.

While it isn’t an official web standard today, more organizations are publishing one to help AI systems discover their most important content.

A simple example looks like this:

# Contoso

Website:
https://contoso.com

Documentation:
https://contoso.com/docs

Products:
https://contoso.com/products

Support:
https://contoso.com/support
 

For smaller websites, a static file is perfectly fine.

For enterprise Optimizely implementations with thousands of pages, I’d recommend generating it dynamically so it always reflects your published content.

That’s something I’ll cover in a future post.

Step 3 – Structure Your Content

This is probably the biggest opportunity.

Many websites still publish pages that contain multiple unrelated topics, huge blocks of text, and headings like:

Learn More

AI models love structure.

Instead, organize pages with:

  • meaningful headings
  • summaries
  • FAQs
  • bullet lists
  • tables where appropriate

Good content structure helps humans and AI alike.

Step 4 – Don’t Ignore Metadata

Metadata is still important.

Make sure every page includes:

  • Page title
  • Meta description
  • Canonical URL
  • Open Graph tags
  • Schema.org structured data

Structured data gives AI additional context about your pages, products, articles, events, and organization.

Step 5 – Review Your Sitemap

Your XML sitemap should always be current.

Remove:

  • unpublished pages
  • redirects
  • expired content

Include:

  • important landing pages
  • articles
  • product pages
  • documentation

This benefits traditional search engines and AI crawlers alike.

Step 6 – Improve Internal Linking

One thing that’s often overlooked is internal linking.

If every page exists in isolation, AI has to work harder to understand the relationships between your content.

Instead, connect related pages naturally.

For example:

  • Blog → Product
  • Product → Documentation
  • Documentation → FAQ
  • FAQ → Support

These relationships help both users and AI navigate your website more effectively.

Step 7 – Expose Content Through APIs

If you’re building AI-powered experiences, don’t stop with web pages.

Optimizely already provides excellent options for exposing structured content, including:

  • Content Delivery API
  • Content Graph
  • Search & Navigation indexes

These services make it much easier to build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications and AI assistants that provide grounded responses based on your content.

Most of these are relatively small changes, but together they make your content significantly easier for AI systems to understand and surface.

As AI continues to change how people discover information, preparing your Optimizely website today will put you in a much stronger position tomorrow.

Happy Optimizing!

July 5, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely: Upgrade Opti-ID and .NET 10 in CMS 12

Many Optimizely customers are planning their roadmap around a future migration to Optimizely CMS 13. As a result, upgrades such as Opti ID adoption and .NET modernization are often postponed until the CMS 13 project begins.

However, waiting for CMS 13 is not necessary.

Organizations running Optimizely CMS 12 can upgrade to Opti ID and move to .NET 10 today, gaining immediate security, performance, and operational benefits while reducing the complexity of a future CMS 13 migration.

Why Modernize on CMS 12?

Instead of combining multiple transformations into a single CMS 13 project, organizations can:

  • Improve security immediately
  • Standardize authentication
  • Modernize the application platform
  • Reduce future migration complexity
  • Enable newer Optimizely SaaS capabilities

A phased modernization approach is typically lower risk than a large-scale platform upgrade.

Part 1: Implementing Opti ID in CMS 12

What is Opti ID?

Opti ID is Optimizely’s centralized authentication platform that provides:

  • Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
  • Centralized user administration
  • Unified access across Optimizely products
  • Improved security and compliance

Required NuGet Packages

Depending on your CMS 12 version, install or upgrade the following packages.

Core CMS Packages

Install-Package EPiServer.CMS
Install-Package EPiServer.CMS.AspNetCore
Install-Package EPiServer.CMS.UI

Identity Packages

Install-Package EPiServer.CMS.UI.AspNetIdentity
Install-Package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.OpenIdConnect
Install-Package Microsoft.Identity.Web

Always align package versions with the Optimizely-supported package matrix for your CMS version.

Step 1: Enable Opti ID in Optimizely

Within the Optimizely Admin Portal:

  1. Navigate to Administration
  2. Enable Opti ID
  3. Configure organization users
  4. Assign product access
  5. Configure MFA policies

Step 2: Configure Authentication

Update Program.cs.

Add Authentication Services

builder.Services
    .AddAuthentication(options =>
    {
        options.DefaultScheme = CookieAuthenticationDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
        options.DefaultChallengeScheme = OpenIdConnectDefaults.AuthenticationScheme;
    })
    .AddCookie()
    .AddOpenIdConnect(options =>
    {
        options.Authority = configuration["Authentication:Authority"];
        options.ClientId = configuration["Authentication:ClientId"];
        options.ClientSecret = configuration["Authentication:ClientSecret"];

        options.ResponseType = "code";

        options.SaveTokens = true;
    });
 

Step 3: Configure appsettings.json

{
  "Authentication": {
    "Authority": "https://login.optimizely.com",
    "ClientId": "xxxxx",
    "ClientSecret": "xxxxx"
  }
}

Step 4: Configure Authorization

Map Opti ID users to CMS roles.

Example:

services.AddAuthorization(options =>
{
    options.AddPolicy("CmsEditors",
        policy => policy.RequireRole("WebEditors"));
});
Validate:
  • WebEditors
  • Administrators
  • ContentApprovers
  • MarketingUsers

Part 2: Upgrading CMS 12 to .NET 10

Why Upgrade?

Benefits include:

  • Improved performance
  • Better security
  • Long-term support alignment
  • Reduced technical debt
  • Better cloud-native capabilities

Step 1: Upgrade Development Environment

Install:

  • .NET 10 SDK
  • Visual Studio 2026 (or latest supported version)

Step 2: Update Project Files

Update:

<TargetFramework>net10.0</TargetFramework>

Step 3: Upgrade NuGet Packages

CMS Packages

<PackageReference Include="EPiServer.CMS.Core" Version="12.24.0" />
<PackageReference Include="EPiServer.CMS.UI" Version="12.34.4" />

Microsoft Packages  

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Extensions.*" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.*" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Identity.Web" />

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!
June 23, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely CMS 13 Upgrade Overview

Wondering how to upgrade from Optimizely CMS 12 to 13? Not sure where to start – you are not alone. 

Here is a quick overview of the key architectural changes that need to be addressed.

Key Architecture Changes

  1. No Search and Navigation
  2. Opti-ID for Identity
  3. Graph for Search and Discovery
  4.  Embedded DAM
  5. OCP for Integrations
  6. OPAL for AI

Optimizely CMS 13

 

🟩Graph — Search & Discovery

  • Provides unified content search across structured and unstructured data.

  • Enables semantic relationships between content items.

  • Powers personalized discovery experiences through relevance scoring and taxonomy mapping.

  • Integrates with Optimizely’s indexing layer for fast retrieval and filtering.

🟦Opti‑ID — Identity & Access

  • Centralized identity provider for user authentication and authorization.

  • Supports SSO, OAuth 2.0, and enterprise federation (e.g., Azure AD, Okta).

  • Manages user roles, permissions, and attribute mapping across CMS modules.

  • Ensures secure access control for editors, marketers, and external systems.

🟪OPAL — AI Services

  • Provides AI‑driven content recommendations and predictive analytics.

  • Automates tagging, summarization, and personalization workflows.

  • Integrates with external AI APIs for language and vision tasks.

  • Enhances editorial efficiency through intelligent suggestions and insights.

🟩Embedded DAM — Asset Management

  • Manages digital assets (images, videos, documents) directly within CMS.

  • Supports versioning, metadata tagging, and rights management.

  • Enables seamless asset reuse across pages and campaigns.

  • Connects to external storage or CDN for optimized delivery.

⬛OCP — Integrations & Connectors

  • Provides an integration framework for third‑party systems (CRM, ERP, marketing tools).

  • Uses REST APIs and webhooks for data synchronization.

  • Supports modular connectors for commerce, analytics, and automation.

  • Ensures scalable interoperability across enterprise ecosystems.

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

 

June 7, 2026
0
Forms / Sitecore

Custom Hidden Field in Sitecore Forms

Custom Hidden Field in Sitecore Forms

I came across a scenario in Sitecore Forms where I needed to build a hidden field. The form is intended for employees, and when they access it, it should automatically recognize them and capture their name and email address upon submission.

Let’s get started.

Create the Hidden Field in Core DB

  • Navigate to /sitecore/client/Applications/FormsBuilder/Components/Layouts/PropertyGridForm/PageSettings/Settings

 

  • Create the HiddenField based on /sitecore/client/Business Component Library/version 2/Layouts/Renderings/Forms/Form/Form Parameters

 

  • Fill out the following fields – 
    • Details 

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field.png 

    • Validation

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field-2.png

 

    • Conditions

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field-3.png

 

    • Advanced

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field-4.png

 

Create a Custom Field Type

  • Inherit from the StringInputViewModel class to create a new view model for your hidden field.

 

Create the View for the Field

  • Define the HTML and JavaScript needed to render the hidden field and set its value.

 

Custom Submit Action

Let’s create a custom submit action and read the properties from formSubmitContext.

Let’s bind it to the Form’s Submit Action.

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field-7.png

Now I’m able to drag and drop the hidden field into the Form. 

Make sure to publish the Form and its related items.

Sitecore-Forms-hidden-field-6-1.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

May 16, 2026
0
Coveo / Sitecore

Coveo Computed Field for Retrieving Page Content and Renderings in Sitecore

I needed to index all text from the page content and its associated renderings, including single-line, multi-line, and rich text, into a single Coveo-computed field.

Let’s get started.

Text Extraction:

  • Created a TextExtraction class that inherits BaseComputedField.

  • GetComputedFieldValue: Computes the concatenated text from the item and its renderings.

  • GetRenderingSource: Retrieves the source item for a given rendering reference.

  • GetDatasourceItem: Resolves and retrieves the data source item using the pipeline manager.

  • GetAllReferencedText: Extracts text from fields and adds them to a result list.

  • GetReferenceFieldData: Handles reference fields and extracts text from referenced items.

 

 

Configuration:

Let’s add the TextExtraction computed field into the config file.

 

I published all the files, and it’s time to check.

I selected the page that has many renderings and hit Rebuild Tree (I set the indexing strategy as SyncMaster. If you have intervalAsyncMaster or onPublishEndSyncSingleInstance, publish the item to see the record in Index.)

If any issues, you can put a breakpoint in Visual Studio, and Rebuild Tree will hit the breakpoint to debug.

 

Let’s check the Coveo index – Yay! Its page content and its associated rendering content were extracted successfully.

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

March 25, 2026
0
Sitecore

2025 – Contributions

The year 2025 has been great, featuring presentations at various Sitecore User Groups around the world and meaningful interactions with numerous members of the Sitecore community.

Blog Posts : 

Presentations : 

Feedbacks: 

  • August 16, 2025  –  Alpha Reviewers: Content Hub Developer Exam

 Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups: 

Co-organized SUG-Philadelphia Meetups: 

 Conferences I attended: 

  • MVP Lunches   
  • MVP Webinars 
  • All SUG Pittsburgh and Philadelphia meetups  
  • Many SUG Boston/ Columbus/ Atlantic meetups 

Plans for 2026: 

Learn and contribute: 

  • Sitecore AI
  • Sitecore Saas Offerings 
  • Containerization 

Co-organize : 

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup 
  • Quarterly SUG-Philadelphia meetup 

Present: 

  • SUGCON EU/Symposium 
  • SUG Meetups 

Happy Sitecoring!

February 26, 2026
0
CDP and Personalize / Sitecore

Sitecore Personalize Demo using TamperMonkey

 

Sitecore Personalize Demo using TamperMonkey.png

I started exploring Sitecore Personalize, which allows to craft tailored web experiences based on customer behavior and preferences.

In this blog, I’ll walk through how to integrate Sitecore Personalization for the Sitecore XP/XM/XMCloud website without installing EngageSDK – using TamperMonkey, a browser extension for running custom JavaScript.

Create a Point Of Sale (PoS)

In Sitecore CDP or Personalize create a PoS for the website.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey.png

 

Create a Web Experience

In Sitecore Personalize, let’s navigate to the Experiences section and click Create New Experience.

Select from experience types such as:

  • Web Experience (e.g., personalized banners or pop-ups)
  • Interactive Experience (e.g., Chatbots, real-time API integrations)
  • Triggered Experience (e.g., email, push notifications)

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-21.png

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-3-1.png

OOTB Templates

Sitecore Personalize offers 14 out-of-the-box (OOTB) templates for creating web experiences. These templates are designed to help you quickly set up and customize your web experiments and experiences without needing to write code. Here are some of the templates available:

  1. Alert Bar (Boxever Library)

  2. Corner Popup (Boxever Library)

  3. Email Capture Bar (Boxever Library)

  4. Email Capture Corner (Boxever Library)

  5. Notification Widget (Boxever Library)

  6. Popup takeover (Boxever Library)

  7. Sidebar (Boxever Library)

  8. Alert Bar (Sitecore Library)

  9. Corner Popup (Sitecore Library)

  10. Email Capture Bar (Sitecore Library)

  11. Email Capture Corner (Sitecore Library)

  12. Notification Widget (Sitecore Library)

  13. Popup takeover (Sitecore Library)

  14. Sidebar (Sitecore Library)

Select any of the out-of-the-box templates or custom web templates, if they have been created.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-4.png

Let’s start to customize it. You have the option to use Advanced Edit for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to enhance web templates.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-4.png

The final Popup looks like this – changed the following 

  • Background color
  • Title
  • Description
  • Button Text

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-6.png

 

Page Targeting

I chose all the pages for simplicity.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-7.png

 

If you like specific pages – add the condition for the page URL.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-17.png

Goals

I chose not to track performance for testing purposes. Feel free to add any goal according to website needs.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-8.png

Filter, Decisioning, and Notifications

They are optional, going to leave them as it is. The Decision Model is so powerful that, will be exploring it in upcoming blogs.

Preview

Let’s Preview what it looks like – 

https://madhuanbalagan.com/?bxQATool=true&bxFlowRef=f536d1f2-646d-406e-8bb4-7e434912ce6b&bxVariantRef=77069aa5-dd50-44d2-ac5b-243ff8c246f6

The preview isn’t working because the EngageSDK needs to be installed on the website. If you have EngageSDK installed on the website, feel free to skip the TamperMonkey part.

Now this is where the TamperMonkey plugin comes to the rescue to pre-load the Engage SDK on any website using Sitecore Personalize script.

Download TamperMonkey Chrome extension –http://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en

Note: Make sure it is enabled and the Developer mode is turned on.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-11-1.png

 

Let’s make a new script. By default, TamperMonkey uses the website domain where you clicked ‘New Script’ as a match. 

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-12.png

Replace the following placeholders – 

The clientkey is found in CDP->Settings->API Access

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-2-1.png

 

Let’s add the script to TamperMonkey and save it. The @name value determines how the script is named.

Now it should detect the script when you visit the website.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-13.png

 

Live

Let’s publish the Experience to make it live – If you have a notification set, it will email when it’s live, paused, etc.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-2-1.png

The email notification is pretty helpful especially for Marketers to track their Experiences.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-20.png

 

 

Preview

Let’s try the Preview – make sure to add a new script for the preview URL in TamperMonkey. 

Let’s load the Preview with the page URL.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-16.png

The Popup showed up and the QA Tool shows at the left side of the page.

QA Tool

The QA Tool shows the validation of everything. Feel free to change the variant to test different scenarios. It’s super helpful for troubleshooting any issues.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-14.png

Testing

Let’s reload the page, Yay! Popup showed up!!

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-15-2.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

February 20, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely Opal: Unlocking AI-Powered Marketing with Opal Chat & Agents

I’ve just released a new YouTube video highlighting Optimizely Opal and how it’s transforming modern marketing with AI-powered chat and intelligent agents.

In this video, you’ll get a quick overview of:

  • Opal Chat and how it simplifies everyday marketing tasks
  • AI agents that help generate content, insights, and reports
  • How Opal enables faster, smarter marketing workflows

Check out the video here –

Happy Optimizing!

 

January 23, 2026
0
Sitecore

Sitecore Forms : Custom Validation to Exclude the Default Value for Dropdown

Blog-Sitecore-Favorite-Tools (2).png   

I came across a scenario where I needed to exclude the default value for dropdowns in Sitecore Forms. By default, dropdown fields in Sitecore Forms often preselect the first option, which might be a placeholder like “Select an option.”

If users submit the form without changing this value, it can lead to unreliable data. Custom validation helps enforce user interaction, ensuring the selection is meaningful.

 

Steps to Implement Custom Validation in Sitecore Forms

 

Step 1: Create a Custom Validator

  • Navigate to your Sitecore solution and open the project where Sitecore Forms is configured.
  • Create a new class that extends FormConditionalValidator and override the validation logic.

 

 

Step 2: Register the Validator in Sitecore

  1. Open Sitecore Content Editor and navigate to:
    /sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Validation
  2. Create a new validation item:
    • Name: Department Validator (Change it according to Project needs)
    • Type: Reference the class you created, e.g., Custom.Validators.DropdownDefaultValueValidator, CustomAssembly
    • Message: "{0} is required"
    • Parameters: "{"fieldToCompare":{Guid-of-the-dropdown}", "valueToCompare": "Select"}
  3. Save and publish the changes.

Sitecore_Forms_Validation-1.png

 

Step 3: Apply the Validator to Your Dropdown Field

  1. Open your form in Sitecore Forms Designer.
  2. Select the Dropdown field where validation is needed.
  3. Under the Validation section, add the newly created validator.
  4. Save and publish the form.

Sitecore_Forms_Validation-2.png

Let’s test – It’s working! Yay!!

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

 

January 16, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely: Our Journey in the Opal Innovation Challenge

When we signed up for Optimizely’s Opal Innovation Challenge, we knew it wasn’t just about building a solution—it was about solving a real marketing pain point. As marketing professionals and technologists, we’ve seen countless campaigns fail despite being well-written. Why? Because they didn’t resonate with the audience. This challenge gave us the perfect opportunity to tackle that problem head-on.

https://www.optimizely.com/operation-opal/#challenge

The Spark Behind the Idea

Marketing teams often struggle with persona alignment. A campaign might sound great internally, but fall flat with the target audience. For example:

  • Campaign 1: “Save more with Smart meters” – casual tone, generic message.
  • Campaign 2: “Embracing Green Living” – empathetic, informative, and resonates better.

This gap between content creation and audience expectation inspired our solution.

Our Team & Approach

We formed Infosys Transformers, a two-member team:

Our goal was simple yet ambitious: Make every piece of content count.

Challenges We Faced

  • Time Constraints: Building a multi-agent workflow in a hackathon timeframe was intense.
  • Balancing Creativity & Tech: Ensuring the solution was both innovative and practical.
  • Persona Complexity: Defining measurable persona attributes for scoring was tricky.

Timelines

Key Lessons Learned

  1. Persona Alignment is Non-Negotiable: Content without persona context is just noise.
  2. AI Can Bridge the Gap: Multi-agent systems can automate what manual reviews can’t.
  3. Collaboration is Everything: Combining tech and marketing expertise was our biggest strength.
  4. Start Simple, Scale Later: A modular approach helped us deliver a working prototype fast.

The Hackathon Experience

The Opal Innovation Challenge wasn’t just a competition—it was a learning marathon. We explored Opal’s agent ecosystem, experimented with orchestration, and realized how AI can transform marketing workflows.

Check out our video presented at the Hackathon – 

 

Closing Thoughts

Innovation happens when you combine empathy with technology. For us, this challenge was proof that marketing and AI are not separate worlds—they’re partners in creating meaningful experiences.

Top teams can win prizes like $5,000 in MDF, gift cards, and thought leadership opportunities.

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

January 3, 2026
0
Optimizely

Optimizely : Show Personalized Content Blocks

I have been exploring Personalization on Optimizely CMS 12 – Simple to set up, and can be utilized throughout the website.

I came across this use case where we want to show the Priority Call button on a page only during business hours.

The page currently has no call-to-action button.

Let’s get started to personalize the page to add a Priority Call button.

Step 1: Create Audience

  • Create an audience with the rules you would like to define.

Optimizely-CMS-Personalization-Content-Block.png

  • I created an Audience called Priority Call specifically for customers who can call the priority phone number during business hours.

Optimizely-CMS-Personalization-Content-Block-1.png

  • Add Criteria based on the project needs – multiple criteria can target specific customers.

  • Added Time of Day criteria – Monday to Friday from 8 am to 5 pm.

Optimizely-CMS-Personalization-Content-Block-3.png

 

Step 2: Create a Personalized Block

  • Now that we have created the target Audience. Let’s make a personalized block for a page.
  • I chose the ‘Find a Reseller’ page and, in Blocks, I am going to create a New Block for this page – you can also create one for the All Sites.

  •  Selected Button as the New Block and gave it a name – Priority Call Button.

  • Filled out the Button Text and Link.

  • Please make sure to Publish the Block – If not, it will not be visible on the page. 
  • I have made this mistake and wondered why the block isn’t appearing 🙂

 

3. Add the Personalized Block to a Page

  • Let’s drag and drop the Priority Call Button block into the Large Content Area or any Content Area.

  • Let’s personalize the button.

  • Everyone is by default – let’s change it to our new audience Priority Call.

  • Let’s publish the page and view it during business hours (our Audience criteria)
  • Yay! We could see the Priority Call Button!

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

December 23, 2025
0
Sitecore

Sitecore – Favorite Free Add-On Modules

Over the years, I’ve worked with numerous Sitecore modules that simplify our tasks and boost efficiency.

Sharing my favorite free modules – 

  1. Sitecore Powershell Extensions
  2. SiteCron
  3. Azure Tools
  4. Sidekick
  5. Content Export Tool
  6. Sitecore Log Analyzer

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE) (Huge thanks to Michael West, Adam Najmanowicz, and contributors) is a robust module that adds the power of PowerShell scripting to the Sitecore platform.

It empowers Sitecore developers and administrators to automate repetitive tasks and extend Sitecore’s functionality with custom scripts.

https://github.com/SitecorePowerShell/Console

Check out my PowerShell script blogs – 

https://madhuanbalagan.com/efficiently-bulk-edit-sitecore-content-using-sitecore-powershell-extensions-spe

https://madhuanbalagan.com/bulk-update-fields-using-spe

https://madhuanbalagan.com/migrate-sitecore-media-library-assets-to-dam

SiteCron

The SiteCron Module (a huge thanks to Akshay Sura) is a valuable tool for managing and scheduling tasks within Sitecore.

It provides a flexible way to automate and run various Sitecore jobs, such as publishing, indexing, or custom tasks, on a scheduled basis. 

Check out the installation and recent blogs – 

https://akshaysura.com/2017/09/07/sitecore-scheduling-with-sitecron-2-1-6/

https://akshaysura.com/2018/04/19/sitecore-precision-scheduling-with-sitecron-3-0-4-released-in-powerful-ways/

Azure Tools

Downloading Sitecore Logs from Azure Web Apps wasn’t easy. To troubleshoot any issues, I used to spend decent time trying to find recent logs. 

AzureTools (Thank you Sitecore Community – You are simply awesome!) comes to the rescue. It’s a simple .aspx page that can be dropped into CM environments and download logs in just seconds. 

Check out my detailed blog –  https://madhuanbalagan.com/instantly-download-sitecore-logs-from-azure-web-apps

Sidekick

To pull content locally, we relied on packaging content from upper environments or restoring the database – which was quite time-consuming.

The Sitecore Sidekick module (a big thanks to Jeff Darchuk) was a lifesaver for quickly pulling content into local or lower environments.

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-4.png

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-6.png

Take a look at my in-depth blog on installation and setup –  https://madhuanbalagan.com/sitecore-sidekick-installation-and-setup

Content Export Tool

The Sitecore Content Export Tool (many thanks to Erica Stockwell-Alpert) is a powerful utility designed to streamline the process of exporting content from your Sitecore instance.

It enables developers, content authors, and administrators to easily extract content in bulk, simplifying tasks like data migration, content backups, or sharing content across environments.

Explore the usage guide and documentation –https://ericastockwellalpert.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/content-export-tool-for-sitecore/

 

Sitecore Log Analyzer

The Sitecore Log Analyzer (SCLA) (Sitecore Community Rocks!) is a powerful tool designed to help Sitecore developers analyze and interpret log files with ease.

It simplifies the process of identifying issues, tracking errors, and monitoring system performance by providing a user-friendly interface to view and filter Sitecore logs.

This ClickOnce installer sets up the application and enables automatic updates. After installation, the app can be launched from the Start menu or pinned to the taskbar for easy access.

https://support.sitecore.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0870095

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

December 20, 2025
0
Optimizely

Optimizely PaaS Administrator Certification : Free for Everyone

Optimizely has recently launched a free PaaS Administrator Certification.

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/activity/2958208-paas-cms-administrator-certification?sid=a5b1a937-c694-4e99-b753-821bac3d9173&sid_i=0

 

Exam Details:

  • Questions: 50
  • Duration: 60 minutes
  • Passing Score: 80%

In case of failure, you can retake the exam after 24 hours.

  • After passing the exam, Credly will send an email with badge details.
  • Good Luck!

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

December 8, 2025
0
Optimizely

Automating Cleanup Tasks with Optimizely Scheduled Jobs

Scheduled jobs in Optimizely CMS are a powerful way to automate any background tasks like content cleanup, indexing, or reporting.

I created a simple scheduled job to delete the expired content.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Create the Job Class

  • Created a job called ExpiredPagesCleanupJob.cs that inherits the ScheduledJobBase class.
  • Implement logger as needed, currently commented out in code.
  • Rebuild and deploy the solution.

Step 2: Run the job

  • Wondering, don’t I need to register the job in Optimizely CMS? No need, it automatically registers the job using the [ScheduledPlugin] attribute.

Optimizely-CMS-Scheduled-Job-1.png

  • Let’s navigate to Settings -> Scheduled Jobs
  • Now you will see the job listed and ready to be started.

Optimizely-CMS-Scheduled-Job-2.png

  • Let’s start the job manually for now.

Optimizely-CMS-Scheduled-Job-3.png

  • History shows whether the job has succeeded or not.

Optimizely-CMS-Scheduled-Job-4.png

  • Before running the job, the Expired Page report showed that two content pages had expired.

Optimizely-CMS-Scheduled-Job-5.png

  • Now let’s check the reporting results again. yay! It’s successfully deleted!

  • You can schedule the job every 5 seconds, minutes, hourly, and so on.

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

November 29, 2025
0
Optimizely

Multiple Languages in Optimizely CMS

I was exploring multi-languages in Optimizely CMS 12 – able to figure it out quickly in a few steps.

Let’s get started.

1. Enable Languages in the Admin

Optimizely stores language settings in the Admin view.

  • Log in to Optimizely CMS as an administrator.

  • Navigate to: Admin -> Manage Website Languages

  • You can select an existing language or add a new language

    • There are 14 languages available by default.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-1.png

    • Add a new language if it’s not listed in the default list.

      • I’m adding Hindi (hi-IN) as I’m from India 🙂

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-2.png

  • Make sure to Enable the Language to be listed on the sites.

 

2. Language Settings

  • Now the Hindi is listed on Sites, but it’s enabled at the site level.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-4.png

  • To enable at the site level, go to Language Settings under Tools (Make sure you are on the site’s Start page).

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-5.png

  • Check the newly added language under Available Languages.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-6.png

  • We need to set the Fallback Languages as a secondary option when the language is not available.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-7.png

 

3. Update Page Types and Block Types

To support multilingual fields, Optimizely requires culture-specific properties.

  • For any property that should be translated, add the attribute:

[CultureSpecific]

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-8.png

  • Rebuild and deploy the solution.

 

4. Create Translations

  • Select the page you would like to translate, and the Translate button will appear. I chose the Contact Us page for demo purposes.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-9.png

  • Create the language version.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-10.png

  • Translate properties, blocks, and media as needed and publish the changes.

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-11.png

  • Let’s preview the changes. Isn’t looking good?

Optimizely-CMS-Multi-Language-11.png

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Hope it helps.

Happy Optimizing!

November 15, 2025
0
Optimizely

Optimizely: Multi-Step Form Creation Through Submission

I have been exploring Optimizely Forms recently and created a multi-step Customer Support Request Form with File Upload Functionality. 

Let’s get started.

Note: Assuming that you have installed the Forms module. If not, please check out my blog post – 

https://madhuanbalagan.com/optimizely-forms-setup-configuration-and-submission

Creation of Multi-Step Form

  • Create a new Form Container in the Forms Tab – named it Customer Support Form.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission.png

 

Step 1: Contact Details

  • Let’s create the first step by dragging and dropping the Form Step in the Content Area.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-1.png

  • Quick Edit to fill the Title, Description, and publish the changes.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-2.png

  • Inside the Form Step 1 – Drag and drop the Text elements for the following fields.
    • Name
    • Email
    • Phone

Note: Publish each field to reflect on the Content Area.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-3.png

Step 2:  Product Details

  • Let’s drag and drop the Form Step element like before, and the following fields.
    • Product ID
    • Purchase Date
    • Warranty Status
  • Product ID – Created as a Number and checked all validators.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-4.png

  • Purchase Date – Text field with Date Format validation.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-5.png

  • The Step 2 form is ready now.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-6.png

Step 3:  Issue Description

  • Let’s drag and drop the Form Step element like before, and the following fields.
    • Issue Type
    • Issue Description
    • File Upload
    • Submit button
  • Issue Type – Selection element options entered manually – could be a datasource as well.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-7.png

  • File Upload – Set the Max Limit and Allowed extensions separated by a comma.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-7.png

  • The Step 3 part is completed and ready to be placed in a landing page.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-9.png

Form in Landing Page:

  • Create a new Standard Page – Customer Support Page.
  • Drag and drop the newly created Form into the Content Area.
  • Publish the changes.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-10.png

Testing the Form:

  • The new landing page shows in the menu – let’s check it out.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-11.png

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-11.png

  • The File Upload – multiple file selection worked great!

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-13.png

  • Let’s submit the form – you could redirect to a specific page if needed.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-14.png

Form Submissions:

  • The submitted records are easy to check by pressing the Form Submissions.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-15.png

  • The records can be exported in any of the following formats. 

  • The records are stored forever by default – feel free to change the retention policy as needed for partial and full submissions.

Optimizely-Multi-Step-Forms-Step-Form-NuGet-Install-Submission-17.png

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Hope this helps.

Happy Optimizing!

October 25, 2025
0
Optimizely

Optimizely Forms : Setup, Configuration and Submission

I have exploring Optimizely Forms recently –  Installed NuGet package to enable Optimizely Forms, created a Contact Us Form and placed in a landing page. Sharing my learning from installation to submission.

Let’s get started.

  • To enable Optimizely Forms, we need to install NuGet package for Forms – It can be installed via NuGet Console or Manager. I prefer GUI since it’s more visual.

EpiServer.Forms

EpiServer.Forms.Core

EpiServer.Forms.UI

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-1.png

  • Let’s run the project – localhost:5000 now will have a new tab Forms besides Blocks and Media.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-2.png

  • Create a New Form by right clicking on EpiServer Forms – named it as Contact Us Form.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-3.png

  • Let’s add the fields by drag and dropping into the Content Area.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-4.png

  • Quick Edit to change the Label, Tooltip, Required field and RegEx if needed. Save and Publish the changes.
  • Note: Each field needs to be published.

  • Similarly, I have created the following fields –

First Name – Text

Last Name – Text

Email – Text

Comment – Text Area

Submit Button

Note: The Email is Text field with the Email checkbox checked.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-6.png

  • Form is now ready to be placed in any landing page.

  • Let’s create a Standard Page or any page with Content Area.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-8.png

  • Drag and Drop the Contact Us Form into the Content Area and publish the changes.

  • Let’s test the Contact Us Form – we could see the new menu CONTACT US PAGE is automatically added when published the page.

  • Submitted the Form – Verified that the required field validators are working as expected.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-12.png

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-11.png

  • The submitted records are easy to check by pressing the Form Submissions.

  • The records can be exported in any of the following formats. 

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-12.png

  • The records are stored forever by default – feel free to change the retention policy as needed for partial and full submissions.

Optimizely-Forms-NuGet-Setup-Install-Submission-15.png

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Happy Optimizing!

October 13, 2025
1
Optimizely

Optimizely SaaS CMS Developer Certification

I have recently passed the Optimizely SaaS CMS Developer Certification. Sharing my experience, hope this helps.

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/activity/2181428-saas-cms-developer-certification?sid=b1c2cf21-e438-4a16-8832-c165d1724844&sid_i=2

Let’s get started.

  • To prepare for the exam, I started with Optimizely Academy’s SaaS CMS Fundamentals and went through all the modules.

 https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/1405874/path/4062729

 

  • The developer documentation helps to revise the concepts.

Optimizely Developer Documentation

Optimizely-SaaS-CMS-Developer-Exam-4.png

  • The complete SaaS CMS Developer Certification reference material

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/activity/2408711-saas-cms-developer-core-competency-certification-reference-material

  • When you’re ready for the exam, you can purchase the exam voucher code for $300. Alternatively, if your company is an Optimizely partner and you have competitor certification, fill out the Opt-up program to receive a free voucher code.

https://www.optimizely.com/support/education/opt-up-training-certification-program/

  • After submission, they confirm the eligibility within 7 business days in email.

Optimizely-SaaS-CMS-Developer-Exam.png

  • Once the voucher code is redeemed, you need to take the exam within 14 days. No scheduling the exam is needed, you can take exam anytime.

Exam Questions: 50 multiple-choice questions

Duration: 60 minutes

Pass Score: 85% (43 questions need to be correct)

Note: In case of exam failure, you can retake the exam after 24 hours!

After passing, Credly will send an email notification, and the certification is valid for 2 good years.

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Happy Optimizing!

September 21, 2025
2
Optimizely

Optimizely : Fast Installation on Local Machine

I have been exploring Optimizely and installed CMS 12 on my local machine pretty quickly using the NuGet package manager.

Assuming all prerequisites are installed on the local machine. Check out to make sure everything is installed.

https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/content-management-system/docs/system-requirements-for-optimizely

Let’s get started.

  • Add EpiServer Templates in PowerShell 

dotnet new -i EPiServer.Templates

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-10.png

  •  Let’s install Optimizely CLI Tool globally

dotnet tool install EPiServer.Net.Cli –global –add-source https://nuget.optimizely.com/feed/packages.svc/

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-11.png

  • In Visual Studio, let’s verify that the Optimizely NuGet source is added via the NuGet Package Manager Solution.

https://api.nuget.optimizely.com/v3/index.json

  • Let’s also verify the EpiServer.CMS NuGet package is installed.

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-1.png

  • Now, let’s create a new project in Visual Studio, which will give three Optimizely base projects to choose from 
    • Optimizely Alloy MVC 
    • Optimizely CMS empty
    • Optimizely Commerce empty

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-2.png

  • I chose Optimizely Alloy MVC, which is a starter kit for new developers to explore.
  • Named it – AlloyDemo1 project.

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-3-1.png

  • Provide the SQL admin SA account password since it creates the databases as part of the project in MDF and LDF files.

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-4.png

  • The new Optimizely solution is ready to explore!

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-5.png

  • To run the localhost, we just need to start the IISExpress AlloyDemo1 project, which runs cmd prompt to initialize commands.

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-6.png

Optimizely-installation-episerver-cms12-local-machine-7.png

  • Register the admin account with credentials and explore the new local instance of Optimizely.

NOTE: There is no license required for running on localhost or domainname.local. Yay!

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Happy Optimizing!

September 7, 2025
0
Optimizely

Optimizely : Getting started

 

I have been exploring Optimizely for quite some time and didn’t know where to start. Sharing my journey, hope it helps.

To start learning about Optimizely, https://academy.optimizely.com would be the best place.

Agree the Terms and Conditions and create an account would give the complete access.

Optimizely-academy-saas-certification-introduction.png

 

I have been following the PaaS Learning Path to get Optimizely PaaS CMS Developer certification.

Get to know Optimizely CMS

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3863630

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3863631

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3863632

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3863633

Create and Manage Content

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882255

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882256

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882257

Provision your instance

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882258

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882259

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2882260

Learn More

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925854

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881915

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881916

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881921

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881922

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881923

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881925

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/2881924

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925855

Developer Training

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925856

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3868031

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925226

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925227

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925228

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925229

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925230

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925857

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925858

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/3925859

Exam Guide

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/4195037

Reference Path

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/collection/2014956/path/4195037

Voucher Code

There is opt-up Developer Certification program for Optimizely partners.

https://www.optimizely.com/support/education/opt-up-training-certification-program/

If your company is in the program and you have competitor certification, please fill out the application form, and they will confirm your eligibility within 7 business days.

https://academy.optimizely.com/student/activity/2305283-opt-up-application-form

Optimizely-academy-saas-certification-introduction-1.png

After confirmation, email when you completed the study materials – they will send voucher code to register for the exam. You need to take the exam within 14 days.

If you prefer watching a video, my quick recording –

Happy Optimizing!

September 2, 2025
0
Sitecore

Algolia Search Provider for Sitecore 10.2.1

Algolia Search Provider for Sitecore 10.2.1

The Algolia Search Provider for Sitecore is a powerful integration combining robust content management capabilities with Algolia’s lightning-fast, full-text search engine.

This provider enables Sitecore-driven websites and applications to deliver instant, relevant, and highly customizable search experiences to end-users, ensuring faster content discovery and improved user engagement.

While exploring, I found that Dmitry Harnitski and Peter Procházka have implemented the Algolia Search Provider for Sitecore 9.1 and previous versions. Thank you so much!

https://github.com/dharnitski/Sitecore.Algolia

https://github.com/chorpo/Sitecore.Algolia/tree/sitecore91

Upgrading to Sitecore 10.2.1

The following are the steps taken for upgrading Sitecore 10.2.1 – 

  •  I forked from Peter Procházka’s Sitecore 9.1 branch

https://github.com/chorpo/Sitecore.Algolia/tree/sitecore91

  • Upgraded the Sitecore NuGet packages to 10.2.1.

Sitecore-Algolia-Search-Provider-10-2-1-Upgrade-1.png

  • Algolia.Search NuGet package upgraded 6.12.1

Sitecore-Algolia-Search-Provider-10-2-1-Upgrade-4.png

Sitecore-Algolia-Search-Provider-10-2-1-Upgrade-2.png

  • Finally, able to build the solution successfully. 

Sitecore-Algolia-Search-Provider-10-2-1-Upgrade-3.png

  • After the build was successful, I shifted the module to the existing solution.
  • I didn’t get a chance to upgrade the unit test project. If you have upgraded, please let me know.

The module is checked into the following repository.

https://github.com/Madhumidha/Sitecore.Algolia/tree/Sitecore1021

The repo has all the instructions on how to set up and configuration details.

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

 

June 19, 2025
0
Sitecore / SPE

Bulk Updating Sitecore Workflows

Blog-Sitecore-Bulk-Update-Workflow.png

 

I was working on Sitecore SXA 10.3.1 and the workflow was somehow messed up. 

Manually modifying can be time-consuming and error-prone. Sitecore SPE is a powerful tool that allows for efficient modification of content in bulk through find and replace text functionality.

In this article, we will explore the steps of using Sitecore SPE to quickly and easily bulk update workflow, streamlining the process, and saving time.

Dry-Run Script:

Running the script won’t make any changes to items, it will give the items that are going to be modified.

 

Dry-Run Output:

Powershell-Workflow-Sitecore-Bulk-Edit-2-1.png

Execution Script :

Running the script will modify the items.

Execution Script Output:

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

References

https://sitecorejunkie.com/category/sitecore-powershell-extensions

https://michaellwest.blogspot.com/search/label/powershell

https://blog.najmanowicz.com/category/software-development/powershell/

 

May 20, 2025
0
CDP and Personalize / Sitecore

Sitecore Personalize : Custom Web Template Integration

Sitecore Personalize Custom Web Template Integration.png

I’ve been delving deeper into Sitecore Personalize and have discovered how to incorporate its custom Web Templates into the website.

Let’s dive into the process of creating custom Web Templates and how to utilize them in Web Experiences.

Create Web Template

Let’s navigate to Web Templates in Sitecore Personalize and create it.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-1-2.png

 

The Web Templates have the high flexibility of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and API tabs to configure.

  • HTML: Define the structure and content of your web template. This is where you can create the basic layout and elements that will be displayed on your website.

  • CSS: Style your web template to match your brand’s look and feel. You can add custom styles to ensure that the template is visually appealing and consistent with your website’s design.

  • JavaScript: Add interactivity and dynamic behavior to your web template. JavaScript allows you to create engaging user experiences by adding features like animations, form validations, and more.

  • API: Configure API responses to integrate with your organization’s data.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-2-1.png

 

To build the custom web template, let’s say I want to Personalize the About page of my blog.

To create HTML and CSS, we don’t need to dive into the code. A tool called SnipCSS can turn any section of the website into a reusable component.

SnipCSS

SnipCSS is a powerful tool designed to help web developers extract CSS and HTML snippets from any web element or widget. The main key feature is extracting all HTML, images, and CSS with a single click.

Download the Chrome extension – https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snipcss/hbdnoadcmapfbngbodpppofgagiclicf

After installing, there is no need for signup unless Pro features are needed.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-6.png

 

Running the SnipCSS

Let’s hover over the section we want to personalize and run the Snip CSS.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-8.png

 

A cute Kiwi will come, analyze the section in a second, and open a new tab with HTML and CSS of the section.

Sitecore CDP and Personalize - Web Templates-Experiences-9.png

 

Web Template HTML and CSS

Let’s copy and paste the HTML and CSS into the Web Template that we created.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-13.png

 

Convert all hard-coded text into parameters to ensure it can be reused throughout the website.

Let’s convert the image source into a dynamic image URL.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-10-1.png

To make it configurable, substitute it with a parameter name and type

[[ Image URL  | string ]]

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-11.png

 

Similarly, I have configured more fields.

[[ Title | string ]]

[[ Description | string ]]

[[ Certification 1 | string ]]

[[ Certification 2 | string ]]

[[ Certification 3 | string ]]

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-12.png

 

Web Template JavaScript

Now we need to tell whether the section needs to be replaced/added after some ClassName or ID of the page.

Let’s replace the section HTML with the ID of the div.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-15.png

Sitecore CDP and Personalize - Web Templates-Experiences-14.png

Settings

Let’s add a description for the web template and select an icon from the predefined options, as custom uploads are not allowed.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-17.png

 

Preview

Select the Render a Preview Experience checkbox and it adds a new tab to the web template for previewing.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-16.png

 

Publish/Draft

Enable the Publish button to activate live mode, which locks the web template.

To revert it to draft mode, disable the Publish button.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-18.png

Create Experience

Let’s build an Experience using the Web Template we just created.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-19.png

 

Create a Variant

Now variant lists our custom Web Template, let’s go.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-20.png

 

Enter the field values for Image URL, Title, Description, Certification 1, Certification 2, and Certification 3.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-21.png

 

Page Targeting

It is specifically for the About page, let’s add a condition.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-22.png

Preview

Let’s preview it for the About page URL.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-23.png

It’s working! Tada!

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-23.png

Live mode

Let’s start the Experience – you can start now or schedule it later time.

Sitecore CDP and Personalize - Web Templates-Experiences-24.png

After a few seconds, it’s live now – If a notification is added, it will email that it’s published.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-25.png

Let’s reload the page. Yahoo!!

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Templates-Experiences-4.png

 

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

May 6, 2025
1
Sitecore

Sitecore Forms : Custom Submit Action to Create and Publish Content Item (Part 2)

In Part 1, we saw

  • Create Custom Submit Action in Sitecore
  • Create a code-behind class that inherits SubmitActionBase
  • Create a secure API that can create and publish an item

https://madhuanbalagan.com/sitecore-forms-custom-submit-action-to-create-and-publish-item-from-form-data-part-1

Now, let’s focus on 

  • Create a separate Authorization in the Identity Server for Forms 
  • Create a Controller to bridge between Custom Submit Action and API call
  • Set the Custom Submit Action fields

1. Create a separate Authorization in the Identity Server for Forms 

Add the FormsServerClient node and its value to the Identity Server’s Sitecore.IdentityServer.DevEx.xml file. After making the change, make sure to IIS Reset for the change to be in effect. 

Note: Don’t forget to add transforms for ClientSecret!

 

Ideally, you can call it in Postman to verify that it’s generating a token using Form’s ClientID and ClientSecret values mentioned in the Sitecore.IdentityServer.DevEx.xml file.

Now that the config is all set to have its own ClientID and ClientSecret, let’s set up the Authorize method with BearerToken specifically for Form’s Identity Credentials.

The SitecoreRestServices handles authenticated HTTP requests to Sitecore’s REST APIs, managing access tokens and retrying requests if authentication fails. It uses dependency injection to configure the HTTP client and obtain the necessary settings.

2. Create a Controller to bridge between Custom Submit Action and API call

Let’s bridge the Custom Submit Action and API call – The CustomController class extends SitecoreController and uses dependency injection to obtain an instance of ICreateAutoPublishService.

It defines a CreateAndPublish method – HTTP POST endpoint that processes CreateAndAutoPublishModel, calls the service to create and publish content, and returns a JSON response indicating success or failure.

The method includes error handling to return appropriate HTTP status codes and messages for different exceptions.

3. Set the Custom Submit Action fields

The final step – Let’s set the Model Type and Error Message based on the class we created. 

Publish the form and its related items. It should be good to go!

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

April 20, 2025
0
Coveo / Sitecore

Coveo Computed Field for Extracting PDFs with Apache Tika in Sitecore

I needed to index the PDF file content in the Media Library, but when I tried to index it, the PDFSharp library couldn’t extract it.

Sitecore recommends using the following libraries: IFilter, Apache Tika, or SolrCell for indexing the media content.

I had a detailed blog on installing and integrating Apache Tika into the project.

https://madhuanbalagan.com/sitecore-apache-tika-integration-for-secure-media-file-indexing

Now that Tika is integrated, let’s get started on creating a computed field to extract PDF content using the Apache Tika service.

Media Extraction:

  • I created MediaExtraction class, which inherits BaseComputedField.
  • The GetComputedField method calls the ApacheTika service and extracts the text asynchronously.
  • Returns the text document.

 

 

Apache Tika Service:

  • The Tika Service class implements the IContentExtractionService interface
  • The main method ReadJsonObject sends the document to the Tika server and extracts the text content parsed JSON response.

 

 

Tika ConnectionString:

Please make sure that Tika is up and running.

<add name=”tika” connectionString=”http://localhost:9998″ />

When I checked, it wasn’t running for some reason.

 

Run the following Powershell script to restart the Tika.

cd c:\tika

java -jar tika-server-1.22.jar -s

Let’s check – Tika is now up and running.

 

Configuration:

Let’s add the MediaExtraction computed field into the config file.

I published all the files and it’s time to check.

I selected the PDF document in the Media Library and hit Rebuild Tree (I set the indexing strategy as SyncMaster. If you have intervalAsyncMaster or onPublishEndSyncSingleInstance, publish the item to see the record in Index.)

 

 

 

Let’s check the Coveo index – Yay! Its PDF content was extracted successfully.

Sitecore-Media-Computed-Field

 

The same computed field would work for Word and PowerPoint documents as well.

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

April 12, 2025
0
CDP&Personalize / Sitecore

Sitecore Personalize : Experiment A/B Testing Integration

Sitecore Personalize offers robust capabilities for A/B testing and experimentation, allowing you to optimize customer experiences based on real-time behavior and data analysis.

By running experiments, you can determine which variations of your content perform best and drive the desired outcomes.

Let’s dive into creating the Web Experiment and test which variant appears on the website.

Web Experiment

Create an Experiment based on Web, Interactive, or Triggered.

Sitecore CDP and Personalize - Web Experiment-A-B-Testing-1.pngTypes of Experiments:

  1. Web Experiments: Create dynamic offers and content using web templates. These experiments can be run on your website or deployed into web-based applications.

  2. Interactive Experiments: Develop dynamic offers and content from back-end systems for maximum server-side personalization.

  3. Triggered Experiments: Use FreeMarker to create dynamic offers and content that can be sent to Email Service Providers (ESP) or SMS/Push service providers.

I chose Web Experiment to keep it simple.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-2.png

 

Create Variant

  • Click ‘+ Create Variant’ under the Experiment.
  • Pick the variant (e.g., Popup Takeover – Sitecore Library) or custom Web Template if available.

 

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-3.png

Variant 1

Fill out the details to make it customized according to the website.

  • Title
  • Description
  • Button 

Utilize Advanced edit if you like more customized with HTML, CSS and JS.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-4.png

Variant 2

Let’s create Variant 2 of the Experiment. We can duplicate Variant 1 and make tweaks, which simplifies the process.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-5.png

 

I simply modified the background color, title, description, and button text to give it a different look and feel.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-6.png

Traffic Control

Now that variants are created, let’s assign the traffic for each variant.

I’m going with 50% for each variant and make sure that Control + Variants should be 100%.

  • Control – 0% (Orinigal version)
  • Variant 1 – 50% traffic
  • Variant 2 – 50% traffic

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-7.png

Page Targeting

I chose all the pages for simplicity.

If you like specific pages – add the condition for the page URL.

 

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-11.png

Goals

I chose not to track performance for testing purposes. Feel free to add any goal according to website needs.

Sitecore-CDP-Personalize-Popup-TamperMonkey-8-1.png

Preview

Let’s load the Preview with the page URL.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-8.png

The Popup Variant 1 showed up and the QA Tool shows at the left side of the page.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-10.png

Live

Let’s initiate the Experiment to go live—it only takes a few seconds. If notifications are set, an email will be sent.

Sitecore-CDP-and-Personalize-Web-Experiment-A-B-Testing-10.png

Let’s reload the page, Yay! Popup Variant 1 showed up!!

Let’s reload the page, Yay! Popup showed up!!

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

April 1, 2025
0
Coveo / Sitecore

Integrating External Website into Coveo Index for Seamless Search in Sitecore

I recently faced a scenario where I needed to integrate an external website into the Coveo Index and utilize it along with Sitecore Items on the website.

Let’s take my blog as an external data source and integrate it into the Coveo Index.

Trial Account

Feel free to create a new trial account and explore yourself – No credit card is needed it’s free and valid for 14 days. 

https://www.coveo.com/en/free-trial

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-1.png

Note: Please make sure to use your business email.

Sources

After signing up, navigate to the Sources section.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-2.png

 

There are many sources available like Sitecore, Web, Sitemap, Sitemap, and many more.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-3.png

Web Source

Let’s focus on Web sources since we want to add my blog.

There are two Web sources available on-prem crawler and cloud-based crawler. Let’s choose the cloud-based crawler that is with the cloud icon on the right.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-4.png

When I start filling in my blog URL, it automatically detects the Sitemap for the website – Switching to the Sitemap URL for better Indexing performance.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-5.png

 After switching, it automatically updated to a Sitemap source with the appropriate sitemap URL.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-6.png

Content Security

The next step in the setup is Content Security.

We can permit for 

  • Same users and groups as in your content system (Grayed out due to trial account)
  • Everyone – Anonymous can access
  • Specific users and groups

By default, the everyone option is selected this would be best for public-facing content. 

Let’s change it to Specific users and groups for the demo.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-8.png

Add Source

Once added after a few minutes the source will be available. You can review other settings if further tuning is needed.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-9.png

 

Rebuild Source

Hit save and rebuild source that will initiate the rebuilding of the index.

Download logs provide more in-depth information – It’s super helpful when you face any issues.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-10.png

 

Content Browser

Once the rebuild is completed, Open the Content Browser from the left navigation under content to see the items in the index.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-11.png

 

It took only a couple of minutes to rebuild the entire blog this depends on the content of the site.

Yay! My entire blog is reindexed and ready to be consumed.

Sitecore-Coveo-Extenal-Data-Source-Index-12.png

 

Now, in the Sitecore Coveo Search interface, I could include this as an external source and use the items in the index. We could also set up a blog template and display the results with images. The source type can also be used as a facet.

Hope this helps.

Happy Searching!

March 24, 2025
0
Sitecore

Sitecore Forms : Custom Submit Action to Create and Publish Content Item(Part 1)

 

Problem

I encountered a situation that the website was internally facing, which needed a form that would not save the data in the Experience Forms database. Also the data needs to be saved as an Item in the master database so it could be published and consumed in a listing page.

At first, I considered creating a Custom Submit Action to create and publish an item. However, I later realized that the CD server lacked access to the CM server, preventing it from directly generating an item in the master database. So, I came up with the idea of creating a custom API service and combining it with a custom submit action.

Solution

To implement this followed this process

  • Create Custom Submit Action in Sitecore
  • Create a code-behind class that inherits SubmitActionBase
  • Create a secure API that can create and publish an item
  • Create an API authorization user in the identity server 
  • Create a Controller to proxy between Custom Submit Action and API calls
  • Set the Custom Submit Action fields

 

1. Custom Submit Action in Sitecore

Create the custom submit action in the following path /sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Submit Actions.

Sitecore_Forms_1.png

 

2. Create a code-behind class that inherits SubmitActionBase

Create a class that inherits the SubmitActionBase class and overrides the Execute method which calls the API asynchronously to create and publish an item.

The CreateAndAutoPublish class extends SubmitActionBase<string> and is designed to handle form submissions in Sitecore, creating and auto-publishing content items.

It uses dependency injection to obtain instances of IHttpClientFactory, BaseSettings, and ISitecoreRestServices, which are lazily initialized. The ExecuteAction method validates the form submission context and parameters, then calls the Execute method to prepare a model from form fields, serialize it to JSON, and send it to a Sitecore API endpoint using an HTTP POST request.

The class includes helper methods to extract values from form fields and handles errors by logging them and adding them to the form submission context’s error collection.

 

3. Create an API call that creates and publishes the item  

The API call does the following things – 

  1. Creates an item under a specified folder
  2. Move and Sync the item into a bucket
  3. Publish the item
  4. Clear the Sitecore cache
  5. Ensure the published item is indexed or force index the item
  6. Clear the Vercel Cache for frontend

In Part 2, we will see how to

  • Create an API authorization user in the identity server 
  • Create a Controller to proxy between Custom Submit Action and API calls
  • Set the Custom Submit Action fields

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

March 1, 2025
1
Azure / Sitecore

Instantly Download Sitecore Logs from Azure Web Apps

I had to troubleshoot an issue and started with logs. Since we are in Azure PaaS, I used Kudu or App Service Explorer to search for recent logs. It was absolutely time-consuming.

AzureTools comes to the rescue. It is a simple .aspx page that can be dropped into CM environments, and download logs in seconds.

https://support.sitecore.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0420753

Download the recent AzureTools-1.2.0 (It should work with any Sitecore version) – 

Download AzureTools

Unzip and drop the AzureTools.aspx in https://[CM_Site]/sitecore/admin folder

Sitecore-AzureTools-Azure-Logs-ToolKit-3.png

 

Now it’s ready to download logs from App Insights, Azure Search, and Kibana Logs – https://[CM_Site]/sitecore/admin/azuretools.aspx

Sitecore-AzureTools-Azure-Logs-ToolKit-4.png

To pull logs from App Insights, need the Application ID and API Key.

Application ID:

Navigate to the Azure App Insights Resource -> Configure -> API Access.

Sitecore-AzureTools-Azure-Logs-ToolKit-5.pngAPI Key:

 – Create the API Key with Read Telemetry access.

Remember to save the key in notes, you can’t get it after creation!

Now I was excited to download logs – 

But then it’s erroring out – 

Sitecore-AzureTools-Azure-Logs-ToolKit-1.png  

The console is showing the following error –

azuretools.aspx:2082 Refused to connect to ‘https://api.applicationinsights.io/v1/apps/e…ityLevel%2C%20customDimensions.ThreadName%2C%20customDimensions.StackTrace’ because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: “default-src ‘self’ mailto: tel: ‘unsafe-inline’ ‘unsafe-eval'”. Note that ‘connect-src’ was not explicitly set, so ‘default-src’ is used as a fallback.

 

It made me curious to check the Web.Config – I couldn’t find the content-src node, added the following line.

connect-src ‘self’ ‘unsafe-inline’ ‘unsafe-eval’ https://api.applicationinsights.io; 

 <location path="sitecore">
<system.webServer>
<httpProtocol>
<customHeaders>
<!--Adding mailto: and tel: which are currently blocked in iframes. Seems like a Chrome bug that never got fixed: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=663325 -->
<add name="Content-Security-Policy"
xdt:Locator="Match(name)"
xdt:Transform="SetAttributes"
value="default-src 'self' mailto: tel: 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'; img-src 'self' data:; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fonts.googleapis.com; font-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fonts.gstatic.com; upgrade-insecure-requests; block-all-mixed-content;"/>
value="default-src 'self' mailto: tel: 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'; img-src 'self' data:; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fonts.googleapis.com; font-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fonts.gstatic.com; connect-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' https://api.applicationinsights.io; upgrade-insecure-requests; block-all-mixed-content;"/>
</customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>
</location>

Now I’m able to pull logs, preview traces, and exceptions.

Sitecore-AzureTools-Azure-Logs-ToolKit-2.png

 

Utilize the Extended View for more filtered options.

Hope it helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

February 1, 2025
0
Sidekick / Sitecore

Automate Sitecore Content Synchronization using Sidekick PowerShell

  Sitecore-Content-Sidekick-Powershell.png

I wanted to set up a daily Sitecore content synchronization to lower environments to ensure they are updated with the latest content from Production every morning.

The Sitecore Sidekick PowerShell module came to the rescue – Thank you Jeff Darchuk for the excellent module! One of its key advantages is that it eliminates the need to pass usernames or passwords for higher environments. 

https://github.com/JeffDarchuk/SitecoreSidekick?tab=readme-ov-file#scripting-sidekick

Installation:

Simply copy the Sidekick folder from the URL below and paste it into your PowerShell Modules on a Windows machine.

https://github.com/JeffDarchuk/SitecoreSidekick/tree/master/Scripting

Basically, it should reside in one of the paths found under $env:PSModulePath

Example: C:\Users\[USER]\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\SitecoreSidekick

P.S. I hope you have the Sidekick module installed, it needs a SharedSecret to communicate to the higher environments.

Content Sync:

After successfully installing the Sidekick PowerShell module, I created the following script to sync the Home page and its children from the Production environment to the QA environment.

 

Similarly, I created the following script for the Data folder on the SXA site, excluding the Sitewide Configuration item.

Scheduling:

With the scripts ready, I have scheduled both using Powershell Scripts Command to run every 12 hours to fetch items.

Sitecore-Sidekick-Content-Sync-Powershell.png

 

Sitecore-Sidekick-Content-Sync-Powershell-2.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

January 12, 2025
1
Sitecore

2024 – Contributions

The 2024 year has been great with presenting at Sitecore Symposium, and various Sitecore User Groups worldwide. 

Symposium Presentation: 

 

Blog Posts : 

 

Presentations : 

 

Contributions: 

  • Dec 22, 2023 – Feedback/Review for Sitecore Content Hub Administrator Certification Exam – 
  • Dec 15, 2023 – Feedback for Sitecore MVP Program – 
  • Mar 01, 2024 – Sitecore CDP & Personalize Certification Exam Beta review
  • April 19, 2024 – Reviewed Sitecore Dev 10 Beta Exam

 

 Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups: 

 

YouTube – Videos published for SUG – Pittsburgh  

  • Jan 02, 2024 – Abstracting personalization – CP
  • Mar 20, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud 101 – A Beginner’s Guide
  • Apr 03, 2024 – From Brainstorm to Brilliance: The Untold Story of Sitecore Hackathon
  • Apr 12, 2024 – Sitecore XM Cloud Forms
  • May 6, 2024 – Achieving Behavioral Personalization with XM Cloud Plus 
  • May 22, 2024 – Sitecore Search and XM Cloud – Experiences and Learnings
  • June 11, 2024 – Tips and Tricks for Next.js and Sitecore Headless
  • Aug 5, 2024 – Content Hub Web Client SDK – Internal & External Integrations
  • Sep 3, 2024 – Sitecore Troubleshooting 101
  • Oct 8, 2024 – 8 Content Migration Pitfalls to Avoid and Lessons Learned

 

Co-organized SUG-Philadelphia Meetups: 

 YouTube – Videos published for SUG – Philadelphia 

 

Conferences I attended: 

  • Symposium 
  • MVP Summit 
  • MVP Lunches   
  • MVP Webinars 
  • All SUG Pittsburgh and Queen City meetups  
  • Many SUG Boston/ Columbus/ Atlantic meetups   

 

Plans for 2026: 

Learn and contribute: 

  • Composable DXP 
  • Sitecore Saas Offerings 
  • Containerization 

Co-organize : 

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup 
  • Quarterly SUG-Philadelphia meetup 

Present: 

  • SUGCON EU/Symposium 
  • SUG Meetups 

Happy New Year! Happy Sitecoring!

December 22, 2024
1
Sidekick / Sitecore

Sitecore Sidekick Installation and Setup

Blog-Sitecore-Sidekick-Install-Setup.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While working on a Sitecore 10.2.1 XM project, we relied on packaging content from upper environments or restoring the database to pull content locally, which was quite time-consuming.

The Sitecore Sidekick module (a big thanks to Jeff Darchuk) was a lifesaver for quickly pulling content into local or lower environments.

The latest Sidekick version is 1.7 and I was wondering which version will be compatible with Sitecore 10.2.1 and realized it doesn’t matter! 

Installation 

In NuGet, install the following modules in one of the Foundation projects or create a new helix module.

  • SitecoreSidekickFoundation
  • SitecoreSidekickContentMigrator
  • SitecoreSidekickCore
  • SitecoreSidekickAuditLog
  • SitecoreSidekickEditingContext

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-1.png

Note: You can skip AuditLog and EditingContext if don’t want it.

After installation, you will see the following DLLs in the bin folder

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-2.png

Configuration

  • Create a folder Sidekick under App_Config/Include in the Foundation layer.
  • Add the following Config files as it is, no changes are needed.

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-3.png

AuthenticationSecret – Generate a random GUID

Server List –

<server desc="QA">https://[your_qa_cm_url]</server>

<server desc="QA">https://[your_qa_cm_url]</server>

<server desc="QA">https://[your_qa_cm_url]</server>

 

Publish the solution, now you will see Side Sidekick added to the menu bar!

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-4.png

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-5.png

 

Content Migrator

It is ready to pull content (make sure it’s deployed to higher environments)

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-6.png

 

Audit Log 

It’s quite helpful to review all content changes in graphic and detailed mode.

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-7.png

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-8-1.png

 

Editing Context

Quickly edit content without switching between databases using Editing Context.

Sitecore-sidekick-install-download-content-migration-9.png

References

  • https://jeffdarchuk.com/2016/10/24/sitecore-sidekick-content-migrator/
  • https://kamsar.net/index.php/category/Unicorn/

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

October 21, 2024
1
Sitecore / Solr / Tika

Sitecore: Apache Tika Integration for Secure Media File Indexing

Sitecore-Apache-Tika-Integration-Secure-Media

Problem

We have some secure PDFs in Media Library that were not getting indexed in Solr – They couldn’t be extracted using the PDFSharp library.

The logs were showing the error while extracting secure files

16804 12:04:53 ERROR DefaultMediaItemTextExtractor: Cannot extract content from media item with id ‘{442006A5-8CB6-4ABE-8855-786D2A870201}’.
Exception: PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReaderException
Message: The PDF document is protected with an encryption not supported by PDFsharp.
Source: PdfSharp
at PdfSharp.Pdf.Security.PdfStandardSecurityHandler.ValidatePassword(String inputPassword)
at PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReader.Open(Stream stream, String password, PdfDocumentOpenMode openmode, PdfPasswordProvider passwordProvider)
at PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReader.Open(String path, String password, PdfDocumentOpenMode openmode, PdfPasswordProvider provider)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentExtraction.Readers.PdfSharpReader.ReadAll(String filePath)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentExtraction.Common.DefaultMediaItemTextExtractor.ExtractTextFromMedia(MediaItem mediaItem)

38536 12:04:53 ERROR DefaultMediaItemTextExtractor: Cannot extract content from media item with id ‘{442006A5-8CB6-4ABE-8855-786D2A870201}’.
Exception: PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReaderException
Message: The PDF document is protected with an encryption not supported by PDFsharp.
Source: PdfSharp
at PdfSharp.Pdf.Security.PdfStandardSecurityHandler.ValidatePassword(String inputPassword)
at PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReader.Open(Stream stream, String password, PdfDocumentOpenMode openmode, PdfPasswordProvider passwordProvider)
at PdfSharp.Pdf.IO.PdfReader.Open(String path, String password, PdfDocumentOpenMode openmode, PdfPasswordProvider provider)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentExtraction.Readers.PdfSharpReader.ReadAll(String filePath)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentExtraction.Common.DefaultMediaItemTextExtractor.ExtractTextFromMedia(MediaItem mediaItem)

 

Solution

  • If you like to index the media content, Sitecore recommends using the following libraries IFilter, Apache Tika, or SolrCell. 

https://www.searchstax.com/docs.hc/can-we-use-apache-tika

  • Azure web apps have a limitation in using the IFilter library so I ended up using Apache Tika.

Steps to Integrate:

  • Download the Apache Tika server file –tika-server-1.22.jar.
    • Sitecore recommends Apache Tika version 1.22 refer to the compatibility table for your version
  • Save the server file in a folder on SOLR server e.g: c:\tika
  • In PowerShell navigate to the path and execute the following command to install.

java -jar tika-server-1.22.jar

Sitecore-Apache-Tika-Solr-Indexing.png

Note: The default hostname is localhost and the port is 9998.

If you would like a specific hostname and port number that could be included in the installation command as parameters

 java -jar tika-server-1.22.jar –host=<Tikahostname> –port=<portnumber>

After the installation is completed open the following URL http://localhost:9998 to see if it is working as expected. You should see the welcome message!

Sitecore-Apache-Tika-Solr-Indexing-2.png

  • Add the following patch file into App_Config/Include/zzz folder to replace DefaultMediaFileTextExtractor from Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentExtration.

 

 

  • Last step – Let’s add Tika URL into ConnectionStrings.config file.

<add name=”tika” connectionString=”http://localhost:9998″ />

  • Let’s test quickly – Rebuild a Tree in the Developer Ribbon for one item or you could Rebuild the entire index.
  • Once the indexing is completed check and see if we have the media item available in the index.

Quick Tip: To search for a particular item in Solr, use the following query in the parameter q on your index page

_uniqueid:*[item id in lowercase without braces]*

Sitecore-Apache-Tika-Solr-Indexing-3.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

August 28, 2024
1
CLI / Sitecore

Sitecore Serialization: Rapid CLI Setup and Configuration

 

The Sitecore Command Line Interface (CLI) is a developer tool that provides a command-line interface to interact with Sitecore instances for serializing templates, layouts, and renderings.

Let’s explore the installation and Configuration on Sitecore 10.x.

Prerequisites: 

Preparation:

  • Download Sitecore Management Services
    • I picked the latest version Sitecore CLI 4.1.0 (compatible with Sitecore 10.1 and 10.2)

Installation:

  • Login to Sitecore 10.2 CM instance, navigate to Control Panel, and Install a package.

  • Accept the Terms and Conditions

  • Installation was throwing the below error – Access to the path is denied

After researching, came to know the IIS permission is missing for the CM instance.

Once the instance is up and running, run the below command in PowerShell to get into the C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder of the instance.

Run the below command to resolve the issue. It takes some time, and you can get a coffee!

icacls.exe 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot' /grant 'IIS_IUSRS:(F)' /t

Now that the permissions are all set, I installed the package and it’s succeeded!

Let’s install the Sitecore CLI – 

  • Run the below commands in the Sitecore project CD folder.

dotnet new tool-manifest
dotnet nuget add source -n Sitecore https://sitecore.myget.org/F/sc-packages/api/v3/index.json
dotnet tool install Sitecore.CLI

  • To initialize a new project, run the below command.

dotnet sitecore init

Note: Starting from 4.1.0, the sitecore init command takes care of installing default plugins (Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.Serialization, Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.Publishing, Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.Indexing, and Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.ResourcePackage). 

Skip the below step if you are installing Sitecore CLI 4.1.0 or above.

  • Install the plugins.

dotnet sitecore plugin add -n Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.Serialization
dotnet sitecore plugin add -n Sitecore.DevEx.Extensibility.Publishing

 To see what plugins are installed, run the below command.

dotnet sitecore plugin list

Let’s log in –

Run this command in Powershell.

dotnet sitecore login --authority https://<Sitecore identity server> --cm http://<Sitecore instance> --allow-write true

It will open a Sitecore identity server URL in a browser to authenticate.

It’s successfully logged in, explore (push, pull, and publish to database) Sitecore CLI.

  • sitecore login: Authenticate with the Sitecore instance.
  • sitecore ser pull: Pull serialized items from the Sitecore instance.
  • sitecore ser push: Push serialized items to the Sitecore instance.
  • sitecore publish: Publish content changes.

Happy Sitecoring!

May 30, 2024
0
Coveo / Sitecore

Coveo for Sitecore: Index Error Troubleshooting and Resolution

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-Title-Image.png

I installed Coveo 5.0.1039.1 on the Sitecore 10.1 instance locally. 

After Coveo activation, the indexes weren’t loading and threw an error.

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error.png

The logs showed ‘The parameter ‘p_ApiKey’ must not be an empty string’ error.

Exception: System.ArgumentException Message: Precondition failed: The parameter 'p_ApiKey' must not be an empty string Parameter name: p_ApiKey Source: Coveo.Framework at Coveo.Framework.CNL.Precondition.RaiseArgumentException(String p_Message, String p_ParameterName) at Coveo.Framework.CNL.Precondition.NotEmpty(String p_Parameter, String p_ParameterName) at Coveo.CloudPlatformClientBase.Communication.CloudPlatformHttpClientFactory.CreateAuthorizedJsonHttpClient(String p_ApiKey) at Coveo.CloudPlatformClientBase.CloudPlatformClient..ctor(CloudPlatformConfiguration p_Configuration, ICloudPlatformHttpClientFactory p_CloudPlatformHttpClientFactory, IPipelineRunnerHandler p_PipelineRunnerHandler, ISerializer p_Serializer, ICoveoSettings p_CoveoSettings, IStaticTTLCacheFactory`2 p_StaticTTLCacheFactory, ICriticalExceptionHandler p_CriticalExceptionHandler) at Coveo.CloudPlatformClientBase.CloudPlatformClient..ctor(CloudPlatformConfiguration p_Configuration) at Coveo.CloudPlatformClientBase.Communication.CloudPlatformClientFactory.GetCloudPlatformClient(CloudPlatformConfiguration p_Configuration) at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.CloudLicenseRetriever.GetCloudLicense() at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.CloudLicenseRetriever.GetLicense(Boolean p_ForceRetrieve) at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.Cloud.LicenseRetriever.GetLicense(Boolean p_ForceRetrieve) at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.LicenseManager.RetrieveLicense(Boolean p_ForceUpdate) at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.LicenseManager.EnsureValidLicense() at Coveo.SearchProvider.Licensing.LicenseManager.GetLicenseInformation() at Coveo.SearchProvider.Rest.SitecoreRestHttpHandler.InitializeLicenseSettings() at Coveo.SearchProvider.Rest.SitecoreRestHttpHandler.OnInitializeSettings() at Coveo.Search.Api.Proxy.ProxyHttpHandler.OnInitialize() at Coveo.Search.Api.Proxy.ProxyHttpHandler.EnsureInitialized() at Coveo.Search.Api.Proxy.ProxyHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(IHttpContext p_Context) at Coveo.SearchProvider.Rest.SitecoreRestHttpHandlerDispatcher.ProcessRequest(HttpContext p_Context) at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStepImpl(IExecutionStep step) at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

After researching, came to know there are two API Keys in Coveo.CloudPlatformClient.Custom.config needs to match with Coveo Platform.

1. apiKey
2. searchApiKey

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-4.png

When I logged into the platform, the keys were not visible since it was secure (not sure where I saved it!), decided to create new keys.

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-2.png
1. SearchApiKey

To create the Search API Key, we must ensure the correct permissions are in place.

Ensure that Impersonate -> Allowed is selected to limit the scope of the API Key, which can be selected from the drop-down list.

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-3.png
2. ApiKey

To create the ApiKey, we need to set multiple privileges.

Content Tab:

    1. Fields -> Edit
    2. Security Identities -> Edit
    3. Security Identity Providers -> Edit
    4. Sources -> Edit all

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-5.png

Organization Tab:

    1. Organization -> Edit

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-6.png

Search Tab:

    1. Search Page -> View all

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-6.png

When the keys are created, make sure to save them in a secure place!

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-8.png
It is time to update the new config keys. 

Modify the apiKey and secureApiKey values in Coveo.CloudPlatformClient.Custom.config under AppConfig/Include/Coveo folder

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-4.png

Let’s reload Coveo Index Manager and no more errors.

Indexes are loaded and rebuilt successfully. Yay!

Coveo-Sitecore-p_ApiKey-Error-9.png

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

References:
https://docs.coveo.com/en/2484/coveo-for-sitecore-v5/activate-silently#creating-the-api-keys

April 24, 2024
2
Sitecore / Upgrade

Sitecore Upgrade: Database Scripts

sitecore-upgrade-xm-database-scripts-hero-2.png

In the previous post, we discussed 

  1. Installing a vanilla instance of Sitecore XM 10.3
  2. Sitecore Upgrade: The UpdateApp Tool

I’m upgrading from Sitecore 9.3 to 10.3 instance and as part of the upgrade process, let’s run the Databases scripts.

Before running the scripts, we need to clone the existing project databases and restore them to run the scripts.

Let’s go –

Database Clone

Clone Core, Master, Web, and Experience Forms databases of your Sitecore local 9.3 instance. 

Let’s back up the database –

Save the .bak file and rename it to  _Clone at the suffix (Your_Project_Core_Clone).

Repeat the process for all four databases.

Database Restore

Restore all four cloned databases.

 

Download the Upgrade scripts

Navigate to Sitecore Downloads: Sitecore Experience Platform 103

Download the Configuration files for upgrade <Sitecore 10.3.0 rev. 008463 (upgrade files).zip>

 

sitecore-upgrade-xm-database-download-1.png

 

Extract the Sitecore 10.3.0 rev. 008463 (upgrade files).zip file

Scripts Mapping

Now we bunch of files in the extracted folder. We don’t need to run all scripts, Sitecore has given a chart for each Sitecore version upgrade with a list of scripts to run. I’m upgrading from Sitecore 9.3, below is the list of scripts I need to run against clone databases.

  • Script A – CMS_core_master_web8x.sql
  •  Script B – CMS_core_master_web9x.sql
  •  Script C – CMS_core.sql
  •  Script D – CMS_master.sql
  •  Script E – CMS_web.sql
  •  Script F – SXP_experienceforms_storage.sql
  •  Script H – CMS_security.sql

Core DB: 

Run the Scripts C (CMS_Core.sql) for [Your_Project]_Core_Clone DB

<<CMS_core.sql>>

Run the Script H(CMS_Security.sql) against [Your_Project]_Core_Clone DB since I have a separate Security DB connection string. 

<<CMS_security.sql>>

Master DB

Run the Scripts D (CMS_Master.sql) for [Your_Project]_Master_Clone DB 

<<CMS_master.sql>>

Web DB

Run the Scripts E (CMS_Web.sql) for [Your_Project]_Web_Clone DB

<<CMS_web.sql>>

Experience Forms DB

Run the Script F (SXP_experienceforms_storage.sql) for [Your_Project]_ExperienceForms_Clone DB

<< SXP_experienceforms_storage.sql s>>

 

Now we ran all the upgrade scripts, let’s update the connection string of vanilla Sitecore 10.3 XM to Cloned databases. 

Update the ConnectionString of Sitecore 10.3 XM Instance:

 <<ConnectionStrings.config>>

Let’s point to the Clone Databases by updating Initial Catalog and Password.

 

<add name=”core” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Core_Clone;User ID=coreuser;Password=[Your_Password]” />

<add name=”security” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Core_Clone;User ID=securityuser;Password=[Your_Password]” />

<add name=”master” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Master_Clone;User ID=masteruser;Password=[Your_Password]” />

<add name=”web” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Web_Clone;User ID=webuser;Password=[Your_Password]” />

<add name=”experienceforms” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_ExperienceForms_Clone;User ID=formsuser;Password=[Your_Password]” />

 

Now load the Sitecore 10.3 XM Instance and got the Sitecore login screen.

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

 

March 16, 2024
0
Sitecore / Upgrade

Sitecore Upgrade: The Update App Tool

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-hero.png

 

In the previous post, we discussed the process of installing a vanilla instance of Sitecore XM 10.3.

I’m upgrading from Sitecore 9.3 to 10.3 instance and need to run the Database Upgrade scripts as part of the upgrade process. 

Before running the DB upgrade scripts, need to run a new tool that Sitecore has introduced – 

The Sitecore UpdateApp Tool

  • It is a standalone console tool 
  • Use this tool only if you are upgrading to 10.1.0 or later

The default items have been moved into resource files, the tool will remove them from your databases. (if they have not been modified) from the Core, Master, and Web databases.

  • If you have modified any of the default items, they are not removed and the tool adds a list of these items to its log file.
  • Sitecore recommends that you review this list and decide if you still need the modifications, and re-apply your customizations to the new items after you have deleted the old ones.
  • If you decide that you don’t need the modifications, delete these items from SQL databases.
  • That default content would come from the actual items resource file which will be placed in App_Data\Items.
  • If your solution contains any modules or connectors, you should use this tool to upgrade them.

Database Clean-up:

  • It is a one-time operation, run before running the Sitecore UpdateApp tool

To clean up the content databases:

On the Sitecore Launchpad, open the Control Panel, click Clean up databases, select all the databases, and then click Clean.

sitecore-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-1

It will take some time. Once it succeeds, let’s move to the next step.

Sitecore.UpdateApp Tool:

Download the tool from Sitecore Downloads: Sitecore UpdateApp Tool

I navigated to Sitecore.UpdateApp 1.3.1 page since I’m upgrading it to Sitecore 10.3. The following chart shows which version of the tool you should utilize. 

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-2

 

Inside the tool page, you must download the package for the version of Sitecore that you are upgrading from. This file contains the clean-up tool.

Since I’m upgrading from 9.3, I choose Sitecore 9.3 XP.

  • Download the Sitecore.UpdateApp 1.3.1 for Sitecore 9.3.0 rev. 003498 (XP).zip

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-3

 

  • Extracted the content to C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\Sitecore.UpdateApp

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-4.png

  • Copy the license file to the Data folder of the tool 
    • C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\Sitecore.UpdateApp\Data\license.xml.

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-5

  • Update the databases (cloned or actual – depends upon how you are upgrading) in the ConnectionString file
    • C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\Sitecore.UpdateApp\App_Config\ConnectionStrings.config

<add name="core" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Core_Clone;User ID=coreuser;Password=[Your_Password]" />

<add name="security" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Core_Clone;User ID=securityuser;Password=[Your_Password]" />

<add name="master" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Master_Clone;User ID=masteruser;Password=[Your_Password]" />

<add name="web" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_Web_Clone;User ID=webuser;Password=[Your_Password]" />

<add name="experienceforms" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=[Your_Project]_ExperienceForms_Clone;User ID=formsuser;Password=[Your_Password]" />

Sitecore Modules

Sitecore Downloads: Resource files for Modules

Add the upgrade resources from every module and connector to the UpdateApp Tool files.

Note: If your solution does not contain any modules or connectors, skip this step.

I downloaded the Sitecore Headless Services and SPE modules for my project.

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-6

 

Note: 

If the module or the connector has several versions, there are separate folders for each version.

  • Unpack the zip file into a local folder
    • C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\ModulesUpgradeResources\[Module Name].

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-7

  • Copy all the subfolders and files from the Data folder.

    • C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\ModulesUpgradeResources\[Module Name]\X.X.X\Data.

  • Paste all the subfolders and files into the UpdateApp Data folder.
    • C:\Sitecore.UpdateApp\Data.
  • Repeat this procedure for every module and connector.
  • Open a Command Prompt in the tool folder and run: Sitecore.UpdateApp.exe clean

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-8

  • Review the logs, to make sure all items are cleaned up.

    • C:\Sitecore_103_Upgrade\Sitecore.UpdateApp\Data\logs

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-9

  • To clear the caches, open the <instance_url>\sitecore\admin\cache.aspx page,
    click Refresh, and then click Clear all.

 

Troubleshooting

1. Exception: Execution Timeout Expired

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-10

If you receive this error, increase the SQLTimeout in Sitecore.config of Sitecore.UpdateApp Tool.

The default is 5 minutes, increase it to 30 minutes and run the UpdateApp Tool again.

   <setting name=”DefaultSQLTimeout” value=”00:30:00“/>

sitecore-upgrade-updateapp-tool-default-items-cleanup-11

 

2. The type initializer for ‘Sitecore.SecurityModel.License.LicenseManager’ threw an exception.

Verify that the correct license file is copied to the Data folder of the tool.

 

3. System.InvalidOperationException: Connection string is empty. Name: ‘<database name>’

Verify that the ConnectionStrings.config file is in the App_config folder of the UpdateApp.The content contains the correct connection strings.

If you do not use a separate security database, the security connection string must have the same value as the core connection string.

In the next blog, we will talk about the Sitecore Upgrade: Database Scripts.

Hope this helps. Happy Sitecoring!

January 31, 2024
4
Sitecore

My 2023 Reflections

2023 has been a great year – I went to India in the Summer and Minneapolis in the Fall to attend three events – MVP Summit, Sitecore DX, and SUGCON- NA (had a lot of learning in organizing!).

Presentations

Blog Posts

Certifications

  • Jan 2023 – Sitecore Content Hub Admin Certification
  • Mar 2023 – Sitecore Content Hub Developer Certification
  • Sep 2023 – Sitecore XM Cloud Certification

Contributions

  • SUGCON- NA Organizer
  • XM Cloud Beta Training and Feedback
  • XM Cloud Alpha Review Exam
  • User Testing Feedback with Sitecore Search 

Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups

Co-organized SUG-QueenCity Meetups

YouTube videos published for SUG – Pittsburgh  

Conferences I attended

  • MVP Summit
  • Sitecore DX
  • SUGCON-NA
  • MVP Sitecore Lunches and Webinars
  • All SUG Pittsburgh and Queen City meetups 
  • Many SUG Boston/ Columbus/ Atlantic meetups  

Plans for 2024 :

Learn and contribute:

  • XM Cloud Plus
  • Sitecore CDP and Personalize

Co-organize :

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup
  • Monthly SUG-QueenCity meetup

Present:

  • SUGCON EU/Symposium
  • SUG Meetups

Happy Sitecoring!

January 2, 2024
1
Coveo / Sitecore

Integrating Sitecore website with Coveo rapidly

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-11.png

In the previous blogs, we saw how to install and configure Coveo, troubleshoot, and diagnostics.

https://madhuanbalagan.com/install-and-configure-coveo-for-sitecore

https://madhuanbalagan.com/coveo-for-sitecore-troubleshooting-and-diagnostics

Now that Coveo is installed and ready to use, Let us add a Sitecore website to our instance of Coveo.

In the Coveo Admin Console, we can see that there is already a Coveo Master, and Web indexes are added by using the Sitecore Package Installation.

In this blog, I am showing an approach without any installation or configuration on the Sitecore Instance. This approach can be used with any non-Sitecore websites as well.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-1-1.png

Let’s add the Sitecore website as a web source of content.

We have lots of options to choose from let us focus on web for now.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-2.png

Here I’m adding my blog as a Source for our demo. 

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-3.png

As soon as adding website name, it recognizes and shows the Sitemap URL and recommends adding it for better performance.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-4.png

After adding the Sitemap URL, Coveo has a few configurations like Authentication and Content security.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-6.png

Since the blog is public-facing no security configuration would be needed.

Now add and build the source to populate the index. It might take time depending on the number of pages on the site.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-7.png

When it’s completed it will turn green and show the number of items in the index and the size.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-8.png

Now that the Index is built, let’s navigate to Content Browser to see if our pages show up.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-9.png

Navigate to the content browser and search for a term.

Coveo-Sitecore-Intergration-Website-Source-10.png

Voila! It works! Now you could integrate Coveo search on your site with a preferred approach.

Hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

 

 

December 14, 2023
1
Sitecore

Quickly Setup Sitecore 10.3 XM with SIA

The latest version Sitecore 10.3, is packed with new features and enhancements that make it easier than ever to manage your digital content and deliver personalized experiences to your customers.

If you’re looking to install Sitecore 10.3 XM, one of the easiest ways to do it is by using the Sitecore Install Assistant (SIA). In this blog post, let’s walk through the steps to install Sitecore 10.3

Prerequisites:

  • A Windows machine with a minimum of 16GB of RAM
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2017 or later
  • IIS 10 or later
  • .NET Framework 4.8 or later
  • Microsoft PowerShell 5.1 or later

Preparation:

  • Download the installation package (Graphical setup package XM scaled) from here.

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Download

Installation:

  • Extract the downloaded zip file

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Setup_exe

  • Right-click on the Setup.exe and execute in Administrator mode

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Start

  • Install the prerequisites 

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Prerequisites.png

  • Install Solr 8.11.2 by entering the Port, Windows service path prefix, and Install path

Note: Make sure the port number differs from earlier Solr-installed versions. Check out my blog to discover which processes are using which ports – https://madhuanbalagan.com/sitecore-10-sif-installation-roadblocks

  • Solr installation is successful!

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Solr_Complete.png

  • Fill out the Site prefix, admin password(going with b, so easy to remember), and choose the Sitecore license file

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Sitecore_Settings.png

  • Fill out the SQL server Instance name, admin username, and password.

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_SQL_Server_Settings-1.png

  • It auto-fills Solr URL, System root, and Windows service name

Note: Navigate to Solr URL and ensure it’s running as expected

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Solr_Settings.png

  • Select the optional module if you plan to create a Headless SXA site

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_SXA.png

  • Review the summary to make sure the settings are correct

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Summary.png

  • The Installation wizard in SIA validates all the settings before starting the install

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Validate.png

  • Installation takes around 10-15 minutes (you can get a coffee!). If it errors out, check out the log.

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Install.png

Yayy! It’s successfully installed. Is it easy to install with SIA? It’s indeed a great tool!

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Install_Completed.png

Let’s log in and explore!

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Login_Success.png

 

Roadblocks:

Error # 1: Solr access to the path denied

Solr installation failed with error – Access to the path ‘C:\Users\MANBAL~1\AppData\Local\Temp\solr-8.11.2\server’ is denied.

Sitecore_10_3_Installation_XM_Headless_Rendering_Error.png

 

Resolution:

I wasn’t running at the setup.exe in Admin mode. Ran in Admin mode (restarted the machine just in case) fixed the issue.

 

Error # 2: Unable to create core index

Error CREATEing SolrCore Unable to create core [wc10.3.xm.local_core_index] Caused by: Can’t find resource ‘solrconfig.xml’ in the classpath or ‘C:\Solr\Solr.8.11.2solr-8.11.2\server\solr\sc10.3.xm.local_core_index’

 

Resolution:

Do not use the same port used for the earlier installation. For some reason, it doesn’t work. Always use the new port and new Solr instance name.

Now that we installed Sitecore 10.3 XM, I’ll be installing Sitecore Headless Rendering (previously known as the JSS module) in my next blog post.

Hope this helps. Happy Sitecoring!

April 5, 2023
3
Sitecore / SPE

Efficiently bulk edit Sitecore content using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE)

Efficiently-bulk-edit-Sitecore-content-using-Sitecore-PowerShell-Extensions-SPE-Hero

In today’s fast-paced digital world, website content must be constantly updated to stay relevant. Manually modifying content can be time-consuming and error-prone. Sitecore SPE is a powerful tool that allows for efficient modification of content in bulk through find and replace text functionality. In this article, we will explore the steps of using Sitecore SPE to quickly and easily update website content, streamlining the process and saving time.

I encountered a situation where I needed to locate specific text in both images and rich text fields and replace them in large quantities. Essentially, we were transferring media from the Media Library to the Content Hub.

Find Text for Image and RichText Content-Type:

Replace the $contentPath, $guidPattern $mediaPath according to the project. 

The $guidPattern is for images containing GUID format like https://cdn.companyurl.com/-/media/897222F0-3BCF-4651-AAC4-6CBBC227B449.ashx that needs to be manually modified since we don’t know where the item path lives in Content Hub. These items I’m adding these to the $cdnItemWithoutGuid array and the list will be given to Content Authors for manual editing.

The results will yield one or two variations of results, dependent on the content, referred to as

  • Items that contain cdn.companyurl.com with GUIDEfficiently-modify-Sitecore-content-in-mass-with-Sitecore-PowerShell-Extensions-SPE-Find-without-Guid-View
  • Items that contain cdn.companyurl.com without GUIDEfficiently-modify-Sitecore-content-in-mass-with-Sitecore-PowerShell-Extensions-SPE-Find-with-Guid-View

Retrieve the results in CSV, Excel, XML, HTML, and JSON (and also via Email) and analyze them to ensure they are the expected items.

Replace Text for Image and RichText Content-Type:

Replace the $contentPath, $guidPattern, $cdnMediaPath, and $damMediaPath according to the project. 

The results will yield one or two variations of results, dependent on the content, referred to as

  •  Changed Items View
  •  Not changed Items ViewEfficiently-modify-Sitecore-content-in-mass-with-Sitecore-PowerShell-Extensions-SPE-Not-changed-View

Upon completion, review the output. Inspect the Not changed Items View to determine the reason for its unchanged status, it could be due to it being in a workflow stage or any other cause.

Hope this helps. Happy Sitecoring.

Ref

https://michaellwest.blogspot.com/search/label/powershell

https://blog.najmanowicz.com/category/software-development/powershell/

https://sitecorejunkie.com/category/sitecore-powershell-extensions

 
 
February 28, 2023
2
Coveo / Sitecore

Coveo for Sitecore: Troubleshooting and Diagnostics

Coveo’s Diagnostics page is super helpful when troubleshooting any Coveo issues. It is listed in the Coveo Search menu in the Sitecore control panel or can be reached directly with the following url –

https://[CMS Site]/sitecore modules/web/coveo/admin/coveodiagnosticpage.aspx

 

Coveo for Sitecore components state

This section shows the status of all services related to Coveo. Here is the healthy state, but when it errors it shows the detailed error message

Healthy Component State

 

Errors in Component State

Coveo-Sitecore-Control-Panel-Diagnostic

 

Coveo for Sitecore version information

It comes in handy for checking Coveo and Sitecore versions and their compatibility.

Current Coveo for Sitecore version: 5.0.1153.1

Current Sitecore version: 10.2.0.6766

Compatibility status: these versions are compatible

 

Coveo for Sitecore organization information

This section is about the Organization and it is usage details.

 

Coveo for Sitecore configuration files

Basically shows all Coveo-related config files that are currently loaded in the system.

 

Coveo for Sitecore published items

It shows if the Coveo-related Sitecore items are published or not, it’s time to publish them 🙂

 

Coveo for Sitecore Indexing test

This section comes into handy when indexing an item or a path, really helpful when an Item has been published but it’s not available in the Coveo index. 

 

 

Coveo for Sitecore log viewer

This section is my favorite – I typically use it on Production environments to view the logs when we don’t have access to the server or without logging into the Production servers. We can quickly view the log and troubleshoot the issues.

 

Indexes List

It shows all the indexes and the IsCoveo flag differentiates the Coveo and Sitecore Indexes.

 

 

Download Diagnostics Package

Another super helpful tool – The download Diagnostics Package button at the top of the page. 

It creates all necessary config and logs files needed to log a Coveo Support ticket.

I hope this helps someone.

Happy Sitecoring!

January 30, 2023
1
Sitecore

My 2022 Reflections

2022 has been a good year so far – I traveled to India and Chicago for the Sitecore Symposium. Lots of learning and fun!

Presentations:

Blog Posts :

Certifications:   

  • Feb 2022 – Sitecore OrderCloud Certification
  • Apr 2022 – Sitecore 10 System Administrator Certification
  • May 2022 – Sitecore CDP and Personalize Certification

Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups :

Co-organized SUG-QueenCity Meetup :

Conferences I attended:

  • Sitecore Symposium
  • Virtual Developer Day
  • MVP Sitecore Lunches
  • All SUG Pittsburgh and Queen City meetups 
  • Many SUG Boston/ Columbus/ Atlantic meetups  

Plans for 2023 :

Learn and contribute:

  • Composable DXP
  • Sitecore Send
  • Sitecore CDP and Personalize

Co-organize :

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup
  • Monthly SUG-QueenCity meetup

Present:

  • Sitecore Virtual Developer Day
  • SUGCON EU/Symposium
  • SUG Meetups

Happy Sitecoring!

December 31, 2022
1
Coveo / Sitecore

Install and Configure Coveo for Sitecore

Install and Configure Coveo for Sitecore

I’ll be installing Coveo 5.0 on a Sitecore 10.2 in the following post. Let’s explore –

1. Download

Choose the Coveo package based on the Sitecore version and download the relevant package.

https://docs.coveo.com/en/2274/coveo-for-sitecore-v5/releases-and-downloads 

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Download

2. Install

Upload and install using the Sitecore Installation Wizard

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Installation-Wizard

Accept the customer agreement.

 

 

3. Activation

Once the installation is complete, Sitecore will show the following popup.

Let’s explore how to activate Coveo for Sitecore.

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Activation-Authorization

The login page brings to https://platform.cloud.coveo.com/login

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Installation-Plarform-Login

I logged in using a Google account for Demo purposes.

 

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Installation-Wizard-Accept-Customer-Agreement

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Installation-Plarform-Grant-Access

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Activation-Authorization-Successful

4. Configure

After authorization is successful, create your Organization with Name and Organization Type.

  • Enterprise Trial
  • Pro Trial

https://www.coveo.com/en/pricing/sitecore-integration

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Activation-New-Organization

Use the default Indexing options.

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Activation-New-Organization-Index-Options

 Provide Farm name and Sitecore credentials and click Activate.

Coveo-Install-Sitecore-Activation-New-Organization-Farm-Configuration

Once Activation is completed, Rebuild all Coveo Indexes to finish the setup.

I hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

September 6, 2022
1
DAM / Sitecore

Migrate Sitecore Media Library Assets to DAM

Migrate Sitecore Media Library Assets to DAM

When we move into composable architecture. We will need to move the media assets to other platforms. Let’s explore methods of exporting Sitecore Media Library assets to Digital Assets Management (DAM) like Content Hub, AEM, etc. It’s a two-step process of exporting from the source and importing to the destination. We will export the entire Media Library to a zip file and also the asset details to a spreadsheet for validation.

Sitecore Media Library Export to file:

I was exploring the Sitecore Modules, but I realized It could be quickly done using PowerShell Extensions. Right-click on the Media Library node, Navigate to Scripts, and click Download. 

Sitecore_Media_Library_PowerShell_Download

The PowerShell script will run for a few mins in my case it ran for 20 minutes for 3GB (depending upon the Media Library size). If you run into timeout issues. Execute at folder levels and finally combine them.

Once the execution is completed it will prompt a pop-up to download the zip file.

P.S: The zip file is temporarily stored in the App_Data folder, but once we download it, it gets deleted.

Sitecore Media Library Export to CSV:

PowerShell extensions script to help export the media library assets file names and path to a spreadsheet.

 

 

Another approach to export the data is to use the content export tool.

https://github.com/estockwell-alpert/ContentExportTool

Import

Now the assets are ready to be imported to DAM

Sitecore Content Hub follow the steps in the following article https://docs.stylelabs.com/contenthub/3.5.x/content/user-documentation/content-user-manual/create/create-upload-content.html

Adobe Experience Manager you could use the bulk import process following the article

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-learn/cloud-service/migration/bulk-import.html

I hope this helps.

Happy Sitecoring!

August 28, 2022
1
CDP&Personalize / Sitecore

Sitecore CDP and Personalize Certification – Tips and Tricks

Sitecore CDP and Personalize Certification - Tips and Tricks

Sitecore CDP and Personalize Certification – Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks, that helped to get certified in Sitecore CDP and Personalize.

The first step is to register for the Sitecore CDP and Personalization exam and block a date that really helps in achieving the goal.

  1. Go through the documentation once you complete email Sitecore partner enablement partnerenablement@sitecore.com to get access to the sandbox environment.
  2.  The Sitecore Partner Enablement will send an invitation to access the Sandbox. 
  3.  Now go through the instructor-led training along with lab assignments
    Tip: I have used my blog site as a sample site to do assignments. It would be ideal to have a sample commerce site for order-related assignments.
  4. Familiarize with the core concepts and utilize the QA tool to test out various scenarios for Experiences and Experiments.
  5. Make sure to take the quiz after each section, which will give an idea of your understanding of the concepts.
  6. The questions were use case and scenario-based, so understanding the concept is crucial.
  7. The exam has 30 multiple-choice questions that have to be completed in an hour. You will have a good amount of time to revisit the answers.
    Note: Beginning of the exam, It says it has 50 questions, this might be a typo. It has only 30 questions, chill out.

Good luck! Happy Sitecoring!

June 1, 2022
3
Sitecore

Install Sitecore 10.2 using Docker in 5 Easy steps!

 

Happy New Year! I just thought trying out Sitecore 10.2 using Docker. Installed it with minor hiccups. Let’s share my experience.

Prerequisites:

  •  Sitecore 10 license.
  • OS: Windows 10 1903 or later.
  • Docker Desktop for Windows.
  • 32 GB of RAM (It can be 16 GB for XM1 or XP0). I always recommend 32 GB for better experience.
  • CPU: Quad-core processor or higher.
  • Disk: 25 GB free space.

Preparation:

  • The following ports needs to be available for containers

The following ports need to be available for running the Docker instance. Make sure you are using stopping the services so it’s available for Docker to consume.  

Note: Always use iisreset /stop in the command line rather than stopping it in IIS. 

  • To check the port availability, run the following in PowerShell. It shouldn’t return any process. 

netstat -ano | findStr 127.0.0.1:443

netstat -ano | findStr 8079

netstat -ano | findStr 8984

netstat -ano | findStr 14330

Installation:

  1. Extract the file zip file downloaded into Sitecore_10.2(or any folder name).

             

      2. Execute this command to set the execution policy unrestricted.

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser Unrestricted

       3. Navigate to XP1 folder (Sitecore_10.2\SitecoreContainerDeployment.10.2.0.006766.683\compose\ltsc2019\xp1) in PowerShell and run compose-init.ps1 script.

.\compose-init.ps1 -LicenseXmlPath <License Path>

  • Note: I’m installing XP1, If you want XP0, navigate to XP0 folder and follow the same exact steps.   

    4. Run docker-compose pull

docker-compose pull

      5. Run docker-compose up (It takes some time, you can get a coffee!)

docker-compose up –d

Once it’s done, let’s bring in CM instance – 

https://xp1cm.localhost/sitecore

Login as admin using ‘Password12345‘ password (not b though)

It’s so cool see the new desktop view! Cool work Sitecore!

It’s time for CD instance – 

https://xp1cd.localhost/

 

Errors and Resolutions:

If you get unhealthy for any nodes, don’t worry. It’s very common, I get this most times. 

Run the following in PowerShell, It should fix it. Thank you Sitecore Staff Exchange!   

docker-compose down

iisreset /stop

docker-compose up –d

 

To check if all nodes are healthy, run docker-compose ps 

If you want to change the Sitecore and/or SQL password, you can change it in docker-compose.ps1 file. 

Hope this helps someone. Happy Sitecoring!

January 17, 2022
3
Sitecore

My 2021 Reflections

Hope everyone got the Covid-19 vaccines and staying safe.  

Here are my contributions for the year – 

Presentations:

Blog Posts :

Award :

  • Experience Awards 2021 (Honorable Mention)  

Certification:   

  • Sitecore 10 .NET Developer Certification  

Contributions :

  • Logged Sitecore Bugs  
    •  CS0208574 Forms are missing in Forms Designer View
    •  CS0206915 High memory utilization on xConnect/Solr server 

Conferences I attended:

  • Symposium
  • SUGCON  
  • Virtual Developer Day
  • MVP Sitecore Lunches  
  • All Pittsburgh SUG meetups 
  • Most of the SUG Boston/ Queen City/ Columbus meetups  

Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups :

Co-organized SUG-QueenCity Meetup :

 

Plans for 2021 :

Learn and contribute:

  • Sitecore 10.2
  • Composable DXP
  • Containerization
  • Sitecore Saas Offerings

Co-organize :

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup
  • Monthly SUG-QueenCity meetup

Presentations:

  • Sitecore Virtual Developer Day
  • SUGCON EU/Symposium
  • SUG Meetups

Happy Sitecoring!

 

November 29, 2021
0
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore Forms missing | No Forms to display – Issue fix

Sitecore Forms were missing in Forms Designer view after being created. I experience the same and here are the things I tried to get fixed.

  • Cleared browser cache
  • Cleared Sitecore cache (/sitecore/admin/cache.aspx)
  • Incognito/private mode to see if Forms are showing up
  • Rebuilt Forms folder from Developer menu (faster way)
  • Rebuilt Sitecore Master Index

After doing above all, Forms weren’t still showing up 🙁  Decided to take a deeper dive.

I checked the JobsViewer(/sitecore/admin/jobs.aspx) to check what jobs are running and to my surprise, the re-indexing only Forms folder was running for more than 2 hours and they were so many jobs queued up (Content Authors may be busy creating more content for the website).

I was wondering what’s causing the indexing queue to be clogged. Checked the Crawling log using Sitecore Log Analyzer to see what’s happening and for every single update, it was triggering re-index synchronously and immediately checked the Indexing Strategy for sitecore_master_index and it was set to syncMaster! 

This was the root cause of the problem because every time the Content Author was making a change it was triggering the re-index synchronously, whereas it should asynchronously re-indexed with an interval. I switched it to the intervalAsyncMaster strategy to fix the issue.

Tip: Sitecore Log Analyzer is a powerful tool for parsing Sitecore log files. It provides the interface to explore and navigate through a large amount of log data.

 

Here is the patch I used to update the index strategy. 

Now within few minutes, all queue jobs cleared and moved to finished jobs.

Checked Forms in Designer view, all forms were showing up! Tada!

Hope this helps someone.

Happy Sitecoring!

July 29, 2021
0
Sitecore

Sitecore Sidekick – Upgrade

I was working on a Sitecore 9.0.2 client project and the Sitecore Sidekick(1.4.4 version) was already installed. When I tried to initiate the Sidekick and it was throwing an error –

Method not found: Void Rainbow.Storage.IDataStore.Save(Rainbow.Model.IItemData) SitecoreSidekick.Shared.IoC.Container.Resolve(Object[] args) +776
ScsContentMigrator.Core.ContentItemInstaller..ctor() +313
ScsContentMigrator.&lt;&gt;c.&lt;InitializeContainer&gt;b__5_4(Object[] args) +31
SitecoreSidekick.Shared.IoC.Container.Resolve(Object[] args) +117

While researching the error, came to know that I need to update Rainbow and Unicorn (If you use Unicorn in your project to serialize items make sure you install the No Rainbow package as this will not overwrite Unicorn’s Rainbow DLL files but rather utilize whatever version Unicorn is using (Sidekick can work with any version). You can skip if your project doesn’t use it) packages as it wasn’t compatible with the versions that were installed.

I was wondering what version of these packages(SideKick, Rainbow, and Unicorn) will be compatible with Sitecore 9.0.2 and realized it doesn’t matter! 

So decided to update the Sidekick(it automatically updates Rainbow) and Unicorn with the latest version via NuGet. Make sure to update all installed Sidekick packages to up-to-date. In my case, I updated the below ones – 

  • SitecoreSidekickFoundation
  • SitecoreSidekickContentMigrator
  • SitecoreSidekickCore
  • SitecoreSidekickAuditLog
  • SitecoreSidekickEditingContext

It automatically updated all the dependencies like below

Now updating Unicorn(Skip if your project doesn’t use it for serialization)  

All packages and it’s dependencies were successfully installed and deployed to QA and UAT environments(it needs to be deployed to the servers in order to make the contract) and the Sidekick started working.

Now we were able to pull content from any environment!

Installing via Sitecore Package

It is not recommended, If you like to install it in environments directly without check-in to source control, you can install it as a package. Download the latest package at the root of the repo.

References

  • https://jeffdarchuk.com/2016/10/24/sitecore-sidekick-content-migrator/
  • https://kamsar.net/index.php/category/Unicorn/

Hope this helps someone. 

Happy Sitecoring!

 

April 30, 2021
0
Sitecore / XConnect

High memory utilization fix for xConnect server

We were seeing High memory utilization on the xConnect server and it coincides with when our monitoring service reports the site being down. Logs were particularly showing these two errors related to the xConnect –

Error #1:

System.OperationCanceledException: The operation was canceled.
at System.Threading.CancellationToken.ThrowOperationCanceledException()
at System.Web.Http.Filters.ActionFilterAttribute.&lt;CallOnActionExecutedAsync>d__5.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Filters.ActionFilterAttribute.&lt;ExecuteActionFilterAsyncCore>d__0.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.ActionFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__2.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Filters.AuthorizationFilterAttribute.&lt;ExecuteAuthorizationFilterAsyncCore>d__2.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.AuthenticationFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__0.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.ExceptionFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__0.MoveNext()

Error #2:

Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.SetFacetOperation`1[Sitecore.XConnect.Facet]: Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.FacetOperationException: Operation #0, AlreadyExists, Contact {32971b60-1245-0000-0000-0611bab4b38e}, Classification
[Error] ["XdbContextLoggingPlugin"] XdbContext Batch Execution Exception
Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.FacetOperationException: Operation #0, AlreadyExists, Contact {32971b60-1245-0000-0000-0611bab4b38e}, Classification
 [Error] XConnect Exception Filter OnException(), url - "https://prod9-xconnect.everence.com/odata/Contacts?%24filter=Identifiers%2fany(id:id%2fIdentifier+eq+'a5642a9a87ad41e1ab65a624b7d1b1f6'+and+id%2fSource+eq+'xDB.Tracker')&amp;%24expand=Identifiers,MergeInfo,ConsentInformation,Classification,EngagementMeasures,ContactBehaviorProfile,Personal,KeyBehaviorCache,ListSubscriptions,AutomationPlanEnrollmentCache,AutomationPlanExit,TestCombinations"
System.OperationCanceledException: The operation was canceled.
at System.Threading.CancellationToken.ThrowOperationCanceledException()
at System.Web.Http.Filters.ActionFilterAttribute.&lt;CallOnActionExecutedAsync>d__5.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Filters.ActionFilterAttribute.&lt;ExecuteActionFilterAsyncCore>d__0.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.ActionFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__2.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Filters.AuthorizationFilterAttribute.&lt;ExecuteAuthorizationFilterAsyncCore>d__2.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.AuthenticationFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__0.MoveNext()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
at System.Web.Http.Controllers.ExceptionFilterResult.&lt;ExecuteAsync>d__0.MoveNext()

Investigation:

Created a dump using the Procdump tool. Here is the command I used for creating 18GB of the dump file 

procdump -m 18000 -ma [Name or PID]     

From reviewing the memory dump, we could see two SQL queries that have consumed 8GB and 6GB of memory in your XConnect instance. 

Both queries were running the [xdb_collection].[GetInteractionsByContactIds] stored procedure. This stored procedure retrieves interaction data for a contact.

The queries are attempting to retrieve the interactions for a specific Contact ID. After reviewing some of the retrieved interactions from this contact, we could see the User-Agent for this contact was

Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/534.34 (KHTML, like Gecko) PingdomTMS/0.8.5 Safari/534.34

The above agent is Pingdom (It is a website monitoring and availability service) to have many interactions stored in XConnect. Although it’s a bot, it was considered a valid user and the interactions were being tracked.

Resolution:

In order to mitigate the interactions from Pingdom, we added the User-Agent of Pingdom to the <excludedUserAgents> configuration (Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config) so that future visits from Pingdom are treated as a bot and not saved to XConnect.

For more details, please see this article here: https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/90/sitecore-experience-platform/en/configure-robot-detection-functionality.html#idp23361

Thank you Sitecore Support for helping us figure out the issue.

Happy Sitecoring!

April 8, 2021
0
Sitecore / SPE

Bulk update fields using SPE

I came across a scenario, where I need to update the email field for all custom forms built with ‘EmailTemplate’. Since it’s going to be a bulk update, decided to do it in SPE(so powerful!)

Here is the script I wrote –

$path = "master:/sitecore/content/external_forms"
$templateName = "EmailTemplate"
$emailAddresses = "test@test.com"
$fieldName = "ToEmail"
$items = Get-ChildItem –Path $path –Recurse | Where-Object { $_.TemplateName -eq $templateName }
foreach($item in $items) {
if($item.Fields[$fieldName] -ne 'null'){
$item.Editing.BeginEdit()
$item.Fields[$fieldName].Value = $emailAddresses
$item.Editing.EndEdit()
Write-Host ($item.Name + ": " + $item.Fields[$fieldName].Value)
}
}
view raw BulkUpdateFieldValuesUsingSPE.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Hope this helps someone. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring!

January 25, 2021
0
Sitecore

My 2020 Reflections

2020 has been a rough ride, Covid-19 has changed our lives. Hope we all get vaccinated in the upcoming year. Stay home, stay safe.

Here are my contributions for the year –

Presentations:

  • Feb 11 – Sitecore 9.3 new features and live installation – SUG Pittsburgh
  • March 26 – Smart Experience Forms – SUG Pittsburgh
  • April 12 – Sitecore 9.3 new features and live installation – SUG Jordon
  • July 15 – What’s new in Sitecore 9.3 and Live Installation – SUG QueenCity

Blog Posts:

Podcast:

YouTube:

Conferences I attended:

  • Sitecore Symposium
  • All SUG Boston/ Pittsburgh/Queen City meetups.

Co-organized SUG-Pittsburgh Meetups :

Co-organized SUG-QueenCity Meetups :

Participation:

  • Sitecore Lunch
  • Hackathon

Plans for 2021 :

Learn and contribute:

  • Content Hub
  • Cortex
  • Sitecore AI Personalization
  • Sitecore Experience Forms
  • Docker Containers
  • Sitecore 10

Co-organize :

  • Monthly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup
  • Monthly SUG-QueenCity meetup

Presentations:

  • SUG Meetups
  • Sitecore SUGCON EU/Symposium

Happy Sitecoring!

December 11, 2020
0
SIF / Sitecore

Sitecore 10 SIF Installation Roadblocks

Sitecore_10_Installation_Roadblocks

Sitecore 10 was out a couple of months back. I installed it using SIF, hit a couple of roadblocks while installing and sharing the resolutions that helped resolve the issues.

If you haven’t installed Sitecore 10, here are some blogs that help you install.

Sitecore 10 using SIF: https://scorewow.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/install-sitecore-10-in-10-using-sif/

Sitecore 10 using SIA: https://madhuanbalagan.com/installing-sitecore-10-using-sia

 

Error # 1: Solr Port Issue

I have multiple Solr services running for different versions of Sitecore and here is the error I got while installing Sitecore 10.

“Port 8984 is already being used by another process. Please choose a different port”.

Run services.msc to check how many Solr’s are running on the machine.

Resolution:

If you have multiple instances of Solr running and you don’t know what port, it’s associated with. Here is a quick way to get the process name and kill if it’s is no longer needed.

Find which process using Solr port

 

Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort $portNumber).OwningProcess

Sitecore_10_Installation_Find-_Which_Process_Using_Solr_Port

Also when installing the Solr, you can add the Port Name and Sitecore Version number or any information in the Description of Details tab.

This is life saver, do not need to worry about which Solr maps which port in the future!

 

Sitecore_10_Installation_NSSM_Service

 

Sitecore_10_Installation_Service_List

 

Error # 2: SQL User Issue

“msdeploy.exe : Error: .Net SqlClient Data Provider: Msg 12809, Level 16, State 1, Line 5 You must remove all users with password before setting the containment property to NONE.                                                            At C:\ProgramFiles\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\SitecoreInstallFramework\2.2.0\Public\Tasks\Invoke-CommandTask.ps1:31 char:13”  

                                                    

Resolution:

For some reason, the SC10 uninstall did not remove all the variables for failed instances. I removed the  ‘sc10_CollectionUser’ in local DB users, fixed the issue.

 

Sitecore_10_Installation_SQL_User_Issue_Resolution

 

 

Error # 3: Credential Issue

Sitecore_10_Installation_Error_Credential_Issue

“Install-SitecoreConfiguration: A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name ‘Credential’. This error might have been caused by applying the default parameter binding. You can disable the default parameter binding in

$PSDefaultParameterValues by setting $PSDefaultParameterValues[“Disabled”] to be $true, and then trying again. The following default parameters were successfully bound for this cmdlet when the error occurred: -Debug -WarningAction

-Verbose -InformationAction -ErrorAction

At C:\ResourceFiles\XP0-SingleDeveloper.ps1:77 char:1

+ Install-SitecoreConfiguration @singleDeveloperParams *>&1 | Tee-Objec …

+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+ CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,Install-SitecoreConfiguration”

 

Resolution:

The SqlServer module wasn’t installed by default, so I had to do it manually.

Ran this on Powershell command fixed the issue.

Install-Module -Name SqlServer -AllowClobber

 

Hope this helps someone. Any issues, let me know in the comments section.

Happy Sitecoring!

October 8, 2020
1
Horizon / Sitecore

Sitecore Horizon 10 Installation

I want to share my experience with the Installation of Sitecore Horizon 10. 

Prerequisites

Before you install Sitecore Horizon, you must:

After you install the tools, restart your machine.

SameSite cookies and custom domains:

The commonly-used browsers such as Chrome and Safari are changing how the browsers interpret the SameSite cookie. After the change takes effect, Horizon will only work if the Sitecore Horizon host instance, the Sitecore identity instance, and the Sitecore CM instance belong to the same site. 

Sitecore CM: https://cm.mycompany.com
Sitecore identity: https://si.mycompany.com
Horizon: https://horizon.mycompany.com

Installation

  • Download Horizon 10 from here. I downloaded the on-premises deployment.  

  • Extract the zip file and open InstallHorizon.ps1

  • Fill out the below parameters –

  • Run the InstallHorizon.ps1 in Adminstrator mode.



  • Once the installation is done (only takes 2 to 3 minutes), you will see a new Icon in Sitecore XP.



  • Clicking the Icon opens Horizon (yes, it’s separate IIS site) in a new tab and you can explore the new features!

Post Installation

To use the alignment and indentation features in the rich text editor in Horizon, make sure to add the below styles to your default style sheet (like default.css in your project).

.rte-indent-1 {
     padding-left: 40px;
}
 .rte-indent-2 {
     padding-left: 80px;
}
 .rte-indent-3 {
     padding-left: 120px;
}
 .rte-indent-4 {
     padding-left: 160px;
}
 .rte-indent-5 {
     padding-left: 200px;
}
 .rte-indent-6 {
     padding-left: 240px;
}
 .rte-indent-7 {
     padding-left: 280px;
}
 .rte-indent-8 {
     padding-left: 320px;
}
 .rte-align-center {
     text-align: center;
}
 .rte-align-justify {
     text-align: justify;
}
 .rte-align-right {
     text-align: right;
}

Hope this helps someone. Any issues, let me know in the comments section.

Happy Sitecoring!

August 19, 2020
0
Sitecore

Installing Sitecore 10 using SIA(Sitecore Install Assistant)

Sitecore 10 is out! I tried installing it using SIA(Sitecore Install Assistant) along with SXA and it installed smoothly without any errors!

Prerequisites: 

No need to install any prerequisites(includes Solr, SIF) manually, SIA will take care of it.

Preparation:

  • Download installation package (Graphical setup package XP Single) from here.

Installation:

  • Extract the file zip file downloaded and click on Setup.exe
  • Install the prerequisites to make sure the required SIF and Windows Server prerequisites are up to date.
  • Install Solr 8.4.0 by filling Port, Windows service path prefix and Install path and Install.

Note: Make sure the port number is different from earlier versions of Solr installed. 

  • Fill out site prefix, admin password (going with b, so easy to remember) and Confirm password (new to Sitecore 10), and license file path.
  • Fill out SQL server instance name, admin username and password.
  • Double-check the Solr URL (browse to make sure it’s running successfully), System root and Windows service name
  • Select optional module SXA if you need. I’m going for it, time to explore SXA! Would be nice if Horizon is listed here.
  • Review the summary to make sure the settings are correct.
  • SIA validates to make sure the files look good.
  • Install. This takes around 10 minutes (you can get a coffee!). If it errors out, check out the log.

Yayy!! It’s installed. Is it easy to install with SIA? It’s indeed a great tool!  

Check out the release notes for what’s new in Sitecore 10.

Error:

While installing got this error –

Failed to start service ‘Sitecore Marketing Automation Engine – sc10.xp.dev.localxconnect.dev.local- MarketingAutomationService (sc10.xp.dev.localxconnect.dev.local- MarketingAutomationService)’.

Failed to start service Sitecore Marketing Automation MarketingAutomationService

Failed to start service Sitecore Marketing Automation – MarketingAutomationService

Resolution:

This could be due to a license expiry issue. In my case, I had a valid license file. Resolved the issue by moving the non-self signed certificates to trusted certificates. 

I ran this command as an admin and got a couple of certificates that were non-self signed.

Get-Childitem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject }

Now I moved it to Trusted Root by running the following command.

Get-Childitem cert:\LocalMachine\root -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Issuer -ne $_.Subject } | Move-Item -Destination Cert:\LocalMachine\CA

Failed to start service Sitecore Marketing Automation Engine

Moved Non-Self Signed Certificates to Trusted Root

After moving, I tried the SIA again and it worked perfectly.

Happy Sitecoring!

August 4, 2020
2
Horizon / Sitecore

Sitecore Horizon 9.3 Install, Troubleshooting, and Uninstall

I want to share my experience on the Installation of Sitecore Horizon 9.3, Uninstallation, and the errors I faced during installation.

Prerequisites

  • Install Sitecore 9.3 
  • Ensure CMS site is accessible with https protocol
  • Ensure WebSocket Protocol enabled

After installing the tools, restart your machine.

Installation

  • Download Horizon 9.3 from here. I downloaded the on-premises deployment.
  • Extract the zip file and open Parameters.ps1
  • Fill out the below parameters –
  • Run install.ps1 in Powershell Administrator mode
  •   Once the installation is done (only takes 2 to 3 minutes), you will see a new Icon in Sitecore 
  •   Clicking the Icon opens Horizon (yes, it’s separate IIS site) and you can explore the new features!

Troubleshooting Error

I faced this error after the installation was successful. When I opened Horizon, here is the error message I got.

Failed to render a page: Failed to render the root extension, with error: Failed to render a fragment. Status code: InternalServerError, message:

I checked the logs (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\[Hoirzon Website\logs) and it showed below message

[1] Ensure that Node.js is installed and can be found in one of the PATH directories. Make sure the Node executable is in one of those directories, or update your PATH.

I verified that the Node.js path (C:\Users\manbalagan\AppData\Roaming\nvm\v10.16.0\) was accessible and PATH was correct.

Also, I uninstalled Node v10.16.0 and reinstalled. Restarted my machine. Nothing helped.

Finally, I resolved the issue by adding ‘Everyone‘ permission and allowed full control to NVM folder (C:\Users\manbalagan\AppData\Roaming\nvm) fixed the issue! IIS couldn’t access the folder without ‘Everyone’ permission.

Uninstall

If you want to uninstall the failed versions (to clean up IIS sites it created), here is how you can do it –

  • Uninstalling is straight forward – just need to run the uninstall.ps1 script 
  • After uninstalling, it didn’t remove the Horizon Icon in Desktop mode. Clicking on the icon goes to 404 page.  It would be clean if the icon is also removed.

Hope this helps someone. Any issues, let me know in comments section.

Happy Sitecoring!

July 9, 2020
0
Sitecore / Tools

5 Essential Sitecore Chrome Extensions

Browser Extensions are handy and easy to use without leaving the tab. Here are the top 5 Sitecore Chrome Extensions I use daily and it saves ton to time! 

Sitecore Author Tool Box

Author: Ugo Quaisse

This extension is a lifesaver and must have! Here is the set of handy tools into Content Editor. Favourites Bar, Desktop notifications, and Dark mode are my favorites.

Download link

 

Sitecore Extensions

Author: Alan Płócieniak

This tool is super helpful, has great features. You can just Ctrl+ Space to search for commands. 

Download here

Also when in the Web database, it shows the red bar on the top to make sure you are not editing in Web DB!

The latest version 3.3 is released, check out the new features here

 

Sitecore Icon Search

Author: Gabriel Streza

This is my favorite extension. You can search and add Sitecore icons without ever leaving the tab.

Download here

Once you choose the icon, it automatically sets the Icon field on the template, and the icon’s relative path is still be copied into the clipboard! 

 

Sitecore Developer Tool

Author: Vlad Shpak

This tool allows navigating to admin pages like cache, serialization, show config (I use this most of the time), etc.  Also, you can switch between databases or set a new database on the options page. 

Download here

Additional tip: If you want the pages to open in a new tab, you can set it in option page and also add any admin pages you want like below

 

Sitecore Analytics Testing Tools

Author: Derek Hunziker

This is a fantastic tool for testing GeoIP and Analytics.

You can clear analytics-related cookies and specify a forwarded IP address for GeoIP lookups.

Download here

 

Pro-Tip:

You can use the same extensions in Microsoft Edge by copy and pasting the same Chrome link in the Edge browser.

Select Allow extensions from other stores in the banner at the top of the page and confirm the popup.

Select the Add to Chrome button and the extension is now added to Edge.

Learn more from here.

 

Hope this helps. Any questions, leave a comment below.

Happy Sitecoring! 

May 15, 2020
0
Forms / Sitecore

Generic method to read values from any type of Form fields

Are you looking for a generic method to read the values from any type of Sitecore Form fields? Here is the solution.

         private static Dictionary<Guid, string> FormFieldsToDictionary(IList<IViewModel> fields)
		{
			Dictionary<Guid, string> fielDictionary = new Dictionary<Guid, string>();
			foreach (var field in fields)
			{
				fielDictionary.Add(Guid.Parse(field.ItemId), field.GetType().GetProperty("Value")?.GetValue(field, null)?.ToString() ?? string.Empty);
			}
			return fielDictionary;
		}

	private static string GetValue(IViewModel field)
		{
			if (field == null)
			{ return default(string); }


			if ((field as StringInputViewModel) != null)
			{
				return (string)(object)(field as StringInputViewModel).Value;
			}

			if (field is ListViewModel)
			{
				var listField = (ListViewModel)field;
				var array = listField?.Value?.ToArray();
				if (array == null)
				{
					return string.Empty;
				}
				return String.Join(",", array);
			}

			if (field is DateViewModel)
			{
				var dateField = (DateViewModel)field;
				return dateField.Value.HasValue ? dateField.Value.Value.ToShortDateString() : string.Empty;
			}

			if (field is NumberViewModel)
			{
				var numberField = (NumberViewModel)field;
				return numberField.Value.HasValue ? numberField.Value.ToString() : string.Empty;
			}

			if (field is TextViewModel)
			{
				var textField = (TextViewModel)field;
				return (string)(object)textField.Text;
			}

			if (field is CheckBoxViewModel)
			{
				var checkbox = (CheckBoxListViewModel)field;
				return (string)(object)checkbox.Value;
			}


			return default(string);
		}

Utilization:

protected override bool Execute(UpdateContactData data, FormSubmitContext formSubmitContext)
		{
			var fieldsDictionary = FormFieldsToDictionary(formSubmitContext.Fields);

           // From here you can create a model from fieldsDictionary, call any API and return call status

       }

Hope this helps someone. Any questions, leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring!

April 6, 2020
0
Forms / Sitecore

What’s new in Sitecore Forms 9.3

You can now publish the forms within Forms Designer. No need to navigate to Content Editor to publish. This is pretty handy when developing forms.

Users can now delete submitted data for a particular form and specify a date range.​​

You can now use the Sitecore bot detection functionality to verify whether visitor is human. This removed the need for a Captcha element. Nice work Sitecore!

Now the forms element that allows you to add email confirmation to a form.​​

Users can now use the Redirect submit action to redirect to a URL and pass parameters to it.

To add file upload functionality to your forms, you can now use the File upload forms element. I use to utilize the Forms Extensions module(It’s very nice), it’s now included in forms element. 

 

Apart from these, there are bunch of enhancements made  – 
  • Improved database performance by increasing our ability to prevent deadlocks.​
  • You can now use the client-side API to retrieve form fields, for example when you build a custom submit action that needs to show all the form fields.
  • You no longer need to rebuild the master index after you install Sitecore XP.

 

Hope this helps. Any questions, leave a comment below.

Happy Sitecoring!

March 14, 2020
0
Sitecore

Tips and Tricks: Re-index item(s) faster

I recently came across a scenario where I wanted to reindex a specific item(s)/folder instead of the full content tree. 

Typically I would have reindexed from Indexing Manager in Control Panel which takes a good amount of time to rebuild all items.

Instead, I chose the item(s)/folder, navigated to the Developer tab, and clicked Re-Index Tree. It was done in less than a minute! 

This will rebuild the Item(s) to all the indexes in your solution and I feel this is very quick as compared to traditional re-index.

Note: If you don’t see Developer tab in the menu, you need to enable it by right-clicking on the menu and select the developer option.

Note: Same trick works with Web DB when you switch it in Sitecore Desktop.

Hope this helps someone. Any questions, leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring.

February 10, 2020
0
Sitecore

Install Sitecore 9.3 (using SIA) quickly in 20 minutes!

I’m participating in Sitecore Hackathon 2020 for the second time. One of the requirement is to have sitecore 9.3 installed on your machine except for commerce . I want to share my experience how i quickly installed Sitecore 9.3 using SIA(Sitecore Install Assistant) in 20 minutes!

Note: No need install any prerequisites(includes Solr) manually, SIA will take care of it.

Preparation:

  • Download installation package (Graphical setup package XP Single) from here.

Installation:

  • Extract the file zip file downloaded and click on Setup.exe
  • Install the prerequisites if needed. 
  • Install Solr 811 by filling Port, Windows service path prefix and Install path and Install.

Note: Make sure the port number is different from earlier versions of Solr installed. 

  • Fill out site prefix, admin password(going with b, so easy to remember) and license file path.
  • Fill out SQL server instance name, admin username and password.
  • Fill out the Solr URL, System root and Windows service name

Note: Go to Solr URL to make sure it’s running successfully.

  • Select optional module SXA if you need. I’m going for it, time to explore SXA! Would be nice if Horizon is listed here. 
  • Review the summary to make sure the settings are correct.
  • SIA validates to make sure the files look good.
  • Install. This takes around 10 minutes (you can get a coffee!). If it errors out, check out the log.

Yayy!! It’s installed. Is it easy to install with SIA? It’s indeed a great tool!

Check out the release notes for what’s new in Sitecore 9.3 here

Happy Sitecoring!

January 26, 2020
0
Sitecore

My 2019 Reflections

2019 is going great so far, wanted to share my contributions to the Sitecore community(Awesome!).

Presented Sitecore 9 Forms(Intermediate/Advance) in 7 SUG’s-

• April 18 2019 – SUG Bulgaria
• May 4 2019 – SUG Bangalore
• June 4 2019 – SUG Manchestor, NH
• June 6 2019 – SUG Belarus
• June 12 2019 – SUG Boston
• June 25 2019 – SUG NCR(Delhi -India)
• Aug 29 2019 – SUG Educador

 

The blog posts I have written and one of my blog post received ‘You are life saver, Thank you’ comment.

• Install Sitecore 9.1 quickly in 5 easy steps
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Redirecting to formbuilder on Submit?
• Sitecore 9 Forms: The required anti-forgery cookie __requestVerificationToken is not present
• Sitecore license file expired?
• Sitecore 9.1 Forms: Conditional Logic
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Control – Conditional Section
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Success message
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Submit Action
• Tips and Tricks : GIT Cherry Pick
• Sitecore Certification : Exam and Review
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Save Data
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Regex Validation
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Grouped dropdown
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘unobtrusive’ of undefined
• XConnect: Certificate was not found
• Sitecore 9 Forms: Access landing page fields in FormSubmitContext?
• Sitecore 9 Forms: The date range is invalid. Please select a date range that is within the range of the list.
• Sitecore Forms: Export Data to CSV shows Field Types on column header?
• Sitecore Forms: Redirecting to External URL

Youtube
• How to add Forms Custom Submit Actions – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE_aaFN7GvY

Slack Community
• Active on #wffm-forms

Certification
• Sitecore 9.0 Certified Platform Associate Developer

Participation
• Hackathon

Conferences I attended
• SUGCON India
• SYMPOSIUM
• All SUG Boston meetups.

2020 Plans

Learn and contribute

  • Cortex
  • Sitecore AI Personalization
  • Sitecore 9.3 Forms
  • Sitecore 9.3 Overall

Co-organize (Virtual)

  • Quarterly SUG-Pittsburgh meetup

Present

  • SUG Meetups
  • Sitecore SUGCON EU/Symposium 2020
December 4, 2019
0
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore Forms: Export Data to CSV shows Field Types on column header?

I exported the Forms data using Export the selected data into CSV button and noticed one of the column header was showing field type not field name.

I checked at many places, couldn’t figure out. Later I checked on Content Editor – Forms and found that item name was showing the field type!

I gave the appropriate Field Name in Forms and the CSV file looks good now. 

Forms Field Name sets Item Name and Label sets the Title field in Content Editor.

Don’t forget to publish the Forms!

Happy Sitecoring.

October 21, 2019
0
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore Forms: Redirecting to External URL

I came across a scenario where I need to redirect to a external url(thank you page) after form submission. It’s achievable using formSubmitContext’s RedirectUrl property on your Custom Submit Action.

Here is the code snippet – 

protected override bool Execute(string data, FormSubmitContext formSubmitContext)
		{
//Prepare model
//WebApi Call

//Redirect to external URL
var thankYouPageUrl = $"{HttpContext.Current.Request.Url?.Scheme}://{HttpContext.Current.Request.Url?.Host}/[thank-you-page-path]/";

formSubmitContext.RedirectUrl = $"{thankYouPageUrl}?id={add-any-querystring-if-needed}";
formSubmitContext.RedirectOnSuccess = true;              
return true;

}

Hope this helps someone. Happy Sitecoring!

October 10, 2019
0
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: The date range is invalid. Please select a date range that is within the range of the list.

I deployed the forms to Staging environment and see how the forms were performing.

I exported the data using Export form data into CSV button and i received ‘The date range is invalid. Please select a date range that is within the range of the list.‘ error.

I tried different range and it threw the same error. I checked the db([project]. ExperienceForms) and there was NO DATA!

I submitted the form and tried again. It downloaded the CSV file with an entry on it.

Hope this helps someone. 

Happy Sitecoring.

October 2, 2019
0
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Access landing page fields in FormSubmitContext?

I came across a scenario where I needed to access landing page fields(the page where we add Forms) in Custom Submit Action’s FormSubmitContext. 

By default, the page item isn’t known at the Submit Action. So started thinking should i create a custom hidden field or use the Forms Extensions module? At the end of the day, i didn’t need either. 

Here is the quick way to access the current page using HttpContext’s AbsolutePath.

protected override bool Execute(string data, FormSubmitContext formSubmitContext)
{
 
var contextItem = GetContextItem.GetItem(HttpContext.Current.Request.UrlReferrer?.AbsolutePath) as ILandingPageContentItem;

// Access fields from ContextItem
}

public class GetContextItem
{
	public static IStandardTemplateItem GetItem(string path)
	{
		Item item = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem($"/sitecore/content/<tenant>/Home{path}");
		
		return item?.AsStronglyTyped();
	}
}

Hope this helps someone. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring!

September 25, 2019
0
Sitecore / XConnect / Xdb

XConnect: Certificate was not found (Azure PaaS)

Experience Analytics was not working in the Production Azure PaaS environment. I checked the logs and it was throwing Certificate was not found error. 

Exception: System.InvalidOperationExceptionMessage: The certificate was not found.Source: Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Webat Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Web.CertificateWebRequestHandlerModifier.Process(HttpClientHandler handler)at Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Web.CommonWebApiClient`1.CreateRequestHandler()at Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Web.CommonWebApiClient`1.CreateClient()at System.Lazy`1.CreateValue()at System.Lazy`1.LazyInitValue()at Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Web.CommonWebApiClient`1.<ExecuteAsync>d__37.MoveNext()--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)at Sitecore.Xdb.Common.Web.CommonWebApiClient`1.<ExecuteGetAsync>d__32.MoveNext()--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw()at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)at Sitecore.XConnect.Client.WebApi.ConfigurationWebApiClient.<Refresh>d__4.MoveNext()

  • My first guess was certificate would have expired, but it was valid. 

  • Second guess was thumbprint could be wrong, but thumbprint was perfectly matching with the config value(\App_Config\AppSettings.config file , in the validateCertificateThumbprint setting).

  • Started wondering why it can’t find the certificate for some reason?  Came to know that need to add an application setting to the web app called WEBSITE_LOAD_CERTIFICATES and the value needs to be the certificate thumbprint.

  • This application setting is required for the app service to load the certificate into the local certificate store of the host running the app service. 

Once the setting is added and I no longer see the error in logs and the Experience Analytics started showing some number/graphs. Yay!

Hope this helps. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring.

September 16, 2019
4
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘unobtrusive’ of undefined

Are you getting this error on Sitecore 9 Forms Submission? I got it and it took me some time to figure out. It’s all related to Validation. Here are the points to check to narrow down the issue —

  • If you have form fields set it to mandatory, change it to optional and see if that makes the submission successful. If so, one of the field validation is causing trouble.

  • It happens for custom form control quite often, where you need add the validation to razor view file and make sure you have this attribute – GenerateUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes. 
<label for="@Html.IdFor(m => Model.Value)" class="@Model.LabelCssClass">@Html.DisplayTextFor(t => Model.Title)</label>
<select data-trigger class="@Model.CssClass @Model.Name" name="@Html.NameFor(m => Model.Value)" id="@Html.IdFor(m => Model.Value)" data-sc-tracking="@Model.IsTrackingEnabled" data-sc-field-name="@Model.Name" @Html.GenerateUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(m => m.Value)>
</select>
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => Model.Value)
  • Compare your custom control razor file to any one of inbuilt form controls ([iis-site-folder]\Views\FormBuilder\FieldTemplates ) like below and if you see any difference on attributes, add it out.
  • Finally a simple check: make sure to publish all the forms and view the landing page in live mode(not in preview mode)

Hope this helps. Happy sitecoring.

August 5, 2019
2
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Grouped dropdown

I came across a requirement from a client that they wanted to show Country and it’s states grouped in a dropownlist. I created a custom grouped dropdown to fit into the scenario. Since this is an extension of dropdownlist, no speak knowledge required. 

Let’s get started

Step 1: Create custom dropdown list

Create a custom dropdownlist under
/sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Field Types/Lists based on Field Type(/sitecore/templates/System/Forms/Field Type) template like below

Step 2: Create a code behind class and razor view

create a code behind class like this in VS project

using System.Collections.Generic;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Mvc.Models.Fields;

namespace Sitecore.Project.Example.Views.StateDropdown
{
	public class StateDropdown : DropDownListViewModel
	{
		protected override void InitItemProperties(Item item)
		{
			Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, nameof(item));
			base.InitItemProperties(item);
		}

		protected override void UpdateItemFields(Item item)
		{
			Assert.ArgumentNotNull(item, nameof(item));
			base.UpdateItemFields(item);
		}

		public Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> Regions()
		{
			if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(DataSource)) return new Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>>();
			Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>> counrtyCollection = new Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, string>>();
			Item item = Context.Database.GetItem(DataSource);
			var children = item.GetChildren();
			foreach (Item child in children)
			{
				counrtyCollection.Add(child.Fields["Name"].Value, new Dictionary<string, string>());
				foreach (Item desc in child.Children)
				{
					counrtyCollection[child.Fields["Name"].Value].Add(desc.Fields["Name"].Value, desc.Fields["Code"].Value);
				}
			}
			return counrtyCollection;
		} 
	}
}

Create a razor view like this and build project

@using Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Mvc.Html
@model Sitecore.Project.Example.Views.StateDropdown.StateDropdown
@{
	var regions = Model.Regions();
}
<label for="@Html.IdFor(m => Model.Value)" class="@Model.LabelCssClass">@Html.DisplayTextFor(t => Model.Title)</label>
<select id="@Html.IdFor(m => Model.Value)" data-trigger name="@Html.NameFor(m => Model.Value)" class="@Model.CssClass" placeholder="Select Your Work Location" data-sc-tracking="@Model.IsTrackingEnabled" data-sc-field-name="@Model.Name" @Html.GenerateUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(m => m.Value)>
	<option placeholder>Select Your Work Location</option>
	@foreach (var region in regions)
	{
		<optGroup data-id="@region.Value" label="@region.Key">
			@foreach (var state in region.Value)
			{
				<option value="@state.Value">@state.Key</option>
			}
		</optGroup>
	}
</select>
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => Model.Value)

Step 3: Fill out the fields

Fill out the View Path, Model Type and Property Editor(should be Property Editor Settings/DropDown List).  

you are now all set to utilize the custom dropdown list in Forms Designer. Don’t forget to publish the field!

Hope this is helpful. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring.

July 10, 2019
0
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Regex Validation

I came across a scenario where i implemented a custom validation on Sitecore 9 Forms. Sharing my knowledge here. You can achieve this in three simple steps.

Step 1: Create custom validator

Create a custom validator under
/sitecore/system/settings/forms/validation based on Validation(sitecore/templates/System/Forms/Validation) template like below

Step 2: Fill out the fields

Fill out your own regex and error message. You can copy the Type value from other validator.

Step 3: Assign the custom validator

You can now add the new custom validator to any Form fields(
/sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Field Types). All set and no code required!

Hope you found this blog helpful. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring!

May 7, 2019
0
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Save Data

Are you developing Sitecore 9 Forms and wondering where does the data get saved on Save Data?

  • It goes to local DB called Experience Forms (The DB comes with it as part of Sitecore 9 installation OOTB)
  • It has two tables – dbo.FormEntry and dbo.FieldData holds all the information.
  • The below first query gives the top 1000 form submissions. From the form ID, you can query against dbo.FieldData for any specific field values.

SELECT TOP (1000) [ID]
,[FormItemID]
,[Created]
FROM [sc91local_ExperienceForms].[dbo].[FormEntry]


SELECT TOP (1000) [ID]
,[FormEntryID]
,[FieldItemID]
,[FieldName]
,[Value]
,[ValueType]
FROM [sc91local_ExperienceForms].[dbo].[FieldData]

You can also export the data from ‘Export the data to CSV‘ button from Form Designer.

Hope this information is helpful. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy Sitecoring.

April 19, 2019
0
Sitecore

Sitecore 9.1 Forms: Conditional Logic

Conditional Logic is great new feature introduced in Sitecore 9.1 Forms. Basically you can add conditions to show/hide fields based on user input.

In this example below I set up a drop down and couple of sections that show/hide the section(you can go fields as well) based on user interaction.

My simple conditional logic form

Now I added the conditions to drop-down list by clicking on the Conditions section in the form elements pane.

Edit conditions to add new condition logic

Now are you wondering why the condition logic looks weird? Here is how it works –

  • All Condition are evaluated and applied in sequence.
  • Foreach condition, if the Condition matches, then apply selected action. Else, apply inverse of selected action.

Added the form to a web page and here is how my output looks –

When I chose 1, showed the Attendee #1 section
When I chose 2, showed both Attendees section

1. Dropdown Selection: Empty

  • Condition 1 Evaluation = False. Inverse selected action (Hide section1 and section2)
  • Condition 2 Evaluation = True. Apply selected action (Hide section1)

Results: Hide both section1 and section2

2. Dropdown Selection: 1

  • Condition 1 Evaluation = False. Inverse selected action (Hide section1 and section2)
  • Condition 2 Evaluation = False. Inverse selected action (Show section1)

Results: Show section1 and hide section2

3. Dropdown Selection: 2

  • Condition 1 Evaluation = True. Apply selected action (Show section1 and section2)
  • Condition 2 Evaluation = False. Inverse selected action (Show section1)

Results: Show both section1 and section2

Now you have the cool working conditional logic on the form. Any questions, please leave a comment.

Happy sitecoring!

April 2, 2019
4
Sitecore

Sitecore license file expired?

I have Sitecore 9.1 instance and today my sitecore license file expired. I had to replace the license.xml in multiple places to make sure my site, xConnect and Identity Server sites work.

  • Sitecore site:
    • The /App_Data folder
  • xConnect site:
    • /App_Data
    • /App_Data/jobs/continuous/AutomationEngine/App_Data
    • /App_Data/jobs/continuous/IndexWorker/App_Data
    • /App_Data/jobs/continuous/ProcessingEngine/App_Data (new to Sitecore 9.1)

Hope this helps if you have license expiration message.

Happy Sitecoring!

March 20, 2019
0
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: The required anti-forgery cookie __requestVerificationToken is not present

Have you submitted a form and it returned with this error ‘The required anti-forgery cookie “__requestVerificationToken” is not present’? If so, here is the resolution.

  • This could be because of caching. Can you check if your rendering component or container/page level caching check box is checked? if so, unchecking the caching will fix the issue.
  • Also here is quick check you can do to see whether your form is cached – Inspect the form and check the _requestverificationtoken value like below and refresh the page – do you see same value now? if so, your form is in cache!
 <input name="__RequestVerificationToken" type="hidden" value="O0P3KYBqgEZXlksWnY3fhu0PptEB0a47rRGMgHNnF6lIL2S8tcts9z9NxdxIum7ANKMv95FZB275AeLTw6WxcOl4jCQ1">

March 13, 2019
2
Sitecore

Install Sitecore 9.1 quickly in 5 easy steps

Image result for install software

I’m participating in Sitecore Hackathon for the first time this year. One of the requirement is to have sitecore 9.1(Initial version) installed on your machine. So I want to share my experience how i quickly installed Sitecore 9.1 using SIF on developer machine in 5 easy steps. This post includes the prerequisites, preparation and installation.

Prerequisites:

  • OS: Windows 10, Windows Server 2016
  • DB:
    • Microsoft SQL Server 2017 or 2016 SP2 – Supports the XM database and is the required for the xDB
    • Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Sp2 – Only supports XM databases and does not support the xDB
    • MongoDB Server 3.6.6 – This is required if you are going to use MongoDB for the Collection database or as a Session State Provider
  • IIS 10
  • . NET
    • Sitecore XP 9.1.0 requires .NET Framework 4.7.1
    • Sitecore Identity server requires .NET Core Runtime 2.1.3
    • You must apply any available updates to the .NET Framework on every Sitecore installation
  • Search Indexing
    • Solr 7.2.1 – Default search provider
    • Azure Search – supported and recommended for Azure Cloud PaaS deployments only
    • Lucene – Only supports content search and does not support xConnect.
  • Powershell 5.1 – for Installing SIF

Preparation:

  • Download installation package(XP Single) from here
  • Extract the zip file you just downloaded
  • Again extract this file – XP0 Configuration files 9.1.0 rev. 001564.zip
  • Copy your license.xml file (If you have enrolled for Hackathon, you should have received the file in email)

Now let’s begin the installation!

Step 1: Solr 7.2.1 Install

Check out Jeremy Davis’s low effort Solr installs. It’s pretty cool! https://jermdavis.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/low-effort-solr-installs/

If you want to take traditional approach(Install as service using NSSM tool), here are the steps

  • Download Solr from here
  • Install as service using NSSM tool

  • It opens the NSSM Service Installer like below. Fill out the fields.
  • Note: If you already another version of solr running, make sure to give different port name.
Solr 5 running as a service on Microsoft Windows

Step 2: Install SIF

Run the following scripts in Powershell as administrator.

Register-PSRepository -Name SitecoreGallery -SourceLocation https://sitecore.myget.org/F/sc-powershell/api/v2;
Install-Module SitecoreInstallFramework;
Install-Module SitecoreFundamentals;
Update-Module SitecoreInstallFramework;
Update-Module SitecoreFundamentals;
Import-Module SitecoreFundamentals -Force;
Import-Module SitecoreInstallFramework -Force;

Step 3: Update config files

Update the following files in the folder with the exact information – solr path, solr service name, configsets path, instance name for sitecore, SQL instance name and login credentials.

  • XP0-SingleDeveloper.ps1
  • XP0-SingleDeveloper.json
  • xconnect-solr.json
  • sitecore-solr.json

Step 4: Install prerequisites

Install-SitecoreConfiguration -Path .\Prerequisites.json

Step 5: Install Sitecore 9.1

  • Execute the script ./XP0-SingleDeveloper.ps1 (takes good amount of time to execute)
  • Fingers crossed!

Note: There is no ‘b’ admin password. You can get the password at the end of the script execution. Nice work Sitecore!

Notice that it installed the third site in IIS – Identity Server (New to 9.1)

Also noticed the http://[sitename]/sitecore/login now redictes to identiyserver in the URL.

Have fun exploring Sitecore 9.1!

Any questions, please leave a comment.

February 27, 2019
0
C# / Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Redirecting to formbuilder on Submit?

Problem:

Have you submitted a form and it redirected to form builder url and displayed without styles? If so, here is the solution

Resolution:

  • Make sure to add these scripts to MVC OuterLayout.cshtml and reference it in MVCLayout.cshtml. More details, refer the documentation (Steps 3 and 4)
@using Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Mvc.Html  

@Html.RenderFormStyles()
@Html.RenderFormScripts()

Any questions, please leave a comment. Happy sitecoring!

February 8, 2019
0
Sitecore

Sitecore Certification : Exam and Review

I recently took the Sitecore 9.0 Certified Platform Associate Developer exam online and passed with an overall score of 88%.

Here are the steps I have taken to become certified:

  • Took the Developer’s Fundamental Collection online. You can also do it through Instructor-Led or Virtual Classroom options – https://learning.sitecore.com/#homepage-learning-solutions
  • Went through all the modules and lab exercises. When I completed the fifth module, I received an access key in the email to book the exam.
  • You can book the exam in-person in the center or online. I chose online and booked the exam via https://www.webassessor.com/sitecore/index.html
  • This is a proctor guided exam, no book allowed. Also, the exam software Senitel says you should have an external web camera. It worked with the in-built camera on my work computer. So don’t worry about the external camera.
  • The exam has 50 questions and 90 minutes to complete. You can review the answers as many times as you want. I completed the exam in 30 minutes and review the answers in the next 30 minutes and I still have 30 more minutes left!
  • Overall I got a 88% score. Here is my Topic level scoring:

Architecture: 100%
Creating and Editing Items: 100%
Development Environment: 75%
Docs and Support: 100%
Installation: 100%
Publishing: 100%
xManagement: 100%
Field Types: 83%
Media: 100%
Templates: 85%
Versioning: 100%
Presentation: 77%
API: 100%
Modules and Packages: 100%
Performance: 100%
Search: 80%

  • Once you complete you exam, you will receive an email from test center with score and certification pdf file. Good luck!

Note:

  • Sitecore Professional Developer – This examination is for Version 8.2
  • Sitecore Certified Platform Associate Developer – This is for Version 9.0

January 7, 2019
0
GIT

Tips and Tricks : GIT Cherry Pick

I came across a situation where I need to merge only couple of commits from branch(not the entire branch) and Git cherry pick does the job pretty clean. I use Git extensions IDE and context menu makes it easier.

Here are the steps:

  • Make sure you checkout the branch you want to merge the commits
  • Navigate to the commit you want to cherry pick
  • Right click and select cherry pick commit option

  • It opens a dialog with the option to choose auto commit and add commit reference. I recommend checking both of them. By default, they are not checked. Hit Cherry pick button.

  • Now the commit is auto committed and ready to be pushed into current branch.

Happy cherry picking!

September 27, 2018
2
Forms / Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Custom Submit Action

One of most common scenario I came across in Sitecore 9 Form is to create your custom submit action. You can achieve this in three simple steps.

Step 1: Create submit action button in Sitecore

Create the custom action button under /sitecore/system/Settings/Forms/Submit Actions.

Step 2: Create code behind class

Create a class that inherits SubmitActionBase class and override the Execute method.

public class CustomSubmitAction : SubmitActionBase<string>
{
public CustomSubmitAction(ISubmitActionData submitActionData) : base(submitActionData)
{
}

public override void ExecuteAction(FormSubmitContext formSubmitContext, string parameters)
{
Assert.ArgumentNotNull((object)formSubmitContext, nameof(formSubmitContext));

if (this.TryParse(parameters, out string target))
{
try
{
if (this.Execute(target, formSubmitContext))
return;
}
catch (ArgumentNullException ex)
{
}
}
formSubmitContext.Errors.Add(new FormActionError()
{
ErrorMessage = this.SubmitActionData.ErrorMessage
});
}

protected override bool Execute(string data, FormSubmitContext formSubmitContext)
{
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(data, nameof(data));
Assert.ArgumentNotNull(formSubmitContext, nameof(formSubmitContext));

//Prepare model here
var model = new EmailModel()
{
Email = GetValue(formSubmitContext.Fields.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Name.Equals("EmailAddress")))
};

// Call any API service call

return true;
}

private static string GetValue(object field)
{
return field?.GetType().GetProperty("Value")?.GetValue(field, null)?.ToString() ?? string.Empty;
}

protected override bool TryParse(string value, out string target)
{
target = string.Empty;
return true;
}

Step 3: Set the custom submit action fields

Update the ModelType and Error Message on the button shown below.

Bind the custom submit action to Submit button like below.

Publish the button. The submit button on form should now trigger the custom save action! Any questions, let me know.

Happy sitecoring.

September 16, 2018
2
Sitecore

Sitecore 9 Forms: Success message


Sitecore 9 form feature is awesome and simple to work with. It is more like Visual Studio Toolbox and you can drag and drop the fields.

I had a requirement from Client asking for Ajax form and wanted to show Confirmation/Success message after the form is submitted. Out of the box, this is achievable with the Form.

Here is a small guide on how to create a form with confirmation message:

1. Select Forms from Dashboard.

2. Click Create button.
3. Select blank form.

4. Drag a page for main content.
5. Drag a another page for confirmation message.
6. Design the fields according to needs. Here I’m doing Email Signup form. You can add field validation and css-class as needed.

Please make sure you have these scripts in Layout.cshtml.

@Html.RenderFormStyles()
@Html.RenderFormScripts()

7. On the submit button, set the Navigation step to Next instead of submit. This does the trick to show the confirmation page.

7. Save the form.
8. Now you can see the form in Content Editor.

Don’t forget to publish the form and place it on a web page under MVC layout. Here is Sitecore documentation on Adding a form to webpage.

Happy Sitecoring.

August 30, 2018
0
C#

Pattern Matching in C# 7.0 Switch Statements

I was trying to figure out what would be the best way to list out partial views based on Model type and found C# 7.0 new feature ‘Pattern matching in switch statements’ would be great fit for the scenario.

Before only string/integer can be compared, now you can compare on any type of object. Below is the example shows switch case based on Model Interface type.

@model Synthesis.IStandardTemplateItem

@switch (Model)
{
case INavigationColumnItem nci:
//Take any action
break;
case IColumnNavigationFolderItem ncfi:
//Take any action
break;
case IHeaderLogoItem hli:
//Take any action
break;
case IHeaderNavigationLinkItem hnli:
//Take any action
break;
case IHeaderPhoneNumberItem hpni:
//Take any action
break;
}

Checkout more cool new C# 7.0 features here. Happy coding.

August 17, 2018
0

Twitter Post