Sitecore 9.3 New Feature
i try to illuminate on main new features which we can categorize as enhancement,performance and other changes.
Enhancement
In this release there are many enhancements and improvements are included following area :
Sitecore Form
The Forms module now includes “confirm email” and “file upload” elements.
Publishing Within Form Module
Now we can publish the Form from inside the Forms module itself.
Bot Detection
Sitecore 9.3 Forms can now use our platform bot detection to verify if the input is from a human. This eliminates the need for annoying Captcha elements.
Redirect to External URL
Sitecore 9.3 have a new Submit Action with which you can provide an external URL with parameters and after successful submission, you will be redirected.
Here is nice explanation https://sitecorecompetencies.com/2019/11/08/whats-new-in-sitecore-form-with-version-9-3/
EXM
EXM URLs are now case-sensitive.
New out-of-the-box templates, a simplified block layout for HTML email, and a refreshed template manager allow marketers to set up new campaigns more efficiently than before and empower teams to move from idea to execution without the barrier of significant HTML creation.
In addition, EXM templates feature a responsive HTML design that allows recipients to view messages on any device.
Marketing Automation
The 9.3 release provides the ability to use date and time in the criteria for entry in the enrollment plan. The new feature will now allow marketers enroll contacts from a segment list based on a schedule, configuring an automation plan based on three criteria: A certain time of the day, a certain day of the week or at a given date.
SXA
1. New extensible template engine
This new engine is based on open source template engine Scriban.
Scriban contains full flow controls and error handling, providing developers with the power to add logic to the template.
More Info- https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/sxa/93/sitecore-experience-accelerator/en/scriban-templates.html
2. Additional Search filter components to optimize the Search
SXA 9.3 features two additional search related components, the Aggregated facet filter and the Facet summary.
[1] Aggregated facet filter — allowing for creation of facet filter sets — dynamically showing and hiding sub-components based on content available in Search Results.
[2] Facet summary — showing the selected facets and allowing for removal of undesired filters from the search context.
3. Complete front-end development workflow revamp
SXA in 9.3 is the complete revamp on how front-end development is done with SXA.
Creative Exchange Live Theming tooling is now fully externalized, it’s available as NPM packages, freeing up Media Library.
This also provides you with a ‘JSS Style’ theme creation using command line interface. Now you can create SXA themes without logging in or using the Sitecore UI.
Themes are now fully version controlled with only the compiled assets being uploaded to Sitecore. Ensuring a single source of truth for all SXA Template related files.
More detail please read http://www.pieterbrinkman.com/2019/12/04/sitecore-9-3-sitecore-experience-accelerator-sxa-whats-new/
Experience Editor
- General link with search, Date and Datetime fields now have “Clear” buttons in the floating toolbar to clear the values.
- When creating a new page in Experience Editor, the first available template is preselected by default to improve usability.
- Image selection and Link dialogs are aligned with the similar functionality in Content Editor.
- A new Context mode value is added for the Explore mode. If the user opens the Explore mode then ‘Sitecore.Context.PageMode’ is set to ‘IsExploring’
- Standard link text is converted into links upon pasting or entering the text in the inline Rich Text Editor. For example “http://domain.com”, “https://domain.com” or name@domain.com will be converted to respective links.
- Navigation and Control bars are now enabled by default, so that user can find the navigation functionality easier.
XConnect
1. Monitoring Status
XConnectSearchIndexer.exe should have a possibility to monitor status.
It is now extended with additional behavior:
1) with -rm flag (run and monitor) , can Start rebuild and monitor status on regular basis and terminate process once index is rebuilt
2) with -rr flag (request rebuild) , will just start rebuilding
2. Stability
Implemented fault tolerance to the index rebuild process. In case of temporary infrastructure hiccups the rebuild will not be aborted and it will retry automatically. After a restart, the rebuild process will resume where it left off.
Change to PaaS deployments sending collection traffic to xc-collect instead of xc-search.
Various improvements to the stability of live indexing and rebuild in system under stress scenarios, allowing a faster rebuild:
- Implemented batching + parallelization during the rebuild synchronization stage
- Reduced the default of SplitRecordsThreshold from 25k to 1k
- Reduced in half the ParallelizationDegree of the rebuild
Performance Improvement
Following are main performance improvement area:
1. Web Tracking
Tracking: Session expiration batching support
By having the tracker do fewer requests and batching events before committing it, xConnect will have increased performance. Several improvements have been included with Sitecore 9.3 to improve performance for xConnect:
- Web tracker supports sending expired session data to xConnect in batches .
- Additional settings have been introduced to control the batch size and level of concurrent processing.
- Reduces workload on the CD servers using less resources to save data to xConnect. The resources can be used for visitor requests.
- Batching improves performance of xConnect and all underlying components.
- Possible to have CD servers which do not perform any session expiration by adding ability to have dedicated session expiration servers.
Tracking: Focused Performance Improvements
- Load last known contact together with Device in one request — Reduced the calls to xConnect by 3 times on session start
- Reduce number of requests to Reference Data — Calls to the Reference data service are reduced to half.
- Remove legacy facets from configuration — Reduce the amount of data saved in the session database
- Optimize serialization code — Optimized the amount of data saved to session database
2. Cortex & Processing
Performance Improvement of Aggregation pipeline
- A new interaction aggregation pipeline that handles batches of interactions
- Pipeline provides an opportunity for the downstream components to write performance optimized aggregation processors.
- Path Analyzer already moved to the new pipeline with considerable performance improvements.
Focused Performance Improvements
- Identified and fixed performance hot spots in Reference Data Service
- Introduce a cache of dimensions that have been already created
- Combined Definition and DefinitionMoniker tables
- Added stored procedures for working with a single record
3. Performance counters
Provide possibility to switch off/on performance counters for XConnect/xDB/Cortex services.
Other Changes
Support for Internet Explorer 11 has been deprecated in Sitecore 9.3.0 and will be completely removed in the next major release.
Permission Enabled Search
This new functionality allows customers to set the security permissions for the content they want to appear in search results by using the Sitecore Security model. In case-specific users or roles do not have the Read permissions to the item, this item would not appear in Search results for this user or role.
Sitecore Blob storage
Sitecore stores media items, such as documents or images, in a Sitecore database by default. Sitecore Blob Storage allows you to store these files in Azure Blob Storage, thereby reducing the hosting costs and improving performance.
Obsolete is removed
A huge number of obsoleted functionalities were removed from in this release. That includes removing of the:
- Lucene Search provider
- Sitecore.Nvelocity
- Replaced deprecated SQL data types
Thanks for reading. Hopefully it covers many new features come up with Sitecore 9.3.
http://www.pieterbrinkman.com/2019/12/02/sitecore-9-3-core-platform-enhancements/
