Why upgrade to Sitecore 10 – Some interesting features

Streamlining Development Processes (Command Line Interface (CLI) for Serialization)

Over recent releases, Sitecore has really taken notice of developer needs and provided support to the various tools they already use.

Sitecore 10 introduces the Command Line Interface (CLI), which opens new capabilities in terms of interacting with Sitecore instances. CLI provides a simplified headless approach for serialization, bringing together the best features of its antecedents, TDS and Unicorn.
Now, you can publish and serialize content items from the command line and synchronize all changes automatically.

Value-Adds for the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA)

The Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) is a framework that comes with a set of components to help you build out your entire site. Companies investing in SXA will welcome features in 10.1 which really add value. In the new release, you can set themes at the component level and establish a template for a series of pages with branching. This latter feature will allow companies to use a template to deliver compelling microsites at short notice. Other improvements include the ability to utilize the Horizon editor on SXA sites, and use HTML to render assets that are not hosted on Sitecore onto a page. 

Content Management in Sitecore

Sitecore 10 has good news!!! The pain of pasting in MS Word content is no longer with the Sitecore 10 upgrade. Content management in Sitecore through its Rich Text Editor is smarter and automatically cleans-up your cut and paste job to leave you with clean, unencumbered content!

Core Headless Experience with ASP.NET Core

Sitecore already supports on the open-source framework ASP.NET Core in some features, such as the publishing service, Sitecore Identity Server, or Sitecore Commerce, but most components depend on the .NET Framework. In Sitecore 10 release, the platform has extended the usage of ASP.NET Core by developing a JSS-based SDK for headless services.

ASP.NET Core is a robust framework that provides powerful and fast performance. Sitecore supports the latest version, .NET Core 3.1.

A headless development approach with .NET Core technology ensures flexibility, omnichannel experience and time-efficiency.
Businesses can get cloud-based cross-platform applications for Windows, macOS and Linux, so they’ll spend less time and money on the adoption.

Support Docker deployment

Using Docker technology, developers can ‘box’ software in containers, making it easier to create/start new instances.  Docker and Kubernetes technology runs the software containers.  This helps developers to easily run vast quantities of Sitecore copies, to run Sitecore production instances and to efficiently test load balancing. There are three deployment options available: Self-managed cloud deployment, Managed cloud deployment and On premises deployment.

New Rules for Marketing Automation

The Marketing Automation tool has redefined rules, which has improved its usability. Moreover, it’s also added new rules focusing on customer birthdays.

Marketing teams can create marketing scenarios around your contacts’ birthdays, e.g. send greetings and offer discounts.

There were also enhancements for more efficient interaction with xConnect.

MongoDB is no longer there

MongoDB providers for session and collection are removed in Sitecore 10.1. We need to migrate data to SQL using XDB Migration tool from Mongo DB.

Conclusion

Here’s a few thoughts for those considering the upgrade.

• If you are already on version 10.0, then the upgrade process is likely a low-impact one.
• If you are feeling risk to move to Sitecore 10, now is your time to act. Version 10 is now past the initial shakedown, and you can move forward with confidence.
• If your website has a lot of work with Sitecore Forms, manages huge xDB data, use ECM or SXA, I think your team ca get a lot in this release.
• If it has been several years since last upgrade, you must seriously consider this update.
• And finally, Sitecore 10.1 introduces a much-streamlined upgrade process. Previously it was a painful process to do Sitecore upgrades, but the new process will make future upgrades from 10.1 much simpler.

  Why upgrade to Sitecore 10 – Some improvements