Upgrade to Sitecore 8.1

Upgrade to

A Mini Guide8.1

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Upgrade to Sitecore 8.1

Mini GuideThis Best Practice guide covers the following sections around upgrades to Sitecore 8.1

1. Some compelling reasons for upgrade to Sitecore 8.1.............................................2

2. Considering an upgrade to Sitecore 8.1?........................................................................5

3. Easiest path to upgrade from Sitecore 7.x to 8.1.........................................................7

4. How to plan for an upgrade and mitigate risks...........................................................9

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Some compelling reasons for upgrade to Sitecore 8.1If you are not moving to 8.1, you might be missing out

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Path Analyzer is a new tool to display the path that users take on your website.

The Sitecore Federated Experience Manager (FxM) enables you to track and personalize customers’ journeys across non-Sitecore-powered websites.

Integrated Social Connected module lets you connect to Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ and Twitter. The new Experience Dashboard provides a centralized place for all features of the Sitecore Experience Platform - grouped into sections for Marketers, Editors and Developers.

VVersioned Layouts

Upgrade before it is too expensive, too lateUpgrading to a new CMS version is always necessary because the older version has less product support. There can be browser compatibility and publishing issues to deal with if your version is not updated even after the latest product version has been released and established. Also, if you are waiting too long to do an upgrade, you can get into a situation where you need to upgrade upto 2-3 versions to keep abreast. Further, you will also need to significantly upgrade your supporting infrastructure to align with the new CMS version. This may cause you to spend more budget and time, besides the fact that your marketing team loses the opportunity to use a very good platform.

Support for cloud deploymentThe new version offers complete support for cloud deployment. Sitecore xDB Cloud Edition is a service that enables companies to run Sitecore xDB in the cloud exclusively. This surely saves the cost of acquiring, configuring, and supporting on-premise infrastructure in terms of servers.

Improved Search functionalityThe new Search API offered by the latest version provides a superior user experience. There are evidently high performing indices and facets available to filter search results.

Leverage the latest development toolsThis is another advantage of Sitecore 8.1 upgrade as the platform comes with improved integration tools and development frameworks which are often desired by development teams.

Another new feature for marketers is the introduction of Versioned Layouts. From a marketer’s perspective, this is a new tool that provides the ability to create different layout definitions for each language version of an item. For example, if you want to promote a 20% discount offer on a product in the French region/language and a 50% offer in Russian region/language, you can now create this offer using presentation details and versioned layouts.



What is a single view of the customer?Single view of the customer is an aggregated, consistent and holistic representation of the data available to an organization about its customers.

Data silos such as email marData silos such as email marketing, CRM, website, social and portal do not allow marketers to get a holistic view of customer needs. To activate campaigns and experiences, an organization needs an accurate view of the customer. There's a need to capture, ingest and unify customer data from all touchpoints and store it in a centralized location.

CusCustomers provide explicit, first party information about themselves on the organization website when they complete their profiles or fill in forms. They also provide secondary insights into their needs by leaving behavioral, digital footprint behind. Further, an organization can find third party data such as company name, location, revenue and size from external sources. All this data in aggregate provides a full view of the customer. Creating a single profile that captures data and behavior for a customer across all channels allows an organization to market across channels in a seamless manner.

The adThe advantages of creating a robust customer profile include:

Boost purchases with location-based targetingSitecore automatically locates your customers and delivers tailored content that relates to their nearest physical store. It can send offers to their devices based on proximity and relevance to prompt an in-store purchase.

Increase engagement with societySiSitecore empowers customers to choose the best products and services for their needs. Sitecore makes it easy to add user-generated content — such as online ratings, reviews, and recommendations — that accelerate sales cycles and deepens customer loyalty.

Conduct tests on the fly to refine content With Sitecore, an organization can test and optimize any type of online shopping content, such as images, video and product descriptions. Real-time analytics help pinpoint the content that resonates so that you can drive highest conversions.

AAfter identifying, optimize purchase paths that convertYou need to achieve maximum efficiency for your content to guide website visitors down pre-defined paths. Sitecore helps you understand which purchase paths and upsell cycles are most successful. It also helps you with troubleshooting shopping cart abandonment.

Gain actionable insights to keep up with conversationsSitecore automatically tracks shopping activities and turns that data into actionable insights that you can use to acquire new customers, nurture the ones not yet ready to buy, and retain them.

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Deliver a well-connected customer experience Sitecore Commerce is an assemblage of personalized experiences with sophisticated product merchandizing and shopping. When integrated with other Sitecore® Experience Platform™ solutions — including the web, email, social, mobile and print, commerce becomes a seamless continuation of the conversation across all channels, right through to revenue.

FederaFederated Experience Manager (FXM) allows marketers to tag external sites to track engagementSitecore’s FXM is a module crafted to track visitor interactions and generate analytics information on external, non-Sitecore websites with Sitecore. You can also implement rules that include non-Sitecore sites in engagement plans, as well as track traffic from external websites in Experience Analytics.

Prospect profiles in SitecoreIn Sitecore, a Contact is somebody that uses one or more devices to interact with an organization’s website(s). The Contact is a container that stores information about the behavior of potential customers from the devices they use.

In the Sitecore Experience Platform (XP), starting out from an anonymous visitor to your website, Contacts can be used to visualize a potential customer's portrait.

The Experience PThe Experience Profile lets you monitor the behavior of Contacts that have engaged with your website or other digital touchpoints. You can identify current as well as future customers from their very first point of contact, even if they haven't provided their initials.

Sitecore enables marketing and your sales teams to monitor the key areas of customer experience and interaction, such as visits, campaigns, goals, profiles, automation, outcomes and keywords. For instance, for each contact, you can see at a glance, the triggered objectives, as well as engagement value a prospect has accumulated on your website.

The home The home page of the Experience Profile is a dashboard that lets you find specific contacts. If your website has been running for some time, you may have to peek into contacts for which using the Experience Profile to fetch details of all their interactions and experiences with your website and other touchpoints will be an intelligent step.

FinallFinally, in terms of ease of operations, Sitecore’s Experience Profile dashboard also provides a timeline and multiple tabs that display a summary of key experience analytics data for an individual contact. Not just that, across the top of the Experience Profile, a timeline also displays the Experience Marketing events and activities that a Contact has had with on organization’s website.

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Considering an upgrade to Sitecore 8.1?Here are some proven best practices

Check the feasibility of Sitecore 8.1 with your projectIt is important to check the feasibility of Sitecore 8.1 with the project at hand. Feasibility is a significant step at the initial stage itself. So, executing this step will provide a clear picture of the potential benefits and/or risks of the upgrade.

Feasibility check includes an understanding of details, such as:How many third party assemblies were used in the previous version?Which and how many featuWhich and how many features will Sitecore 8.1 enable?

An example of feasibility check is – the project may need integration of Sitecore Engagement Analytics. Now, this will need to be implemented if Sitecore 7.x is being used. However, in Sitecore 8.1, this is an inbuilt feature that provides the same functionality that media and video players provide. But, the difference between the two scenarios is that to implement the same requirement, little customization might need to be done in Sitecore 8.1.

Review the previous versionIf you are planning to upgrade your current version, the first and foremost thing to be considered should be a review of the previous version. The review will give you an insight on what needs to be done to get the Sitecore updated. The review also helps to plan out what is necessarily needed in the process of upgrading to version 8.1. It also ensures that the selected solution is optimized for the latest release. Also, the review helps Sitecore customers to get a good handle of the overall cost and time required for the upgrade.

Migration of media files to Sitecore 8.1This is a key step in which we have to create variant packages of images and files uploaded on older versions of Sitecore and then deploy these on Sitecore 8.1. This enables us to find documents and images easily in Sitecore 8.1.

Upgrade the framework – Layouts and Sub-LayoutsA mandatory step for moving to Sitecore 8.1 is upgrading of the framework files. So, it is beneficial to check your .NET version and upgrade it to the latest one which is .NET 4.5. You also need to review previous layouts, sub -layouts and put them into the latest framework according to the project requirements.

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Revisit template designsYYou need to review the old templates and try to optimize the template fields in order to aid better performance, stability and reusability. Template designs, if generalized, are easy to use once we understand the requirements of the fields in different templates. After creating templates, we have to assign layouts and sub layouts to templates as per the project requirements. And if you want to use template designs from your old Sitecore version, then you have to create packages from the old version and deploy these on Sitecore 8.1.

Create Sitecore itemsThis is a critical sThis is a critical step in the upgrade process. You can create packages from the old versions if you require the same content structure as your old version has. Further, you can create Import Data Utility Page for bulk upload of content from CSV or XLS files such as content related to product data. Using this utility, you can insert multiple records into the new Sitecore version. You can also create the utility for versioning in different languages. For instance, if we create all content items in English (US) version and further want to copy this content in other languages, the utility will copy this entire content from English to Other Language within Sitecore.

Backup Backup your websiteYou should always take complete backup of your existing website on the older Sitecore version. You should also take a complete backup of all the files that exist under your existing Sitecore instance. Apart from this, you should also backup your databases such as Core, Master and Web.



Easiest path to upgrade from Sitecore 7.x to 8.1Make your upgrade process friction - free and a breeze!

Install the upgrade packageTo install the upgrade package and update your website from Sitecore 7.x to 8.1, you must use the Update Installation Wizard.

Warnings and CollisionsThe following warnings and collisions are expected so they can be ignored:

Field has been modified

VVersion has been modified

Item already exists

Item has been modified

Item has been moved

Item to be deleted is in use

Item not found

Update Solr assembliesIf If you are using the Solr search provider, you must upgrade the corresponding assemblies. Use the Solr support package and extract the assemblies into the bin folder of the website.

Update configuration filesAfter the update package has been installed, you must update your configuration files.

Install PhantomJSYou must install the PhantomJS tool that is required by the Generate Screenshots Functionality used for personalization and content testing features in Sitecore XP 8.1.

Rebuild Search indeRebuild Search indexes and the link databaseIn order to complete the upgrade process, you must rebuild the Search indexes. Rebuild all the Content Search indexes and the Search indexes for the Quick Search Index for the Master and Core databases (if you have them). Also, rebuild the link database for the Master and Core databases.

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Update dataIf you have installed the Social Connected module and created some custom social campaigns, in the Channel fields for each campaign, enter the following values:

In Facebook campaigns – Channel/Online/Social Community/Facebook social community

In Twitter campaigns – Channel/Online/Social Community/Twitter social community

In Google+ campaigns – Channel/Online/Social Community/Google Plus social community

In LinIn LinkedIn campaigns – Channel/Online/Social Community/LinkedIn social community

In Social Marketer campaigns – Channel/Online/Social Community/Other social community

Once you have done this, publish the modified campaigns.

Redeploy marketing dataDownload the RedeployMarketingData file. Do ensure that Sitecore analytics is enabled. Copy the RedeployMarketingData.aspx file to the admin folder. Redeploy Segments and Redeploy Maps.

Upgrade multiple instancesRRepeat all the steps described in this section for every Sitecore instance that you want to upgrade.



How to plan for an upgrade and mitigate risksA roadmap and structured approach will always save time and costs!

Here are a few key steps:

Firstly, create a spreadsheet or some tabular way to track versions. Next, create some dummy folders on your file system for each version of the site. Yes, this sounds tedious, but, you want to maintain integrity of the site from start to finish, and having separate incremental jump versions will help you with thorough QA and in the event of any disaster.

Now that Now that you have empty site roots, create new websites in Internet Information Server (IIS), one for each version. Again, this probably sounds tedious, but it will really help in the long run in identifying problems areas and overall QA. In your spreadsheet, for each version you listed, list the respective www root folder, and the hostname in IIS.

Also, you should have been saving or bookmarking the various Sitecore download pages for each version along the way. Put in the links for these versions in your spreadsheet for fast access to exactly what you’re working on.

While While we’re keeping track of everything, go ahead and list out the database for each site as well. Many Sitecore upgrades cause database changes, so it’s best to have unique sets. First, plan out the names using a version naming convention to keep the groups together.

Upgrade in segmentsIt is always preferable to upgrade in segments. Divide your upgrade into logical segments and then start the upgrade process from one version to the next.

Determine your version jump pointsIn order to know how you’re going to do your upgrade, you need to determine your current version and your target version. Sitecore upgrades from version-to-version often allow you to upgrade from each major release to the next, but not skip major releases. For this reason, you need to map out your plan.

Prepare everything upfrontYYou should prepare everything you can upfront. Seasoned developers know that it takes a lot of upfront planning and discovery before actual development can occur in a project. This can help plan out tasks and break the larger process into smaller, manageable chunks. This is true also with the upgrade process. Each version jump is a pivotal milestone in the process, so it is good practice to prepare everything upfront.

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Risk mitigation workflow for upgrade



Repeat the patternNow, repeat the upgrade process for the next Sitecore version. Copy the site root from this newly upgraded version to the next again. Also, remember to do the database backup again but, the backup should be from the latest databases. Again, the database names should be listed in your spreadsheet. Update the dataFolder and connection strings again and do it all over again. Continue this process until you’ve reached your target version.

QA across jump pointsQA across jump pointsNow that Now that you’ve finished the process of upgrading it’s time to test the site moved to the new version. For every jump site you’ve created, you need to test. You should look at all of your pages for each version you’ve created and ensure everything is consistent across all. Also, test out the Sitecore interface and page editor if you use it. If you find any page that breaks, you can determine which version jump caused this break by having each site under review. There can be a variety of issues that may arise, such as dynamic stylesheets in the rich text editor breaking, so do take advantage of having a site for each version to test.

Planning

Audit

Upgradeinstallation

Updating assembliesand config files

InstallingPhantom JS

Rebuilding Searchindexes and link DB

Redeployingmarketing data

Plan versionupgrade

Audit existingversion setup

Install the upgrade package

Upgrade SOLR assembliesif being used

Update config files

Install the Phantom JS usedby personalization & content testing features

Rebuild all the ContentSearch Indexes for theQuick search

Sitecore 8.1 upgrade process

Upgrade process

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About the Author

Anurag is Sitecore and Ektron/EPiServer CMS certified with 15 years of experience on different CMS platforms.

He has rich experience with marketing platforms such as Salesforce CRM, ExactTarget, Sitefinity, Biztalk, Digipede and mobile apps.

He has been responsible for the overall technology vision, commercial software product development and customer delivery servicing in the global Retail, Travel, Media industries leading all aspects industries leading all aspects of architecture and product development. He has provided architec-tural oversight for development, management and enhancement of enterprise applications. He has worked with development and infrastructure teams to define architectural frameworks.

Anurag Agarwal Sr. VP, Technology

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