What’s New
Digital Marketing
Personalization per Widget in Pages and Templates
Users can personalize on widget level without having to create new personalized versions of the page or template. This speeds the creation of personalized areas across the web site, and eases the management of updates over time. Personalized widgets in page templates allow the reuse of personalized blocks across multiple pages.
The following widget support personalization: Content block, Image, and Card (new). Custom widgets can be personalized as well.
Personalization for Multiple Segments
Personalization per widget empowers marketers to personalize a page for multiple segments. When a visitor in multiple segments opens a page, she sees all widgets personalized for those segments, and not only for the highest priority segment, as it was before.
In the backend, editors previewing personalized pages can filter by more than one segment to see how a page will display to users in multiple segments.
Multilingual Support for Personalization
On multilingual sites, visitors browsing a language version of a page, will see only the personalized versions for this language.
Card Widget
The Card widget is a collection of content elements, which create a teaser to more detailed information or a conversion goal on a website. It can be used for content summaries, page headers, teasers, and announcements.
Out of the box, the Card widget contains: Heading, Text, Image, and Actions, as these can be easily customized. The content of the widget can be personalized.
Digital Experience Cloud
Personalization Analytics and Reporting
Marketing professionals can measure the results of their Page Personalization campaigns. For each personalized page, they can track how many times it has been visited by each segment, and how that compares with the trend of non-personalized visits of the same page.
Custom Contact Properties
Contact demographics are now configurable. The local administrator can able add, edit or remove the key contact properties which are shown in the contact profile. The same properties are automatically enabled for audience segmentation, both as part of the general contact management functionality and part of the Conversion Tracking segments definition.
Data Connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise
System integrators can connect to local instances of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The templates offered out of the box allow the upload of contacts and their key interactions to the Digital Experience Cloud, and utilize that data for audience segmentation.
Authorized Applications
The new Authorized Applications tab allows users to grant permissions to third-party applications to use all Personalization capabilities of the system. This way, personalization by Persona, Lead Scoring or Predictive Campaigns can easily be done using custom logic, including but not limited to third-party WCM systems, custom web site widgets, or mobile applications.
Lead Scoring Event Triggers
.NET SDK allows system integrators to consume Lead Scoring events directly from the cloud, which enables them to initiate any custom workflow based on those events in a third-party system, such as Email Marketing.
MVC and Front-End Frameworks
(Feather)
Forms on Feather
Support for the Feather UI framework is enabled for Forms. That empowers editors to create forms in MVC mode, which leverage the look and feel of MVC websites. Front-end developers have full control of the markup and validation of form elements, and can easily extend them.
Feather support is added for: Form widget, Form Builder widgets (Textbox, Paragraph text, Checkboxes, Multiple choice, Dropdown list, Section header, Content block, File upload, Captcha), and Form Builder layout grid.
Other improvements in Forms:
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Textbox widget: Added support for setting input types: email, date, etc.
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Re-captcha: Sample is available.
Cloud Support & Deployment
Sitefinity CMS includes improved support for the popular cloud platforms, which allow administrators to benefit from the high flexibility and scalability of deploying to the cloud.
Microsoft Azure Apps Service
Upgrades
Application Status Page
A new status page shows during application startup or upgrade. It is a helpful resource for administrators who want to observe the status of those processes via the interface, and wish to issue a friendly message to the visitors on their sites during site downtimes or restarts. The page displays the current status, and provides a detailed log of all processes, errors and warnings as these occur.
Database Schema Change Log
Updates to the database schema done during upgrades are logged in the UpgradeTrace.log. This adds visibility into the upgrade process, and provides detailed info, which can be used for troubleshooting.
Database Upgrades Improvement
When you connect an older version of Sitefinity project to a newer upgraded database, an exception that downgrade is not allowed is thrown. Administrators can avoid this exception using a new setting. This mode allows for uninterrupted service during upgrades as the current version of Sitefinity still serves site visitors, while the new version upgrades the database in a parallel node.
Performance
Performance Optimization Page
This page provides an overview of common settings that affect website performance. Administrators can use it to view the current state of the system and the overall degree to which the web site has been optimized.
SSL Offloading Support
By using SSL offloading, administrators can transfer the processing of SSL encryption and decryption from the webserver(s) to the load balancer or other device. Secure requests can be encrypted at the load balancer or a reverse proxy, and Sitefinity CMS can support such setup.