Sitecore Upgrade 10.1 - Top 10 New Features To Consider

by Saurabh Sharma | Guest Contributor | DIGITAL MARKETING

Sitecore, a Customer Experience Platform, is always looking to improve itself and be more effective. Learn more about the 10 new features of Sitecore, and what kind of improvements have been made.

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Sitecore is considered to be one of the best content management systems for enterprises that were developed on ASP.NET. It allows web content creators and online sellers maximum control. Therefore, they can monitor different aspects related to website traffic and visibility. Additionally, Sitecore helps them to manage the social integration, engagement, personalization of blog posts, and better management of e-commerce.

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Sitecore, a Customer Experience Platform, is always looking to improve itself and be more effective. The main purpose is to make itself the leader of the DXP space. And to regularly meet the needs of its users, it provides regular updates. This helps in filling the gaps and improves according to the demand of the users.  In this article we are going to learn more about the 10 new features of Sitecore, and what kind of improvements have been made.

Features to consider in the new update
The new upgrades in Sitecore and allows you a seamless digital experience. The main purpose of these updates is to offer tools so that the users can manage the web content easily and effectively. Therefore, let us see the new features that have been added to Sitecore.

• Improved and enhanced launchpad

Sitecore upgrade 10.1 has redesigned the launchpad to provide a better experience to its users. The enhanced layout of the Sitecore provides a new design that segregates the features of the platform into five categories. The five categories are Access Management, Commerce, Control Panel, Content Editing, and Marketing Applications.

This render in the layout will cause a stir among the users that have settled themselves to the previous layout. But, on the positive side, the design looks well-structured and allows the users to easily browse through different sections and features very easily.

• Upgrade Methodology

Sitecore upgrades have always been stated to be complicated and generally leave a grey area that always needs improvement. The new Sitecore 10.1 upgrade has added new methods and also provides notes that will help a user who’s trying to upgrade the platform. This will make the complex upgrading process easier. 

It is stated that a simpler and cost-effective upgrade of the platforms is always appreciated. And the new design that has been implemented, which makes the methodology for upgrading the Sitecore platform easier, is very user-friendly, unlike other upgrade methods.

Both the marketing teams and IT teams that use Sitecore were able to easily upgrade the Sitecore platform with the new methodology.

• Improvements made to Horizon

Since its addition in the Sitecore 9.3 version, Horizon has become one of the most essential features of Sitecore. And with the 10.1 upgrades, it has added several new effective features that will be very helpful for content management. The Sitecore development services are now including features in every release. Horizon is regarded as a potential successor of Experience Editor, due to its easy editing process. The features of Horizon allow the user to easily search for media and content over the website.

It also allows the user to edit several link fields, checklists, drop-down lists, and also number fields. Additionally, you can develop and work upon items affiliated with the data source. The new updates in Horizon allow the users to publish several sub-items that were linked with the parent items.

• Sitecore Forms

The new update to Sitecore has provided more improvement to Sitecore Forms. It was aimed to fill the gaps and allow users to send emails when the form is being submitted. The new update allowed front-end developers to construct arrays of CSS specializations. 

And link it to separate aspects of the form using auto-complete enabled, minimizing the human efforts that were previously required. This encourages improved form style and a much more systematic process, making Sitecore Forms a more appealing alternative for retailers.

• Better Management and Reporting

Sitecore 10.1 enables enterprises to gain more access to information and decreases the possibility of technical problems. Several additions have been made to the version so that it provides better management of the web content. Additionally, it looks to provide more and more control through additional features. Let us see some of the features:

• Sitecore xDB requires less demanding hardware to run at its best. This is due to the STD analysis and article management functions having been combined.
• Encryption of data has been improved in the newer Sitecore 10.1 upgrade.
• Presenting a feature that enables users to clean existing data and insights and eliminate data sources that you no longer require, therefore providing extra storage space.
  
• Improving the Development process
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Sitecore has paid close attention to developers' demands in recent editions, including functionality for the different tools developers have used. New capabilities in the Sitecore CLI in this version include the usage of the Git Commit application package management including the NPM package manager, offering designers additional authority over plug-ins, and enabling packaged objects from NPM or NuGet to be imported.

• The flexibility of HTML caching

HTML caching has been enhanced in the new 10.1 updates of Sitecore. The main motive is to make HTML flexible which requires improvement. The admins can now control the caching policies more effectively, and take over certain processes of clearing cached from the component level. In previous updates, it provided a similar policy for the entire website.

Therefore, the caching of the entire page was neglected and interfered with. However, the new update allows users to control the cached flow of every page differently. Therefore, you can optimize every blog and web content, and manage it more effectively.

• Alterations to e-Commerce

The new improvements in Sitecore bring a quick directory that helps in storing data, and efficiently using the cache servers. The 10.1 upgrades brought in Redis which helps support data compression and connection pooling. Sitecore Experience Commerce helps in the reduction of servers that become overwhelmed. It also helps in providing sustained performances that encourage better performance.

A new feature allows Sitecore the ability to transfer entities that are of lesser importance into archives. This enables the teams to keep track of more important catalogs and essential products. And all this can be done without losing access to vital information.

• Better Email Management

The new version of Sitecore 10.1 provides better email management. With a short round of enhancements, EXM receives some TLC. Additional rules to prevent useless email sending retries, improved functionality for messages in languages that aren't officially compatible with Sitecore, and new email layouts will all play an important role in different uses.

• Value Adds to SXA

You may now change designs at the component level and create a framework for several web pages with branches. This latter capability will allow businesses to quickly create engaging microsites by using a template. Other enhancements include the flexibility to edit the SXA sites using Horizon and the possibility to display non-Sitecore elements onto a webpage using HTML.

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Sitecore 10.1 has introduced several versions that will enhance content management over users' websites. With improvements in the Sitecore forms and emailing system, enterprises have easier ways of messaging and management of forms. Additionally, the xDB data can now be directly interlinked to the CRMs which will provide better insights for a single customer. Therefore, many features in the newly upgraded Sitecore 10.1 will help enterprises in a better way.

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About the author:

Saurabh Sharma is a Digital Marketing Executive at Arka Softwares, a leading mobile app & web development company. He has 2 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. He spends his time reading about new trends in Digital Marketing and the latest app development technologies.

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