Welcome everyone to our webinar. It's a new series that we are trying to educate everyone. It's called it's not Sitecore, it's your implementation. Today's thing is about the five quick wins to unlock Sitecore potential, and it's all based on all the experiences that we've had in the past and continue to have with our Sitecore implementations. My name is Akshay. I've been doing Sitecore for a very, very long time, 17 years and counting, been an MVP several times, as well as take part in a lot of Sitecore and other system implementations. And my name is Kamruz. I'm a 12 time Sitecore in VP. I've been working on Sitecore platforms for 15 years now, just pretty much back on 15 years right now, started at the end of 2009 and, yeah, hopefully you guys know me from around the community. Awesome. So Konabos. So cameras and I are both founders of Konabos. Konabos, we want to say is it got its roots from the community building, community sharing information, always making sure that information isn't siloed, and people share their knowledge and help each other out. You would know that by all of the community efforts that we do, like the Sitecore slack, Sitecore hackathon, all the user groups. And it's also very interesting, because cameras and I came together because of this reason, we've seen implementations, and when we saw the way things were implemented, we weren't really happy with the implementations, because typically customers get sold on the implementation, but then they get the b or the C or the D team, and with lack of knowledge, you can make a lot of mistakes, and your implementation ends up being not So great. So today, since we wanted to talk about, hey, it's easy to blame the technology provider, in this case, Sitecore, for the implementation. 

Let's really talk about what exactly is your implementation? What are the few things that you can quickly do without spending a lot of time which can make your lives easier. All right, cameras jump on this is, yeah, as you say, Okay, these are some of the things that we felt like we seen this forever, since at least we formed kind of awesome before, yeah, which probably go through some very, very quick wins, stuff, which you I want to say, we hope by this stage of these things are obvious, but it's, it's unfortunately not we've seen, we've continued to see this in throughout my career and in the past decade. So the first one is probably the biggest one is the visual editing aspects. And for those of us have been around for a while, you'll remember it was the page editor, and of course, we had the experience editor added on, updated. And this is probably the thing that in this day and age, it's 2024, towards the end of 2024 you would think that visual editing, you know, experience editor, use the experience set editor implementation would just be done by now. Everybody knows it has to be working. It has to be you know, this is how marketers are going to be working when they're going to create campaign pages. You need campaign pages, especially with things like dynamic placeholders. I don't even know how you use those without using the experience editor, but they just see some of the implementations where it either doesn't work or, like this example here, where they go into the experience editor, and the editing experience looks very different than what the end result is. And sometimes there are very good reasons for it being like that, because maybe you have a carousel component or a recording component, and you need to deal with that differently in the experience, etc. But sometimes there also isn't. It's just not thought out well, and it's just implemented, not Well, right? It's implemented badly, yeah. And the thing about the experience editor, and again, I've said this before, the site, core experience editor is one of my favorites, but it's also quite a bit. It gets heavier as you customize it more, right? You can the best part about this is you can customize the experience editor to the nth degree, custom buttons, make it do 100 different things. But is it really necessary for you to be able to edit every single thing from the experience editor? The cameras. I mean, you should be able to get access to it, but it shouldn't necessarily have to be in the like on the actual experience editor, right? And we do have an example of what you should be, you know, how you can work around that, but you certainly shouldn't be presenting your content authors with a confusing interface, right when they go to do their work. I mean, this, this, you know, with great power comes great responsibility, right? So with great flexibility, you also need to think about the content author and what their experience is going to be like when they're going in. So if you're giving them great flexibility, still keep it easy and simple for them. Like, this is a great example where they've been given a lot of flexibility. Like, they can go and create rows and columns and things like that, but then when I go to add a column, add a new component. Like, where do you add? Yeah, exactly. And now I'm just confused, like, am I do I click something? Do I not click something? Where do I click? If I do something, am I going to break something? Right? And that's it. Also, it breaks a content author's confidence, right in using the system? Yeah. 

Yeah, absolutely. And we've all been through our fair share of unknown errors or errors where it doesn't know what you want it to do, just because you know things were not implemented properly, it doesn't know what it's trying to insert, or what you insert needs values that it doesn't have. So just try not to make your content author scared of using the Visual Editor. Because I think one of the things you said cameras is you should absolutely be able to build the pages that you constantly build, like landing pages or whatever that is completely from the visual editor. Give them ability to drag and drop, add all of the content, but not every page, depending on the complexity of the page, needs visual editing. There might be something where you would have to probably switch to a Content Editor, or something like that, to add, like, a repeatable set of items. But yeah, it's interesting how people complicate visual editing? Yeah, yeah. But equally that there may be a lot of pages that just aren't designed. They haven't, haven't been designed to be editable, right? So there is a balance, as you said, between making something experience editable, and the time that it takes to make it for the experience editor. But equally, there may be things where you can still give them the option to edit that those items from the experience editor, and not keep having to switch back and forth between experience editor, Content Editor, experience editor, Content Editor, sometimes you can't get away with it. Like you said, those kind of hierarchical items can be a little bit more tricky, and you can get around it using web edits, buttons and things like that, but it can sometimes add more confusion. But again, just think of the content author and the flow of them doing the work, right? Yeah, for sure. So basically, what you're saying is we have to design with experience editor in mind, make sure that you don't scare, scare your authors. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, like, this is an example of something that we went in and fixed. I mean, it just gave you the original example where there was a there was a boxes all over the place, but this is in the experience editor. Everything here is experience editable from the experience editor. It looks visually much like almost exactly, or at least much more closely, to what the final published page is going to look like. The component is going to look like. And there are some things here where it's difficult to edit these things directly from the experience editor, right? So that, for example, this, there's this background image here with the purple and the blue glove. And it's a little bit tricky to edit that from the experience editors, because of the way the styling works. So if you check out the top right corner, and then obviously the bottom right corner from the other component, we've got a couple of little buttons there. And these are, these are Edit Frame buttons. So the user will click on those. It'll pop up another window with the fields for the background image, the YouTube video, in this particular case, just to again, just to keep that simple in terms of way we're editing it. And there may be a few other things around, like, you know, adult. Theme versus the light theme, or, you know, different color styles and things like that. So it's, it's a visual looks great in the experience editor, and you still have access to the fields that you need, and you're not having to switch back to the content editor to make those edits, right? So it keeps everything within the same interface, within the same flow of the work. Yeah, for sure. 

So that's vision. Funny, funny quote, but it's absolutely true. I think I spend an enormous amount of time picking icons, for sure, because nothing feels like it's right there, like you could spend a lot of time picking icons, but as you said, this is actually funny. Yeah, two hardest things are naming things and picking icons. And I don't think anyone who's worked with Sitecorewill disagree with you. Yeah. So again, this, this is, I think, some fairly obvious ones if you've worked on any cycle project for long enough, you'll know the pain of this one, right? You'll come to a content tree. It starts off quite small, and it's fine, you know, the icons don't really matter. But as your content authors go in and start to add more content, you start to build out the pages just navigating that, just navigating that, that content tree becomes very, very tricky, right? So those visual icons, those visual representations, really, really do make a big difference. I'm a very visual person when I'm when I when I got into web development. Part of the reason was because I was able to work with HTML and CSS, JavaScript at the time, and the fruits of my labor, so to speak, were immediately visible, right? I can go and I can see the changes that I'm making. I like those visual changes, but just something as small as just changing those icons just makes navigating that content structure so much easier, so much more quicker. You're not having to squint your eyes looking for that particular item and make a mistake as well, because it's very easy to pick the wrong item and start editing the wrong thing, right? And editors get used to it, like subliminally. I think once you start working with content every day, you know the kind of icon everything, because the text gets lost, like so much text, but the icons definitely make, make a huge difference. It's like muscle memory, right? Like, when you, when you're when you're driving a car, you just get in the car and you start driving, and you're not constantly thinking about every single little thing. So again, like, if you, if you design these systems in a in a way that gives them signposts, give them guideposts, it makes it much, much easier. Yeah. Man. Also things like thumbnails, like you might end up having so many components. What, depending on where you're trying to insert the components. How does it look like the name alone wouldn't, wouldn't really do that big of a impact as a thumbnail would so help your editor or author out a little bit by just kind of showing a thumbnail up. Here's the kind of component that you're inserting, and I think that makes a huge difference in the day to day life of the author. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. 

Trying to find, yeah, it's just, it's just a night and day difference. Yeah, yeah, agree with you. All right. Number three, insert options. This is an interesting one. So insert options are super duper important, because if you throw if you don't set anything, you're gonna get the list of all the ones that you've used in the past. And this also goes into things like branch templates and things right so like, if you are at the right spot, you're on a specific item where only news items can go and you want to insert, all you want to see is the things which are specific to that item you don't want to add. I don't know a blog where the news is supposed to go, so the insert options are very, very important to control where content goes, where people can do what they need to do, and make it easier for them, and not just give them run of the mill of whatever they want to insert wherever they want. Yeah, it helps guide their brand, okay? And it helps keep things on brand. It helps keeps things on target, yeah? And stops confusion. You don't, you don't want to have to have people, yeah, I've seen the ones where they have nothing set and then they're kind of, you go into. Set for template and go through every single thing and yep, set them up for success. And then you can do the Inc, Sorry, go on cameras. Yeah, exactly. You can do it best to jump in. Use the rules engine. This is one of the most powerful features, one of the one of the many powerful features in Sitecore, right where the insert options can the rules and gene can control the Inc options. It's really, really great, because you can even do nesting right so you can say if it's a first child, if it's a third child, then show a different set of options. Again, it just helps restrict and guide for sure. Also comes the placeholder settings, which are really, really important, because you need to know which placeholder can hold which renderings. So it's all about the way I look. I know it's seems like it's more of control. Yes, it is control, but it's also making things seamless and easier for the person entering the content, so for the content others to be able to create the right content at the right place and have the right options. These are the things that you need to do so that they can be consistent, they can be quick. So when they are trying to place a rendering in a specific placeholder, just having the right options makes the world a difference. And it really isn't that hard to do this. 

These are all a few minutes here, a few minutes there, depending on the different placeholders that you have who number four, content modeling. This is the new term that everybody is using, right? This actually had me a little bit confused when we first started working with headless systems and they kept talking about content modeling, and it's like, oh my god, what is this content modeling? And yeah, we've been, we've been doing this forever in the site Cool World. It's just setting up your templates. But setting up your templates in the correct way for your content authors is actually very, very important in letting them do their jobs efficiently and quickly. And I've fallen foul to this myself in the past where I would set something up, and I would set up the templates to be in a way that is extremely component driven and extremely flexible. And I think from a development perspective, I think, Oh, this is great. You know, this is super flexible for the content authors. They can go in, they can add it, they can remove it, they can do this and do that. And then the content authors will go in and say, this is taking us forever, like, let's start it's not how I this is not how I work. This is not how I do things. And sometimes templates are designed purely for component based designs, and we'll add those into a little data folder. For example, you add the component, you add the data source, it'll create the data source. And in order to create a single page, we end up with several pieces of data source items, and it makes it very difficult for the content authors to actually create that page, especially in the content editor, right? Yeah, so sometimes actually going back and just consolidating things into a single template is the right thing to do, right like, I might have a blog article and I just want to go in, create a new blog item, put everything in by the content editor, fill in the content. It may be a product, one I've seen that a lot with products, for example, where just won't go in Content Editor. Fastest way of putting that content, product data into the to the system. I want to save and publish an open when we done. I don't want to, I don't need to go in. I don't need to add in new components. I don't need to, you know, move components around. I don't need to visually edit that page. I just want to add some content and move on. So, yeah, it's say it's a difficult one, because you want, sometimes you want flexible, a lot of flexibility, and sometimes you don't want a lot of flexibility. So it's a little bit of a little bit of an art. 

I think you've seen this as well a lot, right? Actually? Yeah, it's about finding what works in each of the cases, right? With not just with the content authors, but whichever other stuff you're running, like personalization, or you want to experiment a little bit, or what works your systems are online and offline, especially when you're dealing with product data and stuff. So you got to. Be a little bit careful for sure. Cool, one of my favorites, this is a workflows, a very underused part, but if it's used properly, it's one of the most powerful things that you could do for content governance and just making sure things don't get to the places they need to get to without being the in the right state. So for instance, workflows are basically a way to say, for this piece of content, I wanted to go to this group, this state first, then this state, if it's approved, do this. If it's denied, do that. For instance, maybe you work for an organization where it needs legal, legal approval. That could be a step in your workflow, where after, like the SEO team signs up, after the content team signs off, it gets a legal review, and they need to sign off before it gets published. Or you have a time sensitive material. You're a public, publicly traded company. A piece of content cannot go live before you know whatever the approval is. These are good ways to control how your content goes through a workflow. Cameras. Do you have anything on? No. So the dicing the site for, of course, is the workflows are super customizable. You can do anything you like with them, and you can have as many workflows as you like. So you can have a different workflow for different types of content, different pieces of content, different pieces of content in different parts of the tree, yeah, for sure. Super powerful, yep, and lots of tools available out of the box. In Sitecore, the white box will give you a list of all of the things in workflow. You can also put to workflow, both from the Content Editor and the experience editor as well, right? Yep. And one of the, I think one of the good things with workflows is typically it forces you to go and set up roles, and you and the user security to restrict the permissions of what people can and can't do, and it typically will. Using roles is obviously a best practice. We know this, but we have seen quite often that people will just be made an admin because they can't do something or whatever it is. And then when you're an admin, it completely bypasses workflows, right? So, yeah, typically, when workflows are in place, it forces people to set up roles and security, which is a very good thing. So set up the workflows, get some content governance in. You won't then be accidentally publishing things on, on approved yet. That's the other thing that happens a lot. Well, somebody goes to publish the home page, for example, and they accidentally keep that, you know, also publish the sub items, check box on, and then, oh, no, everything's got published. 

I wasn't, I wasn't quite finished with that. Those edits I was making on that page. Well, if it was on workflow and you hadn't approved it, that change would become modified, yeah. Like, for sure, like just being able to add all the content authors to one role, and all the content approvers to another role, SEO team to another role, for instance, just in a hypothetical, the content authors would build the page or a piece of content, send it to the next state of the workflow. Content editors will pick it up, approve or deny. If they approve, maybe it'll go to the SEO. SEO people will probably make sure the titles, meta titles, everything is right. Maybe goes to legal approval, and then it's in a publishable state where someone else can publish it, or it auto publishes at that time. But it's super useful, and like camera said, don't make everyone an admin role so useful, rather than individual user permissions, just because you can control it at a role level than at an individual level. So hopefully these five are quick and easy. They are not that difficult. Don't need code changes. You could easily do quite a quite a bit of this, just with configuration and doing it on the Sitecore instance itself. Just curious, what are your top five quick ones for the Sitecore environments, we are curious to see. Hopefully we'll come up with a few more ideas that we have for it's really not Sitecore, it's your implementation. So with these changes that you make, hopefully your Sitecore implementations work much better. For you. So Jay, let us know if you have any questions. At this moment, I don't see any questions coming through, so let's go to the next one. Also, yeah, I am super excited about this upcoming webinar next week, Tuesday. Please do join us. It's we're going to be looking at the cycles roadmap for the next 18 months, almost, for XP X and manage cloud. XP xn being the on prem versions that we've all grown to love. We'll be joined by Peter, Peter Kay from cycle, who's the product manager, product owner for forex, PXm, and he did a great talk at symposium. 

So I know a lot of people weren't able to attend, and a lot of people were both symposium itself and Peter's talk, because there's so many great talks going on at the same time, but this was something that I was extremely interested on. And so I think we've been asked a lot by our own customers, and I've been, I've seen it asked a lot in the community, as in, what's happening with XP and XM, and you know, what's the future roadmap from it? So some great info on that. And, yeah, you can, you can at least plan out your own roadmap and your own upgrade part for the next, next short while. Yeah, use this QR code on your screen. It'll take you to the page where you can sign up, and it'll be broadcasted live to both LinkedIn as well as YouTube, and then available. The recording will be available after the webinar. Get in touch with us. We're usually the people other agencies and customers call when they need help with their site, core implementations, when things go wrong, or when we need to jump in. So we are available to help anyone who's in need. We're pretty active on social, so do get in touch. Thank you so much for joining us today for this webinar, and hopefully this was useful, and we'll come up with more topics on the same line, thank you. Applause.