What's New in Kentico CMS 6 Discover the new website possibilities in Kentico CMS 6 and in Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution

Transcription

1 What's New in Kentico CMS 6 Discover the new website possibilities in Kentico CMS 6 and in Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution 1

2 Introduction Hi, my name is Martin Hejtmanek and I'm CTO at Kentico Software and it's my pleasure to introduce you Kentico CMS 6 and the new product Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution. Version 6 is bigger than any version before and it brings dozens of improvements that will make the life of developers and marketers much easier. One of the things we are most excited about is the Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution, a new product that enhances Kentico CMS with additional enterprise and Customer Experience Management features. The new improvements will allow marketers to achieve much more with their websites running on Kentico EMS. Prepare a large cup of coffee, since this document is more than 100 pages long, and start discovering the new website possibilities we prepared for you in version 6! 2

3 General design improvements New UI skin As you probably noticed, the new version comes with a new skin of the UI. If you are used to the old skin, you will notice significant improvements. It may take several hours to days to get used to it, but once you do, you will see how cool it actually is (if not at the first sight). It will also be easier to implement your own skin so we expect to have more options in future and provide better options for rebranding. 3

4 CMSDesk and Site manager theming is now different for better orientation: Most of the CMSDesk is now using the Ribbon-like menus, including Tools, Administration and E-commerce that now got its own tab. 4

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6 Redesigned CorporateSite starter site Nicer demo starter site showing new features is the key to your success in demoing Kentico to your clients. It shows more options, new development models and in general provides much better experience on demo site. 6

7 Dashboards Ability to use widgets in the admin area (My Desk, Web analytics, Site manager, ) + set of admin widgets. 7

8 Web analytics and Reporting Report web parts + parameters Ability to display just single component of a report through web part or widget and also set report parameters. Much easier than copy-paste the components to a separate report as previously. 8

9 Hierarchical report categories Ability to manage reports into deeper levels for better organization + many more built-in reports. 9

10 Microsoft Chart Controls Web analytics and reporting now use nicer and more flexible MS Chart Controls for displaying charts. 10

11 Web analytics UI changes Better GoogleAnalytics-like UI providing more flexible way of managing the web analytics statistics. It also includes new statistics to see who is coming to your web site and how. 11

12 Online marketing features Whole package for the online marketing activities, features: Campaign and conversion management Better management options A/B and MVT testing Optimizing pages for best conversion rate Contact management Tracking users and their activities Segmentation and Personalization Identify groups of people based on their attributes / behavior and provide them personalized content Lead scoring Identify potentially interesting visitors Marketing package seems small from these few point, but it is so complex that it deserved its own main tab in the CMS Desk UI. You will see for yourselves. Campaign and conversion management Campaigns and conversions were very basic in Kentico CMS 5.5 R2. It was revised and now it provides pretty nice set of features to leverage as a reporting base of the following features. 12

13 Conversions are simpler than campaigns: 13

14 A/B Testing A/B or split testing helps you to determine which variant of the page is better for your marketing. You define the variants, set up the test and conversions that are tracked and after a while see which variant is the best one to serve your needs. First you prepare the test: 14

15 Let users behave based on what they see: <-? -> 15

16 And after some time see the results: 16

17 Multivariate testing While A/B testing provides short set of variants, where every variant may be completely different, MVT is like several A/B tests running together, which makes the output a combination of variants from various components. You basically test several sections at once, the number of output variants is usually high (it can be any possible combination of the components) and get the best result from the resulting reports. First, you prepare the test and variants: 17

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19 Then enable the test (unlike A/B test, you cannot edit the MVT test while running): Let the user behave based on what he sees 19

20 And after some time see the results: 20

21 Contact management Contact management helps you track particular visitors of your web site, and their activities to pinpoint their needs and how you can approach to them to convince them to buy what you need. Other features are built on it. For very simple setups, it can be also used as a very lightweight CRM. Contact is a visitor of your web site: 21

22 Account is basically a company or subsidiary where user belongs: 22

23 Contact group is a dynamic or manual group of contacts that groups them by some specific rule. 23

24 Content personalization Content personalization is configured similar way as Multivariate testing variants, but is driven by the given set of rules. An alternative of the web part must match the condition to be displayed. First matched is provided to the user. 24

25 New variant, applied to all editors (see macro condition): 25

26 Editor view: Anonymous (default) view: 26

27 Lead scoring Lead scoring is similar to grouping, yet different. It is similar difference as between A/B testing and Multivariate testing. Scoring provides points for matching the rules which gives weight rather than yes/no. Based on that, you can pinpoint the most important contacts within the given group, and approach them. The rules divide into two groups: Attribute rule Contact has some specific value of static attribute Activity rule Contact has performed specific activity(ies) 27

28 Newsletter module marketing tools Several new features targeted on monitoring of the newsletters: Open tracking See how many and which subscribers opened the s Click-through tracking See which links in the newsletter were successfully visited Bounced- s Automatic elimination of invalid addresses Double opt-in - Verification of the new subscriber's Together with Online marketing features this makes Kentico CMS 6 the ultimate marketing tool. 28

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30 E-commerce improvements Lot of e-commerce improvements: Shipping calculation based on weight Define how much it will cost you to deliver the goods. Better customization model Overridable providers (not only with e-commerce), see later Site separation Ability to use multitenant e-commerce within single instance New product types Downloadable products, Donations, Paid membership, Bundle Text product options Your customer can tell you what they want through the text options such as writings on their ordered T-shirts. Enhanced set of permissions Shipping calculation based on weight You can specify how much the shipping will cost for particular weight of the products. It is not exactly integration with postal services yet, but enough for some simple scenarios. 30

31 Site separation You are now able to configure for particular objects whether to use global or local (site) storage so both single company and multitenant scenarios are possible. 31

32 New product types Downloadable products, Donations, Paid membership, Bundle. They pretty much describe themselves, so see screens. E-products have attachment(s) within the product, links are provided to the buyer once the order is paid. 32

33 Paid membership utilizes the membership module and its membership groups: Bundle is a grouping of several products into one, which has different price. Storage can be handled hierarchically (remove inner products from inventory) or independently. 33

34 Donation is a special type of product where the buyer says what the price will be: 34

35 Text product options Now you will be able to set product option as a text one, where the buyer will actually be able to say what you should write on their product. 35

36 Enhanced set of permissions More granular E-commerce permissions suit more scenarios. There are also some additional sample roles suitable for typical scenarios. 36

37 Development models and Portal engine Widgets in ASPX No new features on Portal engine side. Just ability to define mixed ASPX + Portal templates and use portal components on ASPX page template. It has never been easier to get full control over the page and combine these two models. 37

38 Portal area is defined by CMSPagePlaceholder: Inline Widgets Replaces current inline controls but with many more options. Provide the same functionality as widgets to be inserted into the text edited via WYSIWYG editor. Unlike inline widgets, these cover also security so only authorized people can insert these components. 38

39 Layout web parts Ability to define the layout of the page through web parts (widgets) that provide set of web part (widget) zones in specific layouts. Design your web site without the need to write any HTML code. Just imagine how you can connect this to CSS for components to gain ultimate reusability 39

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41 Improvements to maps web parts / widgets Support for providing map points based on address (new) or GPS coordinates (current). More options for the map web parts including connecting data from other data sources. 41

42 LinkedIn authentication Similar to Facebook, Live ID and OpenID, version 6 provides integration with LinkedIn authentication through a similar set of web parts as other authentications. More Facebook integration More web parts to cover Facebook integration. They are quite simple and integrate the code snippets that FB provides but still very handy. 42

43 Integration with Google and Bing translator Two handy web parts that provide you with an option to display you page translated by these services. 43

44 Universal viewer component Viewer (similar to repeater) for hierarchical data that can display different document types on different levels with different transformations while maintaining single query call (unlike nested repeaters). Significantly improves performance of the web site if you display hierarchical data with transformations anywhere. Can be used to display detailed content: Or even to render nicely styled menus: Hierarchical transformation is made up of standard transformations: 44

45 Paging in web controls Native support for loading and caching of individual pages in data viewers and data sources (repeaters, datalists, e.g). So far ready in Query data controls, but we would like to include this also in others. In order to work properly the query should contain all macros: ##WHERE##, ##ORDERBY##, ##TOPN##, ##COLUMNS## 45

46 CSS for components + Theme editing Ability to edit theme files in file system for components: CSS Stylesheets, Transformations, Page layouts, Web part containers, Web parts, Web part layouts You can now define the styles directly within components to make them more reusable without the need to cut and paste CSS code from the main site stylesheet. It also includes support of linking these CSSes into each other via macros, such as: {% CSS[ CorporateSite ] %} {% CSS.Containers[ blackbox ] %} 46

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48 Text transformations and layouts New type of transformation and layouts Text, powered by macros (separation of designers from the ability to write any harmful code and elevate permissions). You will have the choice to keep with the old ones or leverage text ones for multitenant scenarios. Transformations 48

49 Layouts 49

50 Direct edit / creation of objects from selectors Ability for designers to create new objects or edit them directly from selectors (without the need to go to Site manager). Less clicking and switching between windows helps saving your time. 50

51 Improved documentation + API examples The documentation was reviewed and improved, and in the new version there are: More API examples in documentation Reviewed web parts and controls documentation API examples UI You can already see some of that if you download the documentation setup and see the API examples within the installation. Link is provided on the sample Corporate site Home page 51

52 Support for web application project type Ability to choose whether the project type is web site or web application with support in upgrades / import / export. It gives you more options in the way how you want to handle your projects. 52

53 Windows Azure support Kentico CMS 5.5 R2 already worked in Azure, but with somewhat limited functionality. Version 6 has full support with real-time instance synchronization, and abstraction over the file system to provide properly scalable storage for your files. Azure project has web role included as well as other required components: 53

54 Unique URLs per culture Ability to use URLs in format: /en-us/home.aspx instead of /Home.aspx?lang=en-us for SEO purposes. With ability to define culture aliases for the URL. 54

55 templates management in CMSDesk Ability to manage templates for particular site by the site administrator from CMSDesk Support for uploading the document type icons from admin UI No need to go to the file system for such simple task 55

56 Inherited document types Ability to inherit fields from one document type to another helps you especially when you manage on-line store and your product document types span from general to specific ones. 56

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58 Support for image watermark Ability to define watermark image for images. Not much configuration, but suites for most typical scenarios. 58

59 Syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting for HTML, ASPX, XML, CSS and SQL code. It is based on the CodeMirror component and provides much better experience in editing of the code everywhere you write it. 59

60 Form controls parameters + new Field editor Ability to define parameters for form controls similar to web parts or widgets, more options in built-in form controls. Ability to customize all form controls (including textboxes, checkboxes). Move your forms to a next level. 60

61 Better CAPTCHA More durable CAPTCHA, central control over the selection of the CAPTCHA control throughout the whole system. 61

62 Support for MVC and Routing With version 6 you are able to leverage ASP.NET Routing and MVC by typing the patterns into the URL of the document. This provides additional development model that you can choose from. The final MVC example will be much nicer than the current: Routing works like wildcards, but is handled by the application code, which is more efficient especially in larger setups: 62

63 Content management improvements Multi-file uploader Silverlight uploader for uploading multiple files or large files in all locations. Much easier to populate your media libraries or document attachments or cancel upload. 63

64 Better image editor Better crop functionality, Undo and Redo in image editor. No need to say more, try it yourselves. 64

65 Custom data for attachments More metadata fields with the attachments, ability to edit metadata with non-image files. 65

66 CK Editor Replacing of current FCKEditor with new and much faster CKEditor. Large step forward in WYSIWYG editing. 66

67 Hiearchical categories Define hierarchy on the document categories, including site separation that provides Global and site categories choice. Taxonomy has never been easier. 67

68 Side by side editing of document language versions Ability to display and edit two language versions of the same document side by side. Helps quite a lot with the localization of your web sites. Both vertical and horizontal split options. 68

69 Hiding documents in content tree based on permissions Ability to hide documents on which the user does not have permission in the admin UI. Much easier to manage large departmental web sites. Andy: vs Admin: Relationship editor form control Encapsulating the functionality of relationship tab into the form control + some more options. Suitable mainly (but not only) for User contributions. 69

70 Informative icons in content tree More informative icons in content tree (optional), mainly for workflow 70

71 Validation tools Support for XHTML, Accessibility validations and link checker built-in in the solution. 71

72 Preview link for users without CMSDesk access Ability to send a person who is not an editor a preview link for particular document. Such person can see the same preview as you even without the need to have permissions to access CMSDesk or being authenticated. No worries, this is highly secured so the person won t see anything else that is supposed to see. 72

73 Multi-day events Ability to define and display events within booking system that run several days as well as All day event 73

74 Filters for Custom tables / BizForms data Ability to filter data in the grid of custom tables / bizforms. You can simply define alternative form for filtering which will appear on top of the list displaying data to provide you more convenient way to manage them. Filter is defined by the Alternative form code named filter 74

75 Separate polls per site Ability to have site-specific Polls which helps you in multitenant scenarios. Permission improvements Ability to preserve/copy permissions on move / copy and better options for breaking / restoring inheritance of permissions. Neat small feature to help you save time. 75

76 Hierarchical settings + Custom settings Better organization of the site settings, more options, and ability to define custom settings. 76

77 Messaging improvements Ability to mark messages as read / unread, and more user-friendly UI. 77

78 Smart search improvements Several improvements of searching engine, providing new features: Custom search indexes You provide the indexing code New types of analyzers General search Ability to index system objects, e.g. E-commerce products Crawler search Search index covers what is seen on the live site 78

79 Full WebDAV support Ability to edit files in external application (e.g. Word) directly from the web site. Supported only in IE and with Windows authentication (technology limitation) In version 6 will be covered of all file locations and also Browse mode to manage your files through windows explorer or similar WebDAV client application. 79

80 Administrative tools Site offline mode Ability to take the site offline for visitors, but keep it online for editors to prepare content or do necessary changes. Unlike the stop of the web site, this one is meant for the real maintenance in progress scenarios. 80

81 Health monitoring Performance counters for the system. You can see what the system is doing and identify potential problems from higher load. 81

82 Improved membership Several new membership features: Global roles Time limited membership (roles) Connected with E-commerce as Paid membership (see below) Report final permissions for particular user 82

83 Membership is basically grouping or roles that you can be assigned with or buy (see later) 83

84 New security features Another set of membership features which helps the solution to be even more secured. Password strength (SHA2, SHA2 + salt) + indicator Password reset via Single sign-on Ability to switch to other sites in CMSDesk without login We have also spent significant amount of time on reviewing and improving the security, so the solution is even more secured. 84

85 Single sign-on in CMSDesk You may now stay logged in if you switch between CMSDesks of different domains with the site selector. API of the single sign-on may be also used by your code. 85

86 More UI personalization More UI elements to control actions of editors (designers in particular) 86

87 Object versioning & recycle bin Versioning for important types of objects (page layouts and templates, document types, CS stylesheets) with the ability to rollback + ability to restore almost any system objects from recycle bin just as the documents. Versioning provides Versions tab for all objects where supported: 87

88 Recycle bin is available for all objects: Global recycle bin for admin: 88

89 General export Ability to export the data from UI grids into CSV/XML/Excel. It is almost done, just several grids that have more complex data loading process do not support it (yet). 89

90 Import toolkit More general and flexible tool to import data to the system. 90

91 System integration bus General point where integration providers can connect to provide synchronization with external systems. Site folder for files in custom location Ensure automatic subfolders for site files if custom location is defined on a global level. 91

92 Export/import scalability Allow export functionality to be performed on very large web sites (5.5 R2 time-outs). Includes paging in pre-selection and optimized process of export/import. Still, for the extra large projects, standard Backup / Restore of DB is recommended. 92

93 Logging of staging tasks in the import process Import process is now able to log the staging tasks so you can synchronize the imported changes to other servers. 93

94 Direct upload of the import package in the import UI Just a small one but helps a lot. Uploading and deleting of the packages was missing in the import UI quite a lot. 94

95 Support for multiple SMTP servers Load balancing of the sent s between several SMTP servers (to eliminate SPAM filters and for performance purposes). Large setups will surely appreciate this. Bidirectional staging Ability to make loops in the staging infrastructure without the drawback of recurring tasks. (staging task remembers which servers it visited). This process is automatic. N/A 95

96 Scheduler service Ability to run scheduled tasks as Windows service. We have a new service manager application, and several services that can take the load off the web application to provide better availability. 96

97 Application for easy hotfixing / upgrading + Installation manager No more manual applying of hotfix / upgrade packages. Application handles the steps automatically and we now have the installation manager that helps you to have control over your projects in case you host more of them. 97

98 Management of stored procedures / views through admin UI UI for managament of those DB objects. Ability to rollback the system ones. No more need to gain access to DB management studio for standard development tasks on DB. 98

99 Silent installation Version 6 is also able to install from a console application without any user interaction. N/A Server availability check Now it is very simple whether the URL of the server you enter is available or not in various locations. N/A 99

100 Core and performance Switch to.net 3.5 as the base platform For the reasons of being able to use and support new libraries and features of.net 3.5, version 6 will no longer support.net 2.0. But it gave us advantage to use.net 3.5 features, drop some hacks that we had to do for backward and forward compatibility, and in general leverage more that.net provides. GetFile Better support for partial requests Support for proper linearized PDF (and other files) loading. It had some issues in 5.5 R2 that couldn t be resolved with a hotfix. Move viewstate to the end of the page Option to have the viewstate at the end of the page for SEO purposes (some crawlers only analyze first X kb of the page) 100

101 Output (full-page) cache substitutions Special types of macros {~something~} that get substituted in the output of the page and are driven by custom function. You can use output cache while having some parts of the page such as logged on user name still dynamic. 101

102 Javascript & CSS compression & minification, Client caching support Automatic minification and support for GZip of CSS and JS. Client caching settings. Missing piece in high performance of the web sites. 102

103 New business layer + support for LINQ Strongly object-oriented business layer, ability to get and query collections of objects rather than untyped DataSets. Current model will still be available as you can see in the API examples, the new one will provide LINQ support and access similar to Entity framework. 103

104 New customization model Two ways of customizing: Programmatically by replacing the provider object or from web.config (both from DDL or from App_Code) Overridable providers Overridable helpers 104

105 More samples: 105

106 New macro engine (K#) Many new features of macros: Macros supporting C# syntax and operators Ability to register custom methods IntelliSense for macros Macro builder (not yet done) Connected to the new business layer (ability to query any data through macros) Backwards compatible Whole new way of approaching to macros will blow your mind off. So many new options built-in and ready to be customized quite heavily. 106

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108 Better localization support Ability to localize object texts without the need of knowing how localization macros work. 108

109 Support for REST/ODATA Retrieving and managing data stored in the CMS repository through REST/ODATA services. 109

110 Support for HTML5 Ability to provide HTML5 video and audio tags for browsers that do not support flash. (e.g. ipad). We will see about the rest, because.net still doesn t have any compatibility pack to get rid of the unwanted attributes so we want to provide something good enough. Revised handlers Reviewed current handlers, introduces new ones. More handlers by-the-book. Easier customization. 110

111 Improved debug Easier debug, more options, new IO debug, debug summary = Easier life and optimizing of your projects. 111

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113 Caching in file system Ability to use file system as a storage for output cache so that if application restarts, it starts serving the pages without delay. It is implemented for output caching, but we are thinking about providing the same for the regular cache in future versions. Revised VirtualPathProvider Earlier versions of Kentico CMS suffer from more recompilations than is actually required, which doesn t prevent the web site to run, but may cause unwanted restart in larger projects. This fact is caused by the VirtualPathProvider component not being documented very well by Microsoft. Together with our partners we spent quite a lot of time on researching this and the result is completely revised VirtualPathProvider working like a charm. No more unwanted recompilations 113

114 Summary And that is it! Now is the time for you to say WOW and get Kentico CMS 6. Please note that I haven t included some very minor things that are just small modifications to keep this document brief. As always, we will appreciate your feedback. Also, if you want to know more, contact us on sales@kentico.com or support@kentico.com. 114