What's New in

Visit our documentation site for more general information and useful how-to guides. For example, check out the section on the entire Upgrades topic: https://documentation.coremedia.com/how-to-guides/upgrades

If you still need any more help or information, please do not hesitate to e-mail us: support@coremedia.com

In general, to migrate to Ingest Service v.2, you have to change the URL from /ingest/v1/ to /ingest/v2/.

While the v.1 API calls still exist in v.2, they have been extended to support UUIDs in a backward compatible way.

New calls have been added for asynchronous repository operations (publish, withdraw). Models are extended with new (read only) attributes. Clients usually discard these when deserializing, otherwise the client side models need to be adapted. Error responses have changed, so you have to adapt your client code accordingly in case it processes the error.

Hence, unless you have programmed something unusual, a change of the URL path is sufficient.

Contact our support should you have any questions or concerns regarding this topic.

Filter Test Page

A filter test page is now available on the documentation site with comprehensive example events to test your filter expressions.

To learn more, visit https://documentation.coremedia.com/coremedia-services/event-hub-service/event-hub-filtertest-page/

You can assign content for each of the a/b tests variants. The rendered content will be automatically calculated when delivered on your website through the Engagement Cloud JavaScript tag integration. Plus, you can easily switch to the Engagement Cloud interfaces to edit the a/b tests setup.

Within the Guide Portal (2), the in-app guides have been grouped into several categories to both ease onboarding and help advanced users find what they need faster. It will also keep you informed about new features and functions, and more!

It is possible to change your consent settings at any time, for example, if you have not enabled the in-app guides initially, and now want to use them, you can simply change your user settings under “Permissions” in your “Preferences”.

NOTE

For the in-app guides to work in Studio, data tracking is needed to ensure that they "appear" at the correct elements. The statistics we gather help us to gain a better understanding of what we can improve. This does not include any personal data or sensitive information.

Below, a brief example of how steps in an in-app guide look like:

You can manually select segments and profiles for previewing, and they will be automatically calculated when the content is delivered on your website through the Engagement Cloud JavaScript tag integration.

Plus, you can easily switch to the Engagement Cloud interfaces.

Engagement Cloud is designed to drive impact and revolutionize how businesses interact with their customers. At its core, Engagement Cloud is focused on converting visitors, a pivotal concept aimed at maximizing the potential of existing traffic on various digital channels, including websites, apps, and landing pages. By refining lead quality and boosting return on investment, Engagement Cloud empowers businesses to transform casual online interactions into valuable business opportunities.

More than just a marketing tool, Engagement Cloud serves as a centralized hub that seamlessly integrates marketing initiatives with customer experience strategies. It operates on the principle of business-driven technology, placing the customer firmly at the center of its operations. Through a combination of automation technology and customer-centric approaches, Engagement Cloud enables businesses to not only meet their marketing objectives but also enhance the overall customer experience.

Furthermore, Engagement Cloud is continuously evolving to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing and consumer behavior. With a focus on driving impact with AI and a human touch, Engagement Cloud remains at the forefront of empowering businesses to stand out with exceptional customer experiences.

In essence, Engagement Cloud is more than just a marketing platform—it's a transformative solution that empowers businesses to create personalized and engaging experiences for their customers, driving long-term success and fostering lasting relationships.

To get all the Engagement Cloud features, add the CoreMedia tag into your CAE (Content Application Engine) or Headless Server pages as follows:

For additional information, please refer to our documentation site at https://documentation.coremedia.com/how-to-guides/engagement-cloud/usingcoremedia-tag/

For the editorial backend application (Studio), a maintenance mode will be activated during the deployment and deactivated afterwards. The Production Deployment Self-Service feature will not be activated immediately after the upgrade, and we will notify each customer individually when their CMCC-Service account is ready.

As we follow an API-first strategy, the feature is not available from the Cloud Manager from the beginning. Deployments in pre-production environments are still available via the Cloud Manager.

A new color scheme that brings more overall contrast to the Content App was introduced:

• Usable UI items and dialogs stand out more noticeably against the background and are easier to find and use.
• The blue look was chosen to transport a calm atmosphere and is directed towards users that spend long hours working with the system.

Overall, the Content App is spacier than before, which feels less cramped. Larger fonts and icons are used to support users in their everyday tasks, and round corners give it a smoother, more soothing look.

In the Library, icons (actions) and actual content items have been brought closer together for more convenience.

A more distinguishable search mode was introduced, the filter sidebar was redesigned, and search slots have been reworked to look and feel the same throughout the Content App.

Finally, a view for larger thumbnails was added to the Library to make it easier to find and work with images.

The Start Workflow dialog was redesigned as well. Besides the new look, it is now resizable vertically as well as horizontally, which should make it a lot easier to consume all the information it holds. Plus, the content list is now the same as in the Workflow App for more orientation.

Finally, Content App animations for several states like empty, loading, or finished have been updated.

The new section has an entry point directly on our Documentation home page:

In addition to general how-to and concept guides, the actual Upgrade Guide for v12 is available in time for the new release.

So far, we have the following topics (see the list below, which includes the links). If you have some feedback and/or if you feel like some important information is missing there, please reach out to the CoreMedia Tech Writing team, we’d be glad to hear your thoughts!

• CoreMedia Release Cycle and LTS Strategy describes the CoreMedia release cycle and the long-term support strategy, and all the changes in that matter. This will be especially interesting for our long-term customers and partners to learn what will change in the future.

• Why You Should Perform an Upgrade is all about the technical and business reasons for upgrading your workspace and provides some additional know-how.

• How to Manage Upgrade Tasks provides you expert knowledge on how to manage the upgrade tasks. All these tasks have been thoroughly tested and proved to be helpful for many partners.

• General Upgrading Tasks describes the general steps to perform when upgrading your workspace. For example, upgrading to the last version of your current version, removing outdated components, and merging the new version of the CoreMedia Blueprint.

• Upgrading with Git describes, in general terms, how you can merge the new version of the CoreMedia Blueprint into your existing workspace.

• Upgrade Guides leads you to all existing upgrade guides, for example, to the latest one: the Upgrade Guide for CMCC 12.2404.

Spring Boot, the Spring framework, and dependent 3rd party libraries are also upgraded to the most recent versions as the previously used Spring Boot version ran out of opensource support and does no longer receive bug- and security-fixes.

These updates contribute to ensuring modern and secure software and the ability to incorporate upcoming bugfixes and security patches.

Spring Framework 6.1 and Spring Boot 3.2 require updating to J2EE 9. This update also affects many third-party dependencies which partly introduce breaking changes. Thus, updating to CMCC12 requires manual migration effort.

Please refer to the CMCC12 Release Notes and our Documentation Portal for details.

Please note, that some of our manuals you find there are not for v12 yet. Release Notes, Link: https://documentation.coremedia.com/cmcc-12/artifacts/2401/release-notes-webhelp/content/Preface.html

Documentation Portal, Link to detailed information about CoreMedia Content Cloud: https://documentation.coremedia.com/reference-materials/

Up to now, there has been an info dialog in case any content could not be associated because it does not exist in the target site yet. This information has been made persistent within a project that provides information on all content that could not be assigned to a created localized campaign because it does not exist in the target language yet.

The creation of a project is optional and can provide a starting point for further content localization. It contains information on date of creation, origin, as well as target site. To-dos are created for each target site, along with a list of missing content to give an overview of what is missing (and where).

This new list contains slots defined by page grid segments of the selected pages. This will make it easier to find relevant slots in a potentially very long list of available slots. If more than one refinement is added, all applicable slots will appear in the top list.

We now provide a more secure way for our customers to manage their credentials for connection to 3rd party services.

Our product already has an encryption service based on Java Keystores, which will be used as a foundation for the solution. In addition, we updated the encryption service and made it Spring based by default. This eases configuration and addition of different encryption service implementations in the future or on project level.

Main Features:

• Secrets in Settings can now be encrypted via Studio.

• Encrypted Strings are stored as Blobs with a dedicated MIME type, and displayed as type “Secret”.

• Secrets cannot be retrieved as plain text in Studio to increase security.

• API for decryption exists and Content Hub and Feedback Hub are decrypted transparently for easy usage with existing adapters.

What is the value of Secure Credentials Storage?

• Sensitive data like passwords or access keys are not visible in plaintext to editorial users and Delivery APIs.

• An additional password management system is not needed, and encrypted data is stored in the content server database.

The end users, who are essentially our customers' customers, have become increasingly discerning and demanding. They now require marketing managers to consider a multitude of factors, including various formats, geographical locations, channels, languages, and many other elements. All these considerations contribute to the growing complexity in meeting these evolving expectations.

To address this challenge, we recognized the need for a powerful and efficient solution. This realization has driven us to set CoreMedia Campaigns to provide a simpler and more effective method for managing campaigns.

Main Features:

• A wizard to create campaigns that help the campaign creator avoid mistakes and errors while setting up the campaigns.

• A calendar view to have a complete overview of the created campaigns and manage them in a simple and effective way.

• Orchestration of localized campaigns reducing complexity when managing campaigns in different languages, across different territories, organized by CMS sites

• The rendition of the content is based on headless delivery that combines the content of the campaigns with the elements from the pages generated by the CoreMedia software.

• A set of APIs that enables communication with CoreMedia repositories, allows campaign managers to access the content to use for their campaigns.

What is the value of Campaigns?

• Effortlessly strategize, develop, and manage multiple marketing campaigns within tight timelines.

• Streamlined onboarding for newcomers, ensuring swift task accomplishment.

• Swift and cost-effective creation of captivating digital experiences, leading to cost savings.

• Expedited deployment of potent, engaging digital experiences adaptable across various digital channels.

• Accelerated delivery of digital experiences and consistent content, amplifying user engagement.

• Seamless integration with CoreMedia Studio.

• Enjoy the convenience of hassle-free operations – no installation, upgrades, or infrastructure management required.

If you are interested in using this cloud-native SaaS application available for CoreMedia Content Cloud - Service, please do not hesitate to contact your account manager or your customer success manager to get more information about it.

Following the best practices for testing will help to reduce the required development time and, in the end, increase the robustness of customized extensions.

Have a look at the CoreMedia Blueprint workspace in “global/examples” and to learn more, read the Blueprint Developer Manual: https://documentation.coremedia.com/cmcc-11/artifacts/2310/webhelp/coremedia-en/content/index.html

Because of these unforeseen significant changes, which have a substantial impact on both our product and the Blueprint workspace, we made the decision to roll out this update as a major version release, currently planned for the beginning of 2024.

In the meantime, in order to continue supporting Java 11 and related libraries and components during the current CoreMedia version 11, we will provide extended documentation.

More details will be published in our Support and Knowledge Base portals - please refer to the links below - in the upcoming days and weeks.

Support: https://support.coremedia.com/

Knowledge Base: https://support.coremedia.com/hc/en-us/sections/200566967-Knowledge-Base

• Support for Session Aware Delivery Applications

With this feature, CMCC-Service customers can use sessions which are shared between the delivery application instances (CAE, Headless Server) so that the session information does not get lost when those instances are restarted.

• Support for Disabling CDN Caching for Sub-Domains

With this feature, it is possible to get CDN caching completely disabled per subdomain. This is independent of the used AEP release.

• Support for WebP Image Format

With the new infrastructure release, new CMCC-Service customers starting with AEP 2307 will be able to use the WebP image format for delivering images. This feature is realized through a new shared service for image transformation only available for CMCC-Service customers. The new image transformation also brings some limitations for the maximum image size to be processed.

Please refer to: https://documentation.coremedia.com/coremedia-services/image-transformation/image-transformation-cloud/

The availability for existing CMCC-Service customers will be announced in the next update.

• Improved Support for Large Content Repositories

With the new infrastructure release, new CMCC-Service customers starting with AEP 2307 will benefit from a more efficient handling of BLOBs in their environments. The BLOBs will be handled by a new shared service which replaces the BLOB data management of the environment’s Content Servers and thus allows more efficient storage and operations.

Since the beginning of spring 2023, the Event Hub is available for Cloud customers. This enables them to reuse content outside their CoreMedia system and keep it up to date with content events without customizing CoreMedia’s specific code. Additionally, content creators can be notified about changes to workflows or other editorial actions outside of Studio.

See below the simple architectural diagram of the Event Hub.

The Event Hub is a multi-tenant service that allows customers and partners to register multiple webhooks and receive the following events:

• Content events (analogous to those of the Unified API) for both the management
• and the live side. This includes not only the creation, modification, and
• deletion of content but also the content live cycle.
• All events around workflows.
• Events for all editorial actions, which are also available as notifications in Studio. This includes comments and direct publications.

The end users, hence the customers of our customers, are becoming more and more demanding, and pickier. This increases the need for marketing managers to consider many formats, geographies, channels, languages, and many more elements, when approaching them, adding up to the complexity to meet their expectations.

To tackle this challenge, one needs the right tool to have a flawless execution. This brought us to our goal for CoreMedia Campaigns: A simpler way to manage campaigns!

With CoreMedia Campaigns, we offer to the market a cloud-native SaaS application, seamlessly integrated with CoreMedia Content Cloud, based on APIs, in which the rendition of the campaigns’ content is based on headless delivery.

This is rapid campaign management, optimized for high performance campaigns, that will help marketers to create tailored experiences, in a simple and intuitive way.

Its task-driven UI will help you orchestrate campaigns across all geographies, in all the languages needed, for all your brands, guaranteeing the most effective delivery among the omnichannel world.

We are close to officially release this new product of CoreMedia and to do so, we would like to invite you to take part of the Open-Beta process and be part of a selected group of customers that will help us prepare it to be at the enterprise level that you all expect from our products. If you are interested in being part of this, please contact your account manager or your customer success manager to get more information about the process and benefits of it.

1: "Create campaign" opens the Campaign App - Campaign Wizard

2: Settings for the campaign - Selecting dates

3: Content assignment on the pages

4: Complete calendar view

To stay up to date with what is happening at Google check the GA4 support page continuously.

Some features have changed or are not supported by Google Analytics 4 anymore and therefore have changed in the CoreMedia integration:

Studio:

• A drilldown URL from specific content to the according analytics report is not available anymore.

Tracking/CAE:

• The metric "unique pageviews" is not available anymore. A custom client-side solution can be implemented but is not provided by the CoreMedia extension. See GA4 documentation.
• The advertising feature plugin is now controlled by configuring Google Signals, either via Google UI or via setting "disableAvertisingFeaturesPlugin". See GA4 documentation.
• Custom tracker names are not supported anymore. If the data should be tracked to multiple properties, this can be configured for the tracking call. See GA4 documentation.

Retrieval/Elastic Worker, Studio: • Reports are only available after 24 hours, see GA4 documentation.

Required update steps:

• A Google Analytics 4 property with read permission for the Google service account.
• The authentication mechanism for data retrieval has changed. A JSON authentication file must be downloaded from the Google service account and configured in the content.
• Property names and values for tracking and retrieval have changed and need to be adapted in the content.

Configuration of custom event properties in the Google Analytics UI. Please consult the CoreMedia Analytics Connectors manual and the Google Analytics 4 documentation for details.

Editors get improved accessibility support and new formatting options and functions to make writing and changing texts much faster:

• Alternative Text for embedded images
• Find & Replace
• Drag & Drop from Content Hub directly into Rich Text
• Inline and block code style
• Auto Formatting

Developers on the other hand can leverage the new Data Processing API for developing custom plugins. Feature flags add the possibility to, for example, enable specific features only for certain groups of users. The first usage of feature flags is the integration of the Source Editing plugin which can show the Rich Text XML for debugging purposes for users of the group Administrators. By the way, these features are also partially included in the latest AMP release of CMCC 11.2210.

The localization of taxonomies has now been solved globally. In the global settings a default language can be defined for all taxonomies as well as a list of additional locales. Studio users - especially global content managers - now have the possibility to manage taxonomies centrally in the tag overview and set the locales for each taxonomy.

For Studio and the delivery (Headless and CAE) mapping strategies have been implemented. In Studio content forms, linked taxonomies are always displayed in the Studio language and, in case of delivery, in the site language. As a fallback, the default language of the taxonomies is always used.

Empty States:

The Workflow App used to show only empty grid panels, but not the empty state that is used in several other components.

Empty states have now been implemented for the overview and the detailed view of workflows that don’t contain content items.

Toasts For Workflows

The Workflow App now also supports toasts in the side panel and the main Workflow App. The message and the usage of the toasts is configurable via the localization plugin of the Workflow Studio API.

Workflow Metadata in the Sidebar

The basic layout of the Workflow App has been changed. The metadata information about the workflow and its tasks and users has been moved into a sidebar on the right, including a preview image from one of the items that are part of the content.

Support NagBar

The Workflow App contains a new nagbar which provides the workflow status and additional actions (if either of these are available).

Moved Cancel and Abort into Menu

The abort and cancel options have been moved into a menu in the footer toolbar.

This is provided via block list configuration for content items and repository folders. Configured content items are no longer accessible directly via GraphQL queries and properties can’t be accessed when added as linked settings to non-blocked content items.

Candidates to be blocked are content items containing, for example, user secrets, or credentials for third party integrations like personalization or tracking services.

Content items and paths can be configured via Headless Server application properties as a comma separated list.

If you would like to learn more about this topic, please refer to the following documentation: https://documentation.coremedia.com/cmcc-11/artifacts/2210/webhelp/deployment-en/content/headlessServerClientProperties.html

The configuration supports full repository paths including content name for excluding single content items. Additionally, wildcards in the form of glob patterns are possible to exclude multiple content objects at once (for example, within a certain directory).

Glob example

caas.graphql.repository-path-exclude-patterns[0]=/A/B/C/D
caas.graphql.repository-path-exclude-patterns[1]=/A/*/C/*
caas.graphql.repository-path-exclude-patterns[2]=/A/B/**
caas.graphql.repository-path-exclude-patterns[3]=/A/**/C/*.

To learn more, see this knowledge base article:

https://support.coremedia.com/hc/en-us/articles/8961142568850-Headless-Server-Protecting-Confidential-Contents

Now, it is ready to be used by editors. It is the new default for new Rich Text editing based on the modern and fully customizable CKEditor 5 frameworks, with lots of plugins designed to boost editorial efficiency.

We were also thinking about developers. The new editor is designed with only little dependencies to CoreMedia Studio to significantly simplify project extensions in the future. You will find an extensive documentation on how to use and customize the new Rich Text Editor in our manuals, its Open-Source GitHub repository (see https://github.com/CoreMedia/ckeditor-plugins/) and in the official documentation from CKSource.

Are you missing a feature or an extension point, or cannot you upgrade your extensions to the new Rich Text Editor yet? The CKEditor 4 is still included in the release, and you can easily switch back by following the steps in the Studio Developer Manual. The new Rich Text Editor still lacks extension points available in older releases. These types of extensions will have to be handled differently in the new editor because of the completely new architecture. We will add more information on this in the following releases.

From now on this section is the place to go for details about CVEs, their impact on your system and workarounds or fixes. The articles focus on vulnerabilities that are rated critical and reported for the latest AEPs and AMPs, leaving aside older CoreMedia versions and false positives.

If you would like to stay informed about this important topic and never miss a new post or comment, please subscribe to the section by clicking the Follow button in the upper right corner.

Reference Manuals are now housed directly on documentation.coremedia.com

We wanted to give our Reference Materials a well-structured home, which include manuals such as the Studio User Guide, the Multi-Site Manual, and many more. Now you can rely on one location to find all manuals for our product versions from CMCC 10 up.

Software Terminology can be somewhat tricky – one term can have various meanings. Some people like to look wording up to learn more and to understand certain words in a specific context.

We will continuously update the glossary.

Where you can find the glossary:

It is now possible to accept and open publication workflows via the Content App Footer. Workflows now are shown in the split view, with the option to take all necessary actions to finish the workflow or to send it back for revision, as in the Workflow App.

Including the GA release of CMCC v11, this is already the fourth iteration of the developer preview. We will continue this release cycle until the CKEditor 5-based Rich Text has proven a solid replacement, thanks to your early feedback.

In this release, we have added the following features to the developer preview (not to be used in production):

• Preview-Driven Editing, Validation Highlighting, and Editorial Comments now also work with CKEditor 5.
• The Symbol Font Mapper Plugin makes sure that symbols copied from Word documents are correctly displayed in the Rich Text.
• The Image Styles Plugin adds the well-known alignment options for embedded media objects.

The developer preview as an opt-in feature for the Studio client is part of the Blueprint workspace. The Open-Source GitHub repository serves as the starting point for the development of custom plugins, with a concise documentation and sandbox environment. To enable the preview, the Studio client must be updated. The Studio developer manual contains instructions on how to do this.

Follow our development by watching our Open-Source GitHub repository (see https://github.com/CoreMedia/ckeditor-plugins/).

The “Discover” entry point leads you to an overview of all the CoreMedia APIs you can use to customize the system to your needs. Each API comes with a short description and a link to all the content resources CoreMedia offers, making it easy to find the appropriate API for your specific task.

The “Discover” section contains articles about basic CoreMedia concepts to give you a smooth introduction into CoreMedia Content Cloud.

In order to enhance CoreMedia’s existing features and products, we intend to utilize this data alongside customer feedback to better understand your needs.

We have partnered with Pendo because of its strong reputation. At CoreMedia, we guarantee that all data shared with Pendo is completely anonymized and follows GDPR compliance guidelines.

Some upcoming benefits of this integration include:

• New feature announcements within Studio

• Access to in-app guides, allowing faster and more effective onboarding for new features

• Ability to provide instant feedback while using CoreMedia

What do you have to do?

Very little! If your company is a CoreMedia Content Cloud - Service subscriber, we’ll ask for your consent via a message within Studio, after the first login of 2207.1 or above. In case you change your mind, you can always go to your account settings and either select or deselect the option for us to use your data.

We would appreciate it if you shared this information with your peers and encourage them to be part of the process, which will help us to continue enabling you to create iconic experiences for your users.

NOTE

We recommend our Community members and subscribers to follow the entire Knowledge Base section https://support.coremedia.com/hc/en-us/sections/200566967-Knowledge-Base

This way, you will receive the latest information about future security alerts and known issues via e-mail.

TIP

If you would like to become a Community member, visit https://www.coremedia.com/support and click on 'Register'.

Our long-standing Adaptive Personalization offering has provided a strong foundation for these efforts. But our customers now require an even more robust and extensible tool that enables them to expand their capabilities beyond the reach of a single dedicated personalization engine. They need to support a wide range of best-of-breed tools and data sources – including advanced AI-driven personalization.

This is the challenge that we have set out to address with our new Personalization Hub. This new Hub expands our existing portfolio of Content, Commerce, Marketing, and Experience Feedback Hubs. It enables customers to leverage the capabilities of leading personalization engines – including DynamicYield and Kibo – and provides an intuitive user interface tailored to a wide range of personalization use cases.

In addition to incorporating all the familiar capabilities of the existing Adaptive Personalization module, the new Personalization Hub provides a comprehensive framework around personalization services, along with the ability to connect to some of the best tools on the market. With CoreMedia Personalization Hub, developers can integrate their online personalization services with just a few lines of configuration.

Key components of the Personalization Hub include:

• CoreMedia Adaptive Personalization - for server-side personalization
• Comprehensive API for client-side integration to personalization engines
• Generic connector for personalization engines

In the future, this Hub will provide a flexible platform allowing customers to quickly enable additional CoreMedia-based services such as personalizing experiences based on weather and geolocation.

The benefits of this new offering include:

• Ability to deliver hyper-personalized experiences leading to higher consumer engagement and higher conversion rates
• Contains all existing capabilities of CoreMedia Advanced Personalization
• API first, configuration-only for certain services, requiring less development resources and faster time to market
• Prefabricated CoreMedia Labs connectors available for services that cannot be integrated via the API, which help keep implementation costs low

In CoreMedia Content Cloud 11.2110.1, we have simplified this situation by removing deprecated code and reducing the overall complexity, making the API easier to understand and use. It also enabled the implementation of changes that were not previously practical due to backwards compatibility issues.

The changes in this release include:

• Removal of legacy support for HCL Commerce
• Streamlined configuration
• New Commerce Hub API and default Commerce Adapter implementation for HCL Commerce, SAP Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and commercetools.

For out-of-the-box commerce adapters, changes will be automatically applied, and customers only need to ensure that they are using the appropriate v2 adapters when running CoreMedia Content Cloud v11.2110.1. For custom commerce adapters or customized standard adapters, migration of custom code is required. Details can be found in the Upgrade Guide.

This new, easier to understand API, ensures smoother commerce adapter implementations and easier commerce configuration for every commerce project. Reduced complexity makes the implementation of new product features super easy.

This enables us to support currently up-to-date versions but also prepares us for future versions. Dropping support for older versions frees up development capacity for new commerce APIs and to faster respond to new market demands.

Specific changes include:

• SFCC Connector: Support newer OCAPI version and more usage of Shop API instead of Data API
• SAP Commerce Cloud Connector: SAP CC 2105 support
• HCL Commerce Connector: focusing on v9 and v9.1
• Support for older versions upon request

To facilitate new feature releases for Blueprint, we split the source code distribution for the Content Hub adapters for RSS and YouTube, as well as the Feedback Hub adapter for Imagga, into separate repositories on GitHub. This allows us to bundle them into the application as plugins, reducing the amount of source code, and facilitating independent and faster releases of these, and future, adapters.

CoreMedia Content Cloud v11.2110.1 contains CMD Line tools to simplify the bundling of public plugin releases.

In addition, we are providing three open-source GitHub repositories that host the plugin releases and their source code:

• https://github.com/CoreMedia/content-hub-adapter-youtube
• https://github.com/CoreMedia/content-hub-adapter-rss
• https://github.com/CoreMedia/feedback-hub-adapter-imagga

These changes help to provide a clean separation between product workspace and adaptor extensions reduces maintenance costs and streamlines future upgrade processes.

To address the needs of larger teams and overcome the limitations of the Control Room interface, we introduced a new stand-alone Workflow App. It provides an optimized user interface to help editors deal with any workflow-related tasks. It also features a guided, wizard-like interaction pattern that will give users more direct assistance and make it easier for them to identify and select the desired action.

The Workflow App is based on a new design and UX framework called Studio Applications, which will be the foundation for all upcoming CoreMedia Studio extensions.

Finally, CoreMedia Content Cloud v11.2110.1 introduces a well-defined and streamlined declarative extension API for publication and localization workflows, which is ExtJS independent. This API allows for extensions and customizations in the newly introduced Workflow App as well as in the existing Control Room. For compatibility reasons, CoreMedia Content Cloud v10 Control Room extension points will still work with the new release. Customers have the option of upgrading their customizations to this new API. However, they are not required to.

New UX and design concepts in this release include:

• Introduction of an expanded UX concept into CoreMedia Studio called Studio Applications that provides dedicated spaces for goal-oriented and human-centered solutions. This new, “appified" version of CoreMedia Studio will become the foundation for all future development of the CoreMedia user interface.
• A new Studio Design System, which introduces a more colorful and easier-to-read appearance with bigger fonts and icons, while still offering a clear and effective user interface
• A more intuitive UX environment based on familiar design patterns that enables even casual users to be productive without extensive editorial training

New functionality in the release includes:

• A new Workflow Application based on these new design principles that operates independently of the Control Room and provides the necessary screen estate to optimize the user experience
• A range of UX improvements including improved handling of large numbers of workflows, making the transition and states of workflows more transparent across teams, and an enhanced environment for editing and previewing workflow content

With the introduction of the new CoreMedia Studio applications framework, the UI component that was previously called CoreMedia Studio has now been renamed the Content Application and will operate as one of multiple applications under the expanded CoreMedia Studio applications framework. It will still contain all the features that CoreMedia customers are familiar with. While our chief priority will be the introduction of new App functionality based on these new design and UX principles, we will also focus on gradually transforming our existing functionality into the new application concept.

All running and finished workflows now reside within the new Workflow App, which opens automatically whenever a workflow is opened or initiated. Workflows must still be initiated from within the existing CoreMedia Studio interface because it provides the strongest capabilities for working with and structuring content. Navigation between CoreMedia Studio and the new Workflow app happens via specific elements from within the app, such as the newly introduced general navigation burger menu, or by simply switching browser tabs.

The following screenshots provide a preview of the look and functionality of the new Workflow App – which will provide the template for all future CoreMedia Studio applications:

Figure 1: Workflow overview list

Figure 2: Workflow detail view

Figure 3: Next step dialog

Figure 4: Localization

To support this requirement, CoreMedia Content Cloud now allows editors to see aborted and escalated workflow as finished workflows in the new Workflow App. In addition, developers can now use the underlying Workflow Server hook to implement new kinds of workflow actions, such as like automatic rollback.

This feature includes updated workflow definitions and new APIs in the Workflow server. To enable this feature, custom workflow definitions must be updated and uploaded.

The following screenshot illustrates how this looks to an editorial user:

Figure 5: Aborted Workflows List

The benefits of this enhancement include:

• It helps editors to correct accidental changes and prevent content errors
• The underlying workflow action enables new use cases like automatic rollback, even in the case of unexpected workflow escalations

In previous versions of CoreMedia Content Cloud, toast notifications were designed to pop up differently within various Studio environments. Starting with v11.2110.1, however, toast notifications are now displayed under a standardized design in the lower-left corner of the Studio.

The color and the icon of the toast vary depending on the category of the notification: success, warning, failure, or info. Toasts disappear after a few seconds or can be clicked away by the user.

Additionally, users are notified about longer running jobs that have been triggered by users or the system. Those notifications are displayed in the upper right corner of the Studio and help users to keep track of the background processes. All these notifications are black, and their icons vary depending on the nature of the job that has been finished. As is the case with the toasts that appear in the lower left of the Studio, these notifications disappear after several seconds or can be clicked away by the user. Additionally, it is possible to hide notifications of a certain type permanently.

We also provide a new API to enable customers to define their toast notifications.

The following screenshots provide a preview of the two new types of notifications:

Figure 6: Lower left toast notifications

Figure 7: Upper right running jobs notifications

This new site selector has been divided into three tabs:

• Recent: a list of the last seven sites that have been selected
• Current: displays the name of the currently selected site, but also provides access to the full site tree
• Other Sites: This tab provides access to the site trees of all other sites

Studio users can change the view mode of the site tree for the currently selected site, as well as all other sites. By default, the tree is grouped by language, but can be switched into relationship mode.

The following screenshots show how the new site selector will appear to Studio users:

Figure 8: Current site view

Figure 9: Other Sites view in relationship mode

Figure 10: Other Sites view in language mode

Login Screen

The login screen of CoreMedia Studio has been redesigned to improve the emotional first impression and optimize the login interaction flow.

The new login screen will greet Studio users with a completely new design featuring an attractive animated illustration on the left-hand side.

The login screen is the very first touchpoint the user is presented with when they launch CoreMedia Studio. As confirmed by many studies, the first and the last impression leave the strongest impact on a user’s experience. We hope that the appealing animation and an interaction design that lets users login as easily as possible will trigger a positive emotional response and improve their overall editorial experience.

In addition, the improved user interaction of the login dialog allows each company to define Its most used authorization mechanism. This allows us to move the domain selector to a less prominent position within the interface, turning it into a feature that only administrators and technical users need to worry about.

Figure 11: New CoreMedia Studio Login Screen

Studio Header

The new CoreMedia Studio header bar has an updated and modern look and feel. We have also optimized the structure of items, dropdowns and buttons based on user feedback and current design trends.

On the left-hand side, the header provides access to the new Burger Menu and other application specific menus including the “Favorite” and the “Create” menu. On the right-hand side, the user can access the library, control room or dashboard. It also features the notification and running jobs areas. The new and improved site chooser can also be found here.

New General Navigation Menu

The new general navigation menu (see Figure 5) enables Studio users to reach all areas across all applications in CoreMedia Studio, providing a safe and consistent means for navigation.

This “burger menu” style navigational element displays both individual Studio apps and relevant sub-areas of the apps to enable swift and efficient navigation. This structure provides users with a good overview of features in the studio and makes it easy for them to find their way around at any time.

Figure 12: New general navigation menu (burger menu)

Color Refresh

Our qualitative research indicates that user interfaces in predominately grey tones feel out-of-date. Some users even report that it can be depressing to look at a grey visual environment for an entire workday. Most would prefer a more colorful and modern design. The color gray had a particularly strong negative impact on test users.

Based on this feedback and to support our goal of providing a smoother transition between the Content Application and the new Workflow Application, we decided to give the Content Application a refresh with new colors.

A main objective was to minimize the use of grey tones throughout. We replaced the light grey in the doc form backgrounds with a fresh light turquoise blue, which makes CoreMedia Studio look fresher. The dark grey toolbars will be replaced by a dark laguna blue, which can also be found in the gradient of the Workflow Application background. This creates a harmonious color combination and a smoother transition between apps.

Both colors have a pleasant color temperature which contributes to a stress-reducing and stimulating effect. The selected colors provide a good contrast what is very important for accessibility.

With these new colors, we can also influence the visual flow of users. The colors provide a clear indication of relevant areas without causing the user to feel tired or bored.

Illustrations & Animations

Starting with CoreMedia Content Cloud v11.2110.1 we are introducing animated illustrations into CoreMedia Studio with the intention of turning waiting times into small positive breaks for users. We are also introducing colorful illustrations to trigger positive emotional responses that we hope will lead to an enhanced user experience.

Illustrations and animations are very important motivational tools for user interfaces. If users get frustrated or bored, they won’t like using the software. By including a range of motivational illustrations and animations in CoreMedia Studio we can reach out to users in a more positive way.

An animation can be more than just a simple spinner or a loading bar. It can be something the users enjoy watching. Illustrations and animations can also influence how the software is perceived. Getting emotional feedback on completed tasks, or as a visual comment on what has just happened, gives the impression of a personalized tool with a character of its own. It helps to make the user feel satisfied and understood, which leads to greater productivity and efficiency.

ActionScript is based on ECMAScript 3, which has made very little progress since 2011, when it was donated to Apache. FlashPlayer is at end-of-life, so most browsers no longer support it. In addition, Apache's effort to create their own compiler to JavaScript (Apache Royale) has not been entirely successful. Based on these factors, it made sense to make the transition to TypeScript.

As part of this migration, we have made the following changes to CoreMedia Studio:

• Studio client is now implemented in TypeScript instead of ActionScript/MXML
• Studio client is now built with (p)npm instead of Maven
• Resulting compiled JavaScript and Docker image are very similar to the former artifacts

The transition to this new technology has been designed to be as painless as possible. CoreMedia has provided a tool to automatically convert custom Blueprint workspaces from ActionScript/MXML/properties/Maven to TypeScript/pnpm, so that it can be successfully built and run immediately after conversion. In addition, CoreMedia has provided npm-based tooling to build the new workspace and start the Studio client.

Studio client developers can convert their CoreMedia Content Cloud v10.2107 Studio client to TypeScript completely automatically, and, as a checkpoint, run it with their existing 2107 system. They can then move on to v11 as usual, by merging-in CoreMedia's v11 Blueprint workspace. This process is described in detail in the v11 Upgrade Guide.

Though based on different technologies, the new CoreMedia Studio client workspace supports the full set of developer use cases as before: building, running unit tests, starting the Studio client, “watching” for code changes, packaging plugins, enabling/disabling extensions, and much more.

We believe that this migration will provide customers with significant benefits including:

• Provides a modern, superior developer experience. TypeScript is a very popular programming language with an active developer community. TypeScript is in the 2021 top ten of the worldwide PYPL PopularitY of Programming Language Index. There are many experienced developers that will be able to provide support with developing future Studio client extensions.
• Enables reduced investment in Studio client customizations and provides a perfect starting point for TypeScript/npm Studio client development.
• Using TypeScript leads to an extended range of available IDEs. JetBrains IDEA Ultimate, JetBrains WebStorm and Microsoft Visual Studio Code have all been tested. Any other TypeScript IDE should work as well.
• TypeScript provides a modern approach to static typing that is superior to ActionScript.
• npm is JavaScript's de-facto standard for package and dependency management. pnpm is a new, popular, very efficient, and convenient tool to build a npm workspace.
• Provides the ability to use modern, standard test frameworks like Jest for Studio client code.

The previous CKEditor 4 framework will remain available, however, and will receive bugfixes until the next major release, for customers who prefer to keep their version with its custom extension for now.

Since the CoreMedia CKEditor 4 plugins will need to be rewritten from scratch for data-processing, we decided to include an early developer preview in this release.

Developers can enable this opt-in preview of the upcoming new richtext editor in a non-production environment to estimate the potential scale of their plugin upgrade efforts or get an early start on plugin development. The opt-in developer preview is part of the Blueprint workspace. To enable this preview the Studio client must be updated. The Studio developer manual contains the required instructions. Developers can follow our development by watching our open-source GitHub repository (see https://github.com/CoreMedia/ckeditor-plugins/).

The open-source GitHub repository serves as the starting point for the development of custom plugins with a concise documentation and sandbox environment.

The following screenshot provides a sneak peek at this new richtext editor:

Figure 13: CKEditor 5 richtext editor framework

The benefits of this enhancement include:

• The new richtext editor will be based on the modern and fully customizable CKEditor 5 framework which provides numerous plugins to boost editorial efficiency

• The integration with CoreMedia Richtext will be a standard CKEditor plugin itself. This should simplify the usage and development of other plugins.

With version 2107.1, we provided a simple means for modifying the default behavior of the “start publication workflow” button via the User Settings in CoreMedia Studio. By disabling the option to “Include ‘My Edited Content’ when publishing content”, editors can configure the button to initiate a publication workflow with the active content only.

The workflow button in the ‘My Edited Content’ toolbar is not affected by this change and will always initiate a workflow containing all edited content.

The following screenshot illustrates the new configuration box in the Content tab of the User Setting:

This modification is designed to make usage more consistent and cause less confusion. Users that prefer the old behavior and would like to keep it can do so.

To address this concern, we have introduced a tool to help content editors identify all of content items that must be included in a withdrawal request in order for the content set to be unpublished successfully. Since the withdrawal of published content is often an iterative process involving numerous editorial decisions, content to be withdrawn can now be collected into Projects created especially for that purpose. Content can be added to the Project via drag and drop and content links can be easily removed if certain content items should not be withdrawn from publication. Once the set of content to be withdrawn is complete, it can be unpublished with a single button click.

The following screenshots demonstrate this process:

With this new enhancement, editors are now guided though the process of unpublishing content which gives them more control and a powerful tool to resolve conflicts more efficiently.

In version 2107.1, this asset preview function has been enhanced so support custom HTML, including as iframes or media elements. With this enhancement, Content Hub adapters for third party content sources such as YouTube or external DAM systems can now provide a preview for video or audio assets.

Studio Developers can define specific metadata for part of an asset – instructing the system to rendered it as preview data. This includes such things as the size of an image or its dimensions. The Content Hub API has been changed so that this information can be displayed as HTML as well as plain text. This enhancement can be used for both prefabricated and custom Content Hub adapters.

With this new enhancement, Editors are now able also to view videos and listen to audio assets, when the format are supported by the corresponding Content Hub Adapter and provides the possibility for deeper integrations of external content systems.

Although the default option allows users to isolate Localization issues, the tools can be programmatically extended to add new custom categories for issues that your editors encounter frequently.

Also note that, since version 2104.3, this feature needs to be explicitly enabled because it requires re-creating the search index from scratch. With the next major release, it will be enabled by default.

This enhancement is designed to save technical editors valuable time and accelerate the resolution of potential content issues.

The following screenshot illustrates how this functionality can be accessed via the search pane of the CoreMedia Studio Library:

This modification is designed to make usage more consistent and cause less confusion. Users that prefer the old behavior and would like to keep it can do so.

Additionally, editors can save the search as a custom search folder, giving them faster access to a specific subset of products that they typically work with.

Finally, the layout of the existing content search filters has been updated to provide a more consistent user experience.

This new feature is simple to use. A new collapsible filter panel has been added to the commerce search view in the Library. It provides a combo box where the editor can choose from a list of filters. As soon as the editor switches the Library to search mode and selects a category, this list of available search filters is automatically enabled. Different filter values can be applied to search for a specific set of products. The search can then be saved using the "Save Search" button from the library search toolbar. Note that these "Saved Searches" currently apply only to the search folders yet, not the search widgets for the CoreMedia Studio dashboard.

The following screenshot shows the new search filters:

This feature is designed to improve the daily work of editors that work with commerce catalogs in CoreMedia Studio by providing:

• Deeper integration into commerce system • Better usability for editors when searching for products

With version 2107.1, we have introduced two major enhancements to the commerce cache system:

1. An HTTP-based actuator endpoint to invalidate commerce caches on the central commerce adapter and automatic propagation of invalidations to CoreMedia Studio, the Content Application Engine (CAE), the CoreMedia Headless Server and Feeders. This endpoint supports both manual triggering and automatic integrations into external event queues or schedulers.
2. Optional re-computation of cache values to update them in the background while previously cached values are still being served. After re-computation, newly retrieved values are compared to old cached value and invalidations are propagated if they differ.

This feature is designed to make it easier for admins and developers to control caching and invalidation of entries. It helps them to avoid performance drops during uptime of a commerce adapter through background-update of values instead of removing the cached values first and updating them on request. This results in more reliable response times, as well as more control over the timing for updating values in the commerce cache.

When content is delivered in the “classical” way using our Content Application Engine (CAE), users can sometimes encounter performance issues if commerce caches are empty – particularly when hierarchy data for the eCommerce catalog needs to be retrieved during delivery. The same problem exists with headless augmentation calls where only the concrete ID of the current category or product is passed in and parent categories for inheritance of placements must be retrieved via eCommerce API.

With version 2107.1, we provide additional augmentation queries in the Headless Server that work exclusively on content in the CMS repository without the need to communicate with the commerce system via its API. Communication roundtrips are, therefore, avoided and performance is much more reliable than before.

This feature enhancement takes the form of new GraphQL schema files and Java implementation for commerce augmentation in the Headless Server. To implement it, storefront developers will need to use the new augmentation query API and provide the hierarchy/breadcrumb when calling the Headless Server.

This feature is designed to provide more reliable and faster response times of the Headless Server, especially after new start of the component or timed out caches.

To enable this, we have provided a new “Outgoing IPs” display in the IP Management section of the Cloud Manager. This is in addition to the IP allow listing management. This screen shows the IP addresses categorized by the environments of the customer (e.g., Production, UAT, Sandboxes).

For each Pre/Prod (Production, UAT) environment, three IP addresses are displayed, one for each of the networks used by the CMS applications. Development Sandboxes share one IP address, so there is only one displayed regardless of how many Sandboxes are deployed.

This new feature allows developers and administrators to retrieve this information for themselves without having to contact the support team. This can streamline and speed up the process.

With this new release, however, \ Products, Categories, or variants that have been dragged into link lists will automatically be converted into appropriate CMS documents. The following conversions will take place as a default:

• Product ➝ Augmented Product
• Category ➝ Augmented Category
• Variant ➝ Product Teaser The new content is created parallel to the existing content that the target link list belongs to. Otherwise, it is created in the site root folder.
• 

This new feature enables users to create and work with content based on commerce objects much faster than previously. Explicit augmentation of commerce objects (products, categories) is no longer necessary and happens on-the-fly even for multiple objects.

For example, using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster. Its developers claim that WebP lossless images are 26% smaller compared to PNGs and 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index (https://developers.google.com/speed/webp).

As a result of these performance enhancements, many customers have been requesting that CoreMedia provides support for these new formats to help them meet their quality and performance goals.

With this update, developers can enable the CoreMedia Headless server and the Content Application Engine to deliver images in a variety of new formats, including WebP, by means of the improved Image Transformation API.

To implement this feature, developers can simply add the Java Image I/O compatible library for the required format to the list of dependencies of their application and adapt the view layer accordingly.

The resulting websites and applications will deliver a better end-user experience in terms of highquality images, improved performance, and SEO scores.