Sitecore | Sitecore with Skowronski

Automated Sitecore deployment with the usage of Jenkins and Nexus Repository Manager

I wrote an article describing the process of automated deployment built with the usage of Jenkins and Nexus Repository Manager. You can find this article on Konabos’s website: https://konabos.com/blog/sitecore-upgrade-deployment-aws-virtual-servers-jenkins-nexus-repository-manager

How to find all of the Sitecore Items that use aliases?

Recently I had to find all the items being linked by aliases. Because we had hundreds of aliases and no one wanted to go one by one to check where are they linking to I decided to prepare a PowerShell script to generate a report. Here is the code of it:

$itemList = @()
$allPaths = @(
    "master:\system\Aliases"
    )
    
ForEach($path in $allPaths)
{
    $itemList += Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse | Where-Object {
        $_.TemplateID -eq "{54BCFFB7-8F46-4948-AE74-DA5B6B5AFA86}"
    }
}

$reportProps = @{
    Title = "Aliases Report"
    InfoTitle = "This is a report showing items being linked by aliases"
    InfoDescription = "Total entries found: $($itemList.length)"
    PageSize = 25
}

$report = New-Object System.Collections.Generic.List[PSObject]

ForEach ($item in $itemList)
{    
    $linkedItem = $item.PSFields."Linked item"
    $found = $linkedItem.Value -match '.*id="(.*?)".*'
    $foundItemPath = ""
    $foundID = ""
    if ($found)
    {
        $foundID = $matches[1]
        
        if ($foundItem = Get-Item -Path "master:" -ID $foundID -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
        {
            $foundItemPath = $foundItem.FullPath
        }
        else
        {
            $foundItemPath = "Broken Link"
        }
        
    }
    
    $newObject = New-Object PSObject @{__Icon = $item.__Icon; DisplayName = $item.DisplayName; FullPath = $item.FullPath; ID = $item.ID; URL = $linkedItem.Url; LinkedItemPath = $foundItemPath; LinkedItemID = $foundID}
    $report.Add($newObject)
}

$report | Show-ListView @reportProps -Property `
    @{ Label = "Alias Path"; Expression = { $_.FullPath} },
    @{ Label = "Alias Id"; Expression = { $_.ID } },
    @{ Label = "LinkedItem ID"; Expression = { $_.LinkedItemID } },
    @{ Label = "Linked Url"; Expression = { $_.URL } },
    @{ Label = "LinkedItem Path"; Expression = { $_.LinkedItemPath } }
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Data migration strategy as a crucial part of Sitecore upgrade

Recently I wrote a blog post describing the challenges of the Sitecore upgrades and now on the Konabos website we released a continuation written by me. I share some knowledge about data migration strategies – you can find it here: Rethinking Sitecore Upgrades: The Art and Science of Content Migration

How to find all unused Sitecore Templates?

Recently one of the customers had a need to identify all of the templates that are not in use. We could go through all of the templates manually and verify all the links but with PowerShell we can do that much faster. Here is a script that will generate a report (that you can later download as Excel).

In this report, you will see all the templates and references – then with the help of Excel filtering you can filter out the rows without any references to get the list of unused templates.

$itemList = @()
$allPaths = @(    
    "master:\templates\Feature",
    "master:\templates\Foundation",
    "master:\templates\Project"
    )

ForEach($path in $allPaths)
{
    $itemList += Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse | Where-Object {
        $_.TemplateID -ne "{0437FEE2-44C9-46A6-ABE9-28858D9FEE8C}" -and $_.TemplateID -ne "{85ADBF5B-E836-4932-A333-FE0F9FA1ED1E}" -and $_.FullPath -notLike "*/System/*" -and $_.FullPath -notLike "*/Experience Accelerator/*" -and $_.FullPath -notLike '*/JSS Experience Accelerator/*' -and $_.FullPath -notLike '*$name*' -and $_.TemplateID -ne "{E269FBB5-3750-427A-9149-7AA950B49301}" -and $_.TemplateID -ne "{455A3E98-A627-4B40-8035-E683A0331AC7}" -and $_.TemplateID -ne "{A46706F7-EAF8-4575-9860-A85B6F17C5EB}" -and $_.TemplateID -ne "{239F9CF4-E5A0-44E0-B342-0F32CD4C6D8B}" -and $_.Name -ne "__Standard Values"
    }
}

$reportProps = @{
    Title = "Templates references"
    InfoTitle = "This report shows all references of the templates"
    InfoDescription = "Total entries found: $($itemList.length)"
    PageSize = 25
}

$report = New-Object System.Collections.Generic.List[PSObject]

ForEach ($item in $itemList)
{
    Write-Host "Referrers for "+ $item.FullPath
    $referrers = Get-ItemReferrer -Item $item
    $referrersPaths = New-Object System.Collections.Generic.List[String]
    $referrers| ForEach-Object -Process { $referrersPaths.Add($_.FullPath) }
    
    $newObject = New-Object PSObject @{__Icon = $item.__Icon; DisplayName = $item.DisplayName; FullPath = $item.FullPath; ID = $item.ID; Status = $status; Referrers = ($referrersPaths -join "|")}
    $report.Add($newObject)
}


$report | Show-ListView @reportProps -Property `
    @{ Label = "Item Name"; Expression = { $_.DisplayName } },
    @{ Label = "Path"; Expression = { $_.FullPath} },
    @{ Label = "Id"; Expression = { $_.ID } }
    @{ Label = "Referrers"; Expression = { $_.Referrers } }
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From the list of all paths we exclude things like:

folders
standard values
SXA templates
system templates
and few more

SQL Server Self-Signed certificate required by Sitecore installer

Recently I had a very interesting case when Sitecore installer was failing during installation because required a secured connection with the SQL Server. It was even more interesting because the connection at the beginning was established correctly, some of the databases were created and then …. during a step related to xConnect and xDB databases I saw an error saying:

A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occured during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 – The certificate chain was issues by an authority that is not trusted.)

After some time spent on checking certs generated by Sitecore I realized that I was looking for a solution in the wrong place.

By default SQL Server instance does not use any encryption for incoming connections:

So it should not be a problem – but it was. I decided to add a self-signed certificate to my SQL Server instance to check if it resolved the problem (spoiler alert: it did).

SQL Server requires certificates prepared in a special format. You can generate a certificate with this PowerShell script

New-SelfSignedCertificate -Type SSLServerAuthentication -Subject "CN=$env:COMPUTERNAME" -FriendlyName "SQL Server Self-signed" -DnsName "$env:COMPUTERNAME",'localhost.'  -KeyAlgorithm RSA -KeyLength 2048 -Hash 'SHA256' -TextExtension '2.5.29.37={text}1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1' -NotAfter (Get-Date).AddMonths(24) -KeySpec KeyExchange -Provider "Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider"-CertStoreLocation "Cert:\LocalMachine\My"

Details of it are described here:

https://www.sqlserver-dba.com/2022/06/how-to-generate-a-self-signed-certificate-for-sql-server-with-new-selfsignedcertificate.html

When the certificate is generated and added to the certs store you will find it by running mmc (from Windows > Run) where you have to select certificates for your computer.

Now, you have to assign rights to read that certificate for your SQL Server instance.

Open “Services” app and find your “SQL Server” service and check its properties. In the “Log On” tab you will find user name used to run this service: