Have you ever had to decide what is better for you – Sitecore Commerce Server or Sitecore UCommerce?

If you had in the past dilemma or you have it right now and you still not sure what you should choose – Sitecore Commerce Server or Sitecore UCommerce – you can find some hints in my new article.

Some of you will probably find there answers, some of you maybe will find there only arguments – all of you can find this article on Coders Center blog:

Sitecore & eCommerce. Find Your Path!

If you have different opinion, or maybe you want to ask for something – you can do this always in comments or write to me an private message.

SPEAK 2.0 – STAGE 1

I have decided to create first ever tutorial for SPEAK 2.0 which will give you really working examples.

Why? Because I was not able to find any information about that and I was not sure which version should I choose for greenfield projects (1.2 or 2.0).

I hope I will be able to answer for all your questions in this and all future articles.

Do not hesitate to ask when you will have any additional questions.

Before we will start, please remember – if you want to work with SPEAK you have to:

  • work on core database
  • use Sitecore Rocks for Visual Studio

SPEAK 2.0 guidance

Sitecore with second verions of SPEAK provides us something new – the guidance. Inside core database under the path:

/sitecore/client/Business Component Library/version 2/Content/Guidance/Dashboard

We can find SPEAK application with all available SPEAK 2.0 components.

Application looks in the following way:

2016-08-13_16h08_54

Under the url

/sitecore/client/Business Component Library/version 2/Content/Guidance/AllComponentsList

we can see all available components but this time as a list. The number of components is really impressive. We can use following components:

Category Component Name
Authentications AccountInformation
Charts LineChart
Charts RadarChart
Charts AreaChart
Charts BarChart
Charts ColumnChart
Charts DoughnutChart
Charts PieChart
Common BackButton
Common Button
Common CheckBox
Common DropDownButton
Common DropList
Common GlobalLogo
Common HyperlinkButton
Common Image
Common ListBox
Common MessageBar
Common ProgressBar
Common SearchableDropList
Common Separator
Common ButtonTextBox
Common Text
Common TextBox
Common TextArea
Common ToggleButton
Common ChildRenderer
Common ItemRenderer
Common PageCode
Common RenderView
Common SubPageCode
Containers Border
Containers Expander
Containers Frame
Containers ScrollablePanel
Containers SubAppRenderer
Containers TabControl
Containers Popover
Data QueryDataSource
Data SearchDataSource
Data EntityDataSource
Data BaseDataSource
Data ChartDataSource
Data GenericDataSource
Dialogs ConfirmationDialog
Dialogs DialogWindow
Forms Form
Forms Uploader
Forms UploaderInfo
Indicators ArrowIndicator
Indicators ValueLabel
Lists and Grids Grid
Lists and Grids ListControl
Navigation Breadcrumb
Navigation Menu
Navigation NavigationToggle
Resources Pipeline
Resources Rule
Structures Page Structures
Structures Substructures

Sitecore also provides us a list of all available properties which defines the components behavior. List is available under the url:

/sitecore/client/Business Component Library/version 2/Content/Guidance/AllComponentProperties

It is really long list – so i will not paste it here.

SPEAK 2.0 page branches

In previous version of SPEAK we had possibility to use branches for faster creation of pages. We could find them under the path:

/sitecore/client/Business Component Library/version 1/Templates/Branches

Unfortunately they are currently not available for SPEAK 2.0.

That is why I prepared a branch for dashboard. You can download Sitecore package with this branch from here: SPEAK 2.0 Branches-1.0

Install this package in your Sitecore instance. If you will create a page with my template branch you will be able to see following page:

2016-08-13_16h56_25

Nothing special – that’s right, but it is looking exactly the same as page created from SPEAK 1.2 template branch. If you will compare “Design Layout” definitions you will find many differences.

Your first SPEAK application in 4 simple steps

  1. Open Core database inside Sitecore Rocks 2016-08-13_20h18_44
  2. Create your application directory under path “/sitecore/client/Your Apps” (my application name is “Speak2”)
  3. Add first item to your application – page which is based on DashboardPage branch from “SPEAK 2.0 Branches” package 2016-08-13_20h28_42As result you should see item with PageSettings item under your page item. 2016-08-13_20h32_11
  4. Open your application in browser – use item path and paste it into the browser.

Congratulations – you have created your first SPEAK 2.0 application!

Check also “Design Layout” properties for your Dashboard item. You should have following renderings:

2016-08-13_20h37_47

 

What will be next?

In next article I will show you how to build SPEAK 2.0 application with ListControl.

More about SPEAK 2.0

 

Sitecore Community Poland – Second Offline Meetup

Success of Sitecore Community

What can I say. Second in Poland Sitecore Meetup is a fact.

If you work with Sitecore and you are in Poland you should be on 19 August in Wrocław.

If Wrocław is too far for you you should join to our communication channels because event will be transmitted online.

Dream Team

Again we will have three speakers:

Adam Najmanowicz (SITECORE MVP)

Adam will talk about: Sitecore PowerShell Extensions – From zero to hero – crash course

The basics of Sitecore PowerShell – where it can be useful and how to best utilize it in your day-to-day workflow. The audience will learn how to work with items and Sitecore API as well as how to build rich user interfaces with just a few lines of code and no server restarts. We will also see how to debug those easily and provide extensible Web APIs easily.

Learn more about Adam:

Adam’s background is in the Customer Experience Management (CEM/CMS/ECM) space, he worked with SharePoint and EPiServer as well as some bespoke CMS-es but now his focus is within the Sitecore space. He is a Developer (at heart) who heads up the .Net Practice at Cognifide. During his years in the industry he’s gathered substantial experience in a variety of frameworks besides Microsoft .Net, he’s tinkered with and hacked at Delphi, Java and a wide range of DBMS (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Informix to name a few). Sitecore MVP since 2011.

Read Adam’s blog here: http://blog.najmanowicz.com/

Radosław Kozłowski

Radoslaw will talk about: Unicorn – synchronize easily.

Using Unicorn to synchronize Sitecore databases and resolve item deployment problems.

More information about Radek:

Passionate Sitecore & .NET developer and designer with a lot of professional Sitecore development experience. Worked with Sitecore since beginning of 2013, as a developer and afterwards, team lead developer. Sitecore community contributor, sharing his work, such as modules and packages, and his knowledge – with blog and community forum.

You should also check his blog: http://SitecoreCoffee.com

Wojciech Urban

Wojciech will talk about: Sitecore Habitat – make it smarter.

Presentation will be about Sitecore Modular Architecture which could give you some advantages in the future

More information about Wojtek:

Very energetic person, passionate of new technologies, Sitecore & .NET developer in Coders.Center. Wojtek started his journey with Sitecore in 2014. Since this time he was working on many international projects based on Sitecore with different approaches.

Registration

This time registration is mandatory. Please register here: registration link

Our Channels

I hope that we will be there together!

Changes are coming! – news from Sitecore Partner Day

On 15th June 2016 I had a pleasure to be on first in Poland Sitecore Partner Day.

Speakers were mainly from Sitecore and we had an opportunity to hear about:

  • Updates from the Global Solution Partner Program (Marie Louise Bouchet)
  • Make your Sitecore implementation processes efficient (Hedgehog)
  • What’s new in Sitecore 8.1 and Roadmap (Jannik Devantier)
  • xDB – what is it really and how do I use it? (Morten Ljungberg)
  • Partnering with Sitecore – use Sitecore messaging to help drive digital transformation and generate business (Marie Louise Bouchet)
  • Sitecore Poland Community (Coders.Center & I)
  • Diving deeper into the new features of Sitecore 8.1 (Morten Ljungberg)
  • Sitecore Commerce (Jannik Devantier)
  • Xccelerate Program & Case Stories (Jannik Devantier)

As you can see – most of titles are about: partnering with Sitecore , future of Sitecore and Sitecore Modules.  There was a lot of interesting information and I am not able to provide all of them to you, but I will provide for you some of the most interesting from my point of view.

  • In the second half of the year Sitecore will provide us Sitecore 8.2 version.
  • In the beginning of the year 2017 Sitecore will provide us Sitecore 8.3 version.
  • Sitecore has decided to extend their QA team to provide for use better quality (if you have ever opportunity to create an support ticket you probably will appreciate this move from Sitecore side ;)) .
  • Sitecore will provide us a new version of Web Forms For Marketers (yes another changes in our favorite and the most stable module). In the nearest future WFFM will be a part of Sitecore – not a module as now.
  • Sitecore xDB could be run as a service (infrastructure provided by Sitecore) – but you have to remember that you can not define custom structure of data which will be stored in xDB
  • In the nearest future Sitecore will change some things in Partners program
  • Sitecore Commerce – is becoming to be the most important module for Sitecore, so we can be sure that they will change a lot of things in very short period of time
  • Sitecore eLearning platform elearning.sitecore.net (you can get Sitecore training without Sitecore certificate)
  • Sitecore’s Business Optimization Services (SBOS) – check the place of your client in the road to success “click” (great move from SBOS side)
  • Sitecore webinars – Sitecore will more often share an interesting knowledge with community
  • Sitecore Community in Poland is looking for speakers for next meetup and sponsors and everyone who somehow want to involve in our community (tricky advert ;))

I hope that some of this information will be interesting for you also.

At the end I want to also share with you one photo from Sitecore Partner Day:

Sitecore Awards Coders Center

Coders Center got some Sitecore Awards 😉 I am this first guy from the left side.