Posts tagged as "Episerver 9"
Installing the new Episerver A/B testing feature
Update
This feature is now a fully released product feature so the steps below are not required to install.
It can be installed by installing this package: Episerver Marketing Testing Tools
Recently the new Episerver A/B testing feature was released in beta. This is a quick post to explain how to install it.
Pre-requisites
Your site should be running at least Episerver.CMS.Core v9.10.1.
A note on versioning
The package is in beta so does not appear when you browse directly to http://nuget.episerver.com by default, however you can see the package by browsing here: http://nuget.episerver.com/en/OtherPages/Package/?packageId=EPiServer.Marketing.Testing
Version checker for Episerver
Episerver releases software on a continuous release cycle. This means that a new version of Episerver is typically available every week. This is good news for customers as the software is kept up to date with new features and bug fixes.
However updates are not automatic (for good reason) and need to be installed and put through a standard deployment cycle. As administrators or developers potentially working on multiple Episerver solutions it can sometimes be tricky to know exactly what version is installed and what the latest version of Episerver packages are when looking at the UI.
So I created a tool that allows users to see what versions of packages are installed and also what is the latest available version.
What does the tool do
The tool adds a new icon to the menu bar showing the current status of packages (green = up to date, yellow = updates available, red = very out of date) with some descriptive text on hover:
Remove Episerver UI components for certain editors
Episerver has a powerful UI that makes it very easy for editors to create and edit content in an on-page and a drag and drop way. However I was recently talking to a customer who are going to have a larger editor estate (> 500 people) and wanted 2 types of editors. The first type are editors who are trained and are familiar with Episerver. These editors can use the UI as normal for creating and editing content.
The second type of editor is more interesting. They should only be able edit existing content, often only on a single page. These editors require a very cut down version of the Episerver UI with "super simple" editor functions. So this post describes how its possible to hide certain Episerver UI elements for certain groups of editors.
MenuPin v3.3 - Now with Episerver Commerce support
A new version of MenuPin for EPiServer 9 is now available on the EPiServer Nuget feed.
What's new in MenuPin v3.3
Episerver Commerce compatibility has been added allowing users to pin and unpin the menu when working in the Episerver commerce UI:
Approvals for moving content in the Episerver page tree part 2 - removing the default confirmation dialog
Previously I blogged about Approvals for moving content in the Episerver page tree. This allowed us as developers to prevent users from moving content pages around in the tree without someone else signing the request off.
The approach works fine, however there is one shortcoming in this approach. That is that the default move confirmation message is still displayed after a user moves a page in the tree:
Approvals for moving content in the Episerver page tree (updated)
Episerver's UI is simple for editors to use but also very powerful. One specific feature I'd like to talk about today is the ability to move pages around in the site tree by simply dragging and dropping them.
This is great feature and incredibly simple to use. However moving content around a site can have big impacts on the site SEO, site functionality and in the worst case scenario create errors on a site. By default any editor can move pages to other places in the tree (with sufficient access rights) and the moves require no approval.
Visitor Group criteria for Episerver Forms
Episerver Forms is a new add-on that vastly improves the form capabilities over the legacy xforms implementation. However (at the time of writing) Episerver forms does not come with a set of visitor group criterion that will allow editors to personalise a user’s experience based on their interactions with forms on the site.
Building out a custom form element with the new Episerver forms
When working with the new Episerver Forms its possible to build out custom forms elements that can be used just like the built in form elements (by simply dragging and dropping them onto the form area). Maris Krivtezs has already written about creating a custom forms field but I wanted to expand this further and create a custom form element with a custom icon, translation etc.
So in this example I’m going show how to create a simple "Restricted text box" element that extends the built in Text element to create a textbox that only allows a certain number of characters in a textbox.
MenuPin v3.2 released - click and hold to unpin/hide everything
A new version of MenuPin for EPiServer 9 is now available on the EPiServer Nuget feed.
What's new in v3.2
A new gesture has been added to the pin. When the top menu is pinned out, click and hold the pin to unpin the top menu and hide the left and right hand side items. This allows users to quickly get back to a clear view when items have been pinned out in the UI:
Enabling the new projects feature in EPiServer
Update
As of EPiServer Update 87 which released EPiServer.CMS.Core 9.3 and EPiServer.CMS.UI 9.3 the projects feature is now out of beta there is no need to add users to the EPiBetaUsers group
This a quick "note to self" on how to enable the new projects feature in the later versions EPiServer (8+ and 9 at the time of writing) as I constantly forget how to do it.
Once enabled editors get access to the projects feature that includes the project bar at the bottom of the UI as shown below:
MenuPin v3.1 released - instantly hide the menu on unpin
A new version of MenuPin for EPiServer 9 is now available on the EPiServer Nuget feed.
MenuPin for EPiServer 9 released
A new version of MenuPin is now available. This is is a compatibility release for EPiServer 9 upwards. If you have not heard of MenuPin before then it allows users to pin the menu at the top of the EPiServer UI (as shown in the image).
What's new in v3.0:
- Compatible with EPiServer 9+