Skip to main content

Release notes

7.3.0 (June 27, 2023)#

New features#

Revamped Uniform.app integration#

This release features numerous improvements to the Sitecore connector with Uniform Platform, allowing you to build modern digital experiences reusing your existing content from your Sitecore instance by leveraging Uniform's visual experience builder (Canvas) and our latest generation Mesh capability.

  • Incremental Content Sync (#2532)
  • Surgical cache invalidation support for Uniform Mesh (#2533)
  • Dynamic Pages support (build thousands of detail pages with Uniform Canvas using Sitecore content).
  • Multi-language support - source content on a composition from a desired language (UNI-2595)

Experimental innovations#

  • Concurrent mode for Deploy (speeds up deployments) (#2459)
  • Handling of page renaming during Deploy operation (#2568)
  • Cache purge of removed pages (#2591)
  • Delete button to force page deletion (#2645, #2648)

Enhancements#

Performance improvements#

  • Improves sitemap service performance (#2547, #2517)
  • Page size validator (#2525)
  • Uniform logs configuration (#2634)
  • Cache purge support for Publishing Service (#2638)
  • Site configurations caching (#2565)

Misc enhancements#

  • Disabling deployment publish trigger via /sitecore/admin/uniform page no longer resets after restart
  • Handle virtualFolder for a site configuration (#2561)
  • Read content sync timestamp from AWS S3 using SDK instead of HTTP (#2573)
  • Better logging for EventQueue requests (#2628)
  • Improved publish dialog message readability (#2620)
  • S3 support: make Region field shared for AWS sync services (#2571)
  • Some item-based configuration fields are versioned (#2576)

Bug fixes#

  • Failed deployment prevents other sites from being deployed (#2354)
  • Empty personalization condition causes 500 error (#2551)
  • The timestamp file name is hardcoded in PurgeService (#2540)
  • Error when using Sitecore Data Exchange Framework (#2562)
  • A/B testing ignores TestingDisabled setting and list of active tests (#2486)
  • Fixed Akamai purge by CP code (#2518)
  • Placeholder.tsx doesn't support the same rendering in 2 different placeholders. (#2493)
  • Microsoft.WebSocket.dll is missing in Sitecore package (#2563)
  • New pages are missing after Content Sync in Scaled environment (#2522)
  • Canvas content sync uses the master database (#2567)
  • Sitecore CM/CD caching inconsistencies when creating or renaming pages (#2564)
  • Schedule redeploy button affects all site configurations (#2566)
  • Selecting Sitecore configuration item sometimes leads to an error (#2569)
  • [JSS] Stale content is shown during the first request after saving while using Experience Editor (#2615)
  • CheckLinkDatabaseReferrers might return referrers in other languages or versions (#2593)
  • Deploys all language versions after changing one (#2614)
  • Include Uniform Root Folder template into package (#2659)

Breaking changes#

  • FixDuplicateUniqueIds is disabled by default (#1074)
  • tryFindItemId and tryGetTimestamp helpers should be used to resolve page props for MVC sites, see sitecore-mvc-nextjs-starterkit (#2547)
  • IPrefetchService interface was changed
  • The same _Models format for single and all models response (backward compatibility available via Uniform.Canvas.SSC.LegacySingleModelResult.Enabled setting)

7.2.0 Patch-2 (May 18, 2023)#

This is a special case release, which only affects Uniform Platform connector

New features#

  • Incremental Content Sync for Canvas
  • Incremental Cache Purge for Uniform Platform data types

7.2.0 Patch-1 (Feb 24, 2023)#

This is a special case release, only use when directed to by Uniform staff

Bug fixes#

  • Some cases of nested personalization settings may cause preview/next.js export failure when Optimize is used with Deploy in MVC site (#2548)

7.2.0 (Feb 22, 2023)#

New features#

  • Sitecore 10.3 support
  • Model Builders for React components in MVC and Uniform Platform (#2420)

Improvements#

  • React is updated to v18.2 (#2476)
  • Next.js is updated to v13.0 (#2475)
  • JSS is updated to v21.0 (#2474)
  • Admin page shows information about configured page and media sync services (#2468)
  • Self-hosted deployment service saves .temp/{ticket}/.vars.json file with build-time environment variables in debug mode (#2467)
  • Self-hosted service’s start time improvement (#2252)
  • Akamai purge service timeout can be adjusted (#2423)
  • The Uniform.Deploy.StopOnFail setting was introduced for multi-site solutions to try deploying all sites even if one of them failed (#2354)
  • Experimental option to use Azure API to retrieve content sync timestamp (#2499)

Bug fixes#

  • Incremental deployment strategy can miss page changes when language fallback is configured (#2453)
  • Next.js build fails without active connection to Sitecore (#2252)
  • MapNodeService exclude rules when activated for excluding an item will exclude its descendants as well (#2489)

Changes#

  • React-in-MVC datasources in page.json files are deprecated and disabled (#2456) (backward compatibility available via Uniform.Data.Page.LegacyReactDatasources.Enabled setting)

7.1.0 (Sep 26, 2022)#

New features#

Uniform Deploy#

  • Atomic concurrent deployments to different targets in self-hosted service (#1285)
  • Fallback language support (#2330)
  • Enhanced support of multi-language sites with Single-Origin architecture (#2337, #2360)
  • Limited support of versioned media (#2365)
  • Deploy and media sync for AWS S3 (#2293)
  • Cache purge for AWS CloudFront (#2293)
  • Experimental support of deleting pages from Azure Blob container and purge CDN cache for unpublished page items (see Publish Restrictions dialog in Content Editor) (#1419)
  • Experimental support of Live Preview (preview service reflects changes without page reload) (#2390)
  • Experimental support of React components in Experience Editor (#2334)
  • Sitecore JSS v20 compatibility patch can be provided on demand (#2283, #2372)

Uniform Optimize#

  • Google Analytics 4 support (#2320)
  • Ability to transform dispatch data (#2321)
  • Ability to exclude rendering from testing (#2299)
  • ESI tags to handle visit state (#2324)
  • Contact facets in historical data (#2333)
  • Support of react runtime in browser for MVC sites (#2340)
  • Handle show/hide p13n server-side when no ESI requested (#2325)
  • Option to disable esi for certain next.js pages (#2288)
  • OptimizeIntegrationService is used instead of removed ignore list in <optimizeSiteHelper> (#2256)

Improvements#

Uniform Deploy#

  • Offline license validation option (#2361)
  • Batching support in akamai purge (#2367)
  • Support of client-side navigation in MVC sites (#2302)
  • Option to disable preview and media next.js middleware (#2250)
  • Next.js is updated to 12.2.5 (#2260)
  • JSS App name is now separate from Site Configuration (UNIFORM_JSS_APP_NAME, UNIFORM_API_SITENAME)
  • JSS component factory wrapper (#2298)
  • Save next build && next export log in self-hosted deployment service in debug mode (#2294)
  • New MVC starter kit with pre-enabled Optimize
  • Akamai media purge is now disabled by default
  • Site Configuration now supports inheriting configuration via inherits attribute (#2355)
  • MapNodeService supports auto-excluding children with excluded parent item
  • Media timestamp file name is now customizable (#2242)

Bug fixes#

Uniform Deploy#

  • Some HTML 'stylesheet' link tags disappear with client-side rehydration enabled for MVC sites (#2281)
  • Query string was missing in General Link field expander (#995)
  • HTML Style tag inner HTML was partially encoded (#2339)
  • Custom <site> attributes were not applied consistently (#2357)
  • Duplicate pages in deployment scope failed deployment (#2353)
  • Incremental deployments did not support upper-case letters in Site Configuration name
  • Event queue was blocked when using Sitecore Publishing Service (#2331)
  • Changes to shared fields did not trigger deployments in other languages when using Sitecore Publishing Service (#2313)

Uniform Optimize#

  • GA Personalization event sends a boolean for eventValue (#2296)

7.0.0 Patch-2 (July 8, 2022)#

This is a special case release, only use when directed to by Uniform staff

New features#

  • Deploy and media sync for AWS S3 (#2293)
  • Cache purge for AWS CloudFront (#2293)
  • Google Analytics 4 support (#2320)

Improvements#

  • Ability to transform dispatch data (#2321)

Changes#

  • In Sitecore, Google Analytics configuration item name was renamed from Google Analytics to Google Analytics UA. The icons were also changed to black & white in order to contrast with the new Google Analytics 4 feature.

7.0.0 Patch-1 (May 27, 2022)#

This is a special case release, only use when directed to by Uniform staff

New features#

  • Ability to exclude rendering from testing (#2299)

Bug fixes#

  • Some HTML 'stylesheet' link tags disappear with client-side rehydration enabled for MVC sites (#2281)
  • GA Personalization event sends a boolean for eventValue (#2296)
  • Misc (#2287, #2284, #2286)

7.0.0 (May 9, 2022)#

New features#

  • Sitecore 10.2 support
  • Experimental support of Sitecore Publishing Service
  • Experimental support of Akamai NetStorage

Improvements#

  • Next gen support of Uniform Canvas
  • Next.js is updated to 12.1.4 (#2260)
  • Sitecore JSS is updated to v19
  • Item-Based configuration engine is enabled by default (#2275)

Bug fixes#

  • JavaScript starter kits used UTF8 with BOM instead of UTF8 (#2277)
  • UnsupportedConditions badge shown even if Uniform not enabled for website (#2183)
  • Temporary markup was not removed from head HTML tag (#2257)
  • CDN purge failed without media sync configured (#2279)

6.0.0 Patch-2 (Feb 23, 2022)#

This is a special case release, distributed only as NPM packages

Improvements#

  • Updated html-to-react library to 1.4.8

Bug fixes#

  • Fixed resolving properties on Sitecore context for Optimize with Deploy (#2251)

6.0.0 Patch-1 (Jan 25, 2022)#

This is a special case release, distributed only as NPM packages

Improvements#

  • Increased body-parser buffer limit to 50MB in JSS rendering host middleware

6.0.0 (Nov 11, 2021)#

New features#

  • Uniform Canvas support

Improvements#

  • New map service uses flat JSON object, simplifying customizations and brining first-class wildcard item support
  • Experimental HTML service is now enabled by default, bringing improved SXA support and support of heavily customized solutions
  • Deployment pipeline which makes customizations easy
  • Related media feature was deprecated and removed
  • Improved logging when component's html is not found (#2039)
  • Map service now supports caching (#2178)
  • Timestamp file name is now configurable, and by default includes site name and Uniform version for automatic full-site deployments after an upgrade
  • Improved server-side logging for easier troubleshooting

Bug fixes#

  • HTML service now supports changing language without using a dedicated domain name (#2014)
  • html-to-react is now set strictly to 1.4.5 to work around newer version breaking changes (#2167)
  • Item-based configuration now uses Regional Iso with fallback to Iso fields of the language definition item (#2086)

Breaking changes#

  • Uniform.Deployment.Akamai assembly was renamed to Uniform.PurgeCache.Akamai
  • Uniform.Deployment.Cloudflare assembly was renamed to Uniform.PurgeCache.Cloudflare
  • MapNode class was removed
  • IMapNodeService interface was changed
  • IMapNodeExtenderinterface was changed
  • ItemAndPath class was replaced with PageInfo
  • ContentDeploymentScope.RelatedMediaScope property was removed
  • IRelatedMediaDeploymentScopeService interface was removed
  • RelatedMediaDeploymentScopeService class was removed
  • NotConfiguredRelatedMediaDeploymentScopeService class was removed
  • AbstractDeploymentService class was removed
  • IDeploymentService interface was renamed to IDeploymentOrchestrationService
  • new IDeploymentService interface was added for a different purpose
  • PurgeCacheProcessor class was removed

5.1.0 (Sept 23, 2021)#

New features#

  • Edge-side personalization support for Cloudflare allowing to leverage global CDN and execute personalization on the Cloudflare Workers side.
  • Support for Next.js 11.1.
  • Support for Sitecore JSS 16.
  • Uniform Optimize SDK for Sitecore 10.
  • Page service is now fully compatible with custom link providers (ref #2009)
  • React renderings now have access to the following additional props: renderingId, componentName, placeholder
  • Ability to specify that the next deployment be a full deployment (as opposed to an incremental deployment) (ref #1758)
  • Ability to configure include/exclude rules based on item path and item root (ref #2011)

Improvements#

  • Page sync can be triggered from Content Editor only when page sync is configured (ref #1879)
  • Updated npm package references to remove external package vulnerabilities (ref #2093)
  • Refactored logic to get personalization rules into a separate pipeline (ref #1544)
  • When conditional rendering blocks are added in MVC view code, the developer has the ability to specify the operator (and/or) that is used when a predefined rule that is composed from multiple rules is evaluated (ref #1937)
  • Uniform tracker now ends a visit when the browser is closed (ref #1950)
  • useSitecoreTracker hook only renders in the specified render modes (ref #1987)
  • Added ability to specify dispatch event-handler on useSitecoreTracker hook (ref #1727)

Bug fixes#

  • Link tag is now correctly parsed during HTML-to-JSX conversion.
  • Fixed inconsistencies when using item-based configuration for Akamai purge (ref #1554)
  • Sitecore caches are properly cleared when publishing is completed (ref #1865)
  • Removed unused _app.tsx file from MVC starter kit (ref #1983)
  • Added logic to compensate for false-positive reports from Sitecore related to an item's "sort order" value (ref #2010)
  • Deployment can recover when broken data sources are encountered (ref #2013)
  • Sitecore personalization is disabled only for requests originating from Uniform (ref #2037)
  • Incremental deployments for multi-language sites results in pages for the correct language being generated (ref #2038)
  • Export process fails gracefully when a broken data source is encountered when in forgiving mode (ref #2039)
  • Fixed reference to html-to-react package to avoid breaking changes (ref #2116)
  • Personalization conditions that involve a date offset are properly supported (ref #1870)
  • Personalization conditions that involve the number of interactions are properly supported (ref #1920)
  • When conditional rendering blocks are added in MVC view code, the rule for the specified rule id is properly evaluated (ref #1936)
  • Personalization conditions that involve and/or operators are properly supported (ref #1979)
  • Number of days is calculated properly for conditions that involve days elapsed (ref #2006)
  • Uniform tracker now correctly sets the cookie that stores visit count (ref #2007)

5.0.0 (June 29, 2021)#

New features#

  • Edge-side personalization and decoupled tracking is available in Uniform Optimize.

    Uniform Optimize can also be used with or without Uniform Deploy.

  • Fully integrated incremental cache purge for Akamai (using Fast Purge) into the Sitecore publishing process. (Content Editor users have the ability to manually purge cache, as well).

Improvements#

  • Support for Sitecore JSS 16.
  • Ability to configure warnings that are shown to content authors when they try to make changes that once published will trigger full site redeployment.
  • New re-sync page and check page data buttons are added to facilitate in development and troubleshooting.
  • Item-based configuration has 'enabled' checkbox for temporary disabling services that were configured either via the item-configuration or even file-based config.
  • npm package dependencies updated across the board.
  • Improved content and media sync performance.
  • "none" publish target is now different from "fake" ("none" used to be an alias for "fake") and throws exceptions to remind that publish target needs to be configured.

Bug fixes#

  • Map Service and Page Service no longer perform ContentSync by default and require ?uniform_sync=true query string parameter.
  • Fixed duplicate messages in logs
  • uniform_token url parameter is now hidden from exceptions shown in publish dialog.

Compatibility matrix#

The following combinations of technology/features are currently supported:

Front-endDeployOptimizeNavigationSupported
JSSYesNoserver-side routingYes
JSSYesNoSPAYes
JSSNoYesserver-side routingYes
JSSNoYesSPAYes
JSSYesYesserver-side routingYes
JSSYesYesSPANo*
MVCYesNoserver-side routingYes
MVCNoYesserver-side routingYes
MVCYesYesserver-side routingYes

(*) can be enabled on demand, contact support@uniform.dev for more info.

4.0.1 (Apr 21, 2021)#

This is a maintenance release focused on bug fixes and improvements.

New features#

  • New (experimental) In-process MVC mode.

    This capability enhances SXA support and improves the support for the Sitecore solutions with customized rendering pipelines (ref #1375)

  • Official support for Sitecore 10.1 version.

Improvements#

  • Incremental deployment scope service now depends on EventQueue instead of FastQuery, it is now a prerequisite that EventQueue is enabled in the solution (in Sitecore it is enabled by default)
  • New include/exclude rule type for Map service - Item template ID rule, allowing to include/exclude map service items based on template id. Learn more here.
  • Forgiving mode described here (ref #1066)
  • Revampled approach to configure rules that trigger full site deployment described here.
  • Uniform admin page now lists all environment variables (ref #859)
  • Critical information about Content Sync, Media Sync and Deployment operations is displayed at the end of the Publishing Wizard (ref #1309)
  • Better reporting of pages that are being exported in console (ref #1274)
  • MVC Support performance improved by skipping unused renderings or same renderings with parameters given in different order (ref #1371)
  • Support of full item path as a datasource (ref #1171)
  • Deploy timestamp separately after successful deployment (ref #1263)
  • Uniform APIs don't use .json extension anymore to avoid conflicts with customer solution-level code (ref #1137)
  • Ability to attach the jss-render middleware without the scjssconfig.json requirement (ref #1252)

Bug fixes#

  • Initial Sync button does not work in Azure PaaS (ref #1313)
  • Sometimes Initial Sync UI does not indicate progress (ref #1055)
  • Known issue with running Uniform on the specific Sitecore versions (9.0.0 and 9.0.1) has been fixed (ref #1294)
  • Incremental deployment is now supported in Sitecore 10.1 (ref #1311)
  • Content Sync is running despite disabled publish handler (ref #515)
  • Not all items are synced to the Azure blob after Initial Content Sync using Sitecore 10 (ref #1219)
  • CD server errors out when trying to request map/page service (ref #1237)
  • Page Service renders the fields in editable mode (ref #1314)
  • Sitecore personalization and testing rules applied during Uniform API execution (ref #1316)
  • Uniform placeholder markers should not appear on page rendered by Sitecore in normal browse mode (ref #1333)
  • Edited media doesn't sync to Azureblob when IncrementalDeploymentScopeService is incremental (ref #1266)
  • RenderingsController does not validate token (ref #1298)
  • Duplicate renderings are displayed when the item has multiple devices configured (ref #970)
  • Layout html caching is incorrect (ref #1013, #1135, #832)
  • Some script tag attributes are omitted after html-jsx parser conversion (ref #1078, ref #1300)
  • Item delete, rename and move operations are now handled by the incremental Content Sync and Deployment operations (ref #880 and #1350)
  • UNIFORM_API_TOKEN is not required to be lowercased anymore (ref #1374)
  • CheckParentItemLinkDatabaseReferrers doesn't detect page dependencies correctly (ref #1368)
  • Publishing items that are excluded from map service trigger content sync and site deployment (ref #1306)

Configuration changes#

  • Uniform.HtmlController.* settings renamed to Uniform.MvcSupport.*

4.0.0 (Feb 23, 2021)#

New features#

  • Next.js 10 support (along with getStaticProps/getStaticPaths)
  • Sitecore 10 support.

    Uniform now supports Sitecore 8.2 Update-7 to 10.x.

  • Sitecore XM topology support, previously Sitecore XP was required.
  • HTML Service's role is now bundled with the Page Service, which now returns both rendered HTML for MVC renderings or serialized Json of rendering's data source item, depending on rendering configuration. Separate HTML Service now removed.
  • Netlify is now fully supported as a managed deployment service.
  • Enhanced support for incremental static site export.
  • Media synchronization process with parallel upload and incremental change detection and related media resolution support, allowing to offload media delivery from Sitecore Content Delivery to Azure Blob Storage with a CDN in front.
  • GUI for the Initial Content and Media Sync with the ability to monitor the status of the content and media sync process within the Sitecore shell.
  • Revamped site configuration management, allowing for more flexible and advanced configuration on items or config elements or both.
  • First-class support for both self-hosted build/export service and managed/hosted service with Netlify.
  • Limited support for Sitecore SXA.

Enhanced extensibility#

  • Ability to control item children serialization via AddExpandChildrenRule.
  • Ability to resolve page-level items that require export getPageDependencies pipeline, this facilitates support for incremental export when datasource items are published.
  • Map service extensibility, allow to support custom item wildcard scenarios or aliases, or any other custom item resolution logic you have in your solution.
  • Page service extensibility.
  • Ability to extend the HTML → JSX processing instructions to override DOM during MVC site export (Reference id 1144).

Improvements#

  • Starter kits refactored and simplified.
  • Administration page /sitecore/admin/uniform allows the check of the current configuration of the Sitecore module.
  • More out-of-the-box field expanders allowing to serialize more field types in JSON out of the box.
  • Override the origin host of where the data from Uniform APIs will be fetched from using the new fetchHost site attribute (#890).
  • Accessing rendering parameters in React rendering (#896).
  • Ability to control whether a given rendering needs to be excluded from MVC rendering process and its datasource serialized as JSON by adding it tojavaScriptRenderingOverrides in the configuration. Previously had to change the rendering item template.
  • Ability to configure content items that trigger full redeploy via fullDeploymentRules (#901).
  • Uniform version is now checked and validated before start.
  • Enhanced support for self-hosted preview service integration.
  • MVC Precompilation kit, allowing to improve MVC rendering speed which helps speed up export time (ref #926).
  • Uniform Service status request will now fail when Sitecore is not responding (ref #671).
  • ?token query string parameter renamed to ?uniform_token (#1040).