Marko Milic
| Certified RWS Tridion architect and RWS Tridion MVP
|
RWS is about to drop a new, facelifted version of their Tridion Sites product. 9.6 version is the new and improved version of the 9.5 version and with it RWS is delivering on what they promised in previous versions like adding features to new UI, building on the new GraphQL-based public content API and continuing with deprecations of CIS and CIL libraries.
New 9.6 is supposed to drop later in the year, so let’s see what are some of the changes that will be introduced.
Folder publishing and non-publishable folders
Tridion Sites 9.6 introduces functionality where you can publish Folders as containers of Components. This means that you can now select a folder, click publish, and it will publish all components in it.
You can also configure folders as “non-publishable” and thus exclude these folders from publishing. This is especially important for folders containing configurations and system components.
Image 1: Publishing folder in Tridion Sites 9.6
An extra helping of Experience Space
The new UI has additionally been beefed up to include changes like:
More support for ECL, like the ability to edit metadata of ECL items and external metadata if the externals system allows it.
Experience Space now enables you to classify content according to a taxonomy.
As in the Content Manager Explorer, the Experience Space supports both internal taxonomies (built from Keywords) and external taxonomies (with concepts maintained in an external taxonomy system).
Both user interfaces allow you to manually classify content by editing items and selecting internal Keywords or external concepts.
Only available in Experience Space, the Smart Tagging feature enables you to quickly and consistently classify (tag) content with concepts from the external taxonomy system. This feature requires integration with a supporting taxonomy system, such as PoolParty Semantic Suite.
With Smart Tagging, you can classify content in the following two general ways:
Semi-automatically — while editing items, you can click suggest tags. For fields that support the feature, you will receive suggestions that are based on the current content and metadata of the item being edited. After using this option, you can review and change the tags if needed.
Automatically — From the list of items in the content Area, you can select one or more items and use the "Auto Classify" option to quickly and consistently classify the items without any additional steps. The classification is based on the current content and metadata of the selected items.
Image 2: Editing Component in Tridion Sites 9.6 has new option “Suggested tags” for smart tagging
Image 3: Clicking on “Suggested tags” fills in tags based on content in the Component itself.
The metadata of a page can come from a metadata schema selected on the page itself (old style), or from metadata fields defined in its page Schema (new style). In 9.5, metadata fields of the first type were viewable, but not editable in Experience Space. In Tridion Sites 9.6, they are both viewable and editable in Experience Space.
By introducing new functionalities in Experience Space RWS is delivering on its promise to bring Tridion UI up to date. The new UI is slowly gaining more and more functionalities until it completely replaces old UI.
A new Tridion Connector for PoolParty
The Tridion Connector for PoolParty exposes thesauri and taxonomies managed in the PoolParty Semantic Suite and makes them accessible as taxonomies in Tridion Sites. Content Manager users can categorize Tridion Sites content with concepts from a PoolParty taxonomy. In Experience Space only, users can also obtain fast and consistent suggestions for classifying Components through the Smart Tagging feature. Make note that connectors are sold separately from the main Tridion Sites product.
Access Management just got bigger!
Tridion Sites 9.6 introduces enhancements to the Access Management application, extending its support to additional applications like:
Content Porter
Template Builder
Visio Workflow Designer
TcmUploadAssembly.exe (command line tool)
These applications now have an SSO login experience, the same as the browser-based applications, with authentication completed in the user's default browser.
The initial public release of CoreService.REST API
RWS is releasing a new REST API to replace the old WCF CoreService and is their first step on the road to .NET Core. In the initial release, RWS is focusing on API used in Experience Space. Full API parity will be covered in the next releases.
Semantic Artificial Intelligent capability
Smart features based on Semantic AI that will increase content findability and help with editorial productivity:
Smart tagging of individual content components with concepts from a taxonomy as well as batch auto-tagging of multiple components. Improved Search features that include search suggestions and faceted search for the customer-facing web application
Data publishing and content modeling
Automatic mapping from Content Manager Schema to Semantic content model on the delivery side to classify content as a content type to improve headless capabilities for providing omnichannel experiences.
It hides the complexity of the Content Management System and will allow any developer to work on consuming this data for their application.
But what is going on a chopping block and not in the pot?
Some things are getting cut. RWS is continuing with the deprecation of some of its old features. For details on what is not making a cut in the latest release you can check the following link.
The following functionalities are planned to be dropped in Tridion Sites 9.6:
In-process API
Legacy transport protocols
Context Expression module
Quick installer
If you were using any of these you will need to migrate your solutions to newer (healthier) alternatives.
Serving the dish
So, you might be wondering: We are hungry, when is RWS serving the dish? RWS has not officially released any information on it, but it is planned to be released by the end of the year (2021.). However, it might change so we will keep you posted.
Since Tridion Sites 9.6 is still not released and is made available just to partners and MVPs, the final product might be slightly different from the preview version. For the final list of what is new and fresh, we still need to wait for the official release.
Feel free to contact us If you have any questions.
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