We are proud to announce that we have officially launched Kentico Xperience 13 Refresh 1! The historically first Refresh of the award-winning digital experience platform (DXP) brings a myriad of modern technologies and advanced methods for the technical as well as business audiences. The future of Kentico Xperience is now on the doorstep, accelerating digital transformation and helping our customers and partners drive better business results with a future-proof product.
After having launched Kentico Xperience 13 in October 2020, we have continued in our efforts to bring the next generation of DXP closer to our users and enhance its functionality. Having a stable product vision and a strong executive team, we have been working on a thorough yet concise roadmap of how to leverage the best-of-breed technology to increase the efficiency of our customers’ digital communication even more.
ASP.NET Core MVC became the cornerstone of Kentico Xperience 13, being the primary option for writing new projects and the recommended best practice. It came bearing major challenges that required a rather laborious adoption, and we’ve learned from this. To prevent any breaking changes and lengthy adjustment periods in the future, we’ve decided to remodel our upcoming release cycles. Releasing Refresh 1 today, the fantastic journey to smoother transitions for our users begins.
Adding value fast with seamless upgrades
Refreshes—as we call the significantly shorter release cycles within Kentico Xperience 13 and onwards—represent the ideal way to upgrade the product painlessly. They’re designed to bring a combination of extended functionality and technical improvements to our customers regularly and fast, which enables a much easier adoption. It is a smooth transition to completely removing any further versioning of the product . The future of Kentico Xperience is clear: no more Kentico Xperience 14 and beyond—in its place, Refreshes will be practice of the future.
In 2021, we can be looking forward to welcoming a total number of 4 Refreshes that will strengthen the Kentico Xperience 13 functionality step by step. Refresh 1 is here to provide you with an enhanced user experience and improved performance that both developers and marketers will benefit from.
Refresh 1, the first milestone on the journey to a stronger product
We have continued to invest in functionalities that our partners and customers need to create exquisite digital experiences and to guarantee flawless omnichannel user experiences for their customers. Our new, enhanced solution is therefore focused on expanding the already existing functionalities—to provide future technology for the developers, whilst empowering marketers and content creators.
Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence
As a true sign of utilizing cutting-edge technology and building a timeless product, it is now possible to leverage the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning in automating content personalization. It presents a powerful alternative to the traditional yet equally efficient approach, where content editors set up audiences manually.
Visitors’ actions on the website can now be collected thanks to integration with external AI services provider, Recombee. As customers visit individual pages, their behavior will be evaluated, resulting in automatic suggestions of the most relevant content to be displayed for them in appropriate areas. This future-oriented solution provides better accuracy without the risk of human error while saving time and resources on manual updates.
Advantage for developers | Advantage for marketers and content creators |
AI is a fascinating trend, perfectly representing the course of future technology. It will secure better results compared to the manual setting through personas whilst saving time on configuring personalization rules and various segments. Algorithm-based solutions do not require regular updates. If the data source changes, the algorithm responds. In Kentico Xperience, the API is now prepared, allowing a much easier implementation. All developers need to do is send the data to Recombee and prepare a widget, which will be automatically filled with the relevant content. Its presentation on the website is then all that remains to be taken care of. | Artificial intelligence will select the most appropriate articles or products to be displayed to the relevant visitor automatically, based on their behavior on the website. This reduces marketers’ and content creators’ efforts as the only decision they need to make is where the relevant content will be displayed on the website. Automatic suggestions calculated by AI will replace plenty of manual work with defining individual personas, resulting in significant savings in time and effort, as well as reducing the risk of human error. |
Simplifying uploading of media
The integration with the Bynder Digital Asset Management system is another powerful feature Kentico Xperience has invested in. It opens a new option for working with media in structured content. Users can now select their images directly from Bynder DAM as an alternative to using Media Library or a direct upload. This way, the media can be kept separately from the content and utilized in multiple areas across the website, using a single link. As the assets are held externally, they can even have separate workflows held upon them, and the same media sources can be used for both online and printed outputs.
Advantage for developers | Advantage for marketers and content creators |
There’s no need to prepare a custom integration with DAM Bynder anymore. We have taken care of making the integration a part of Kentico Xperience, ready to be used with just a few clicks, saving developers the effort and thereby reducing additional costs. | Whether you manage digital assets in scale, maintain brand guidelines, or prepare print-ready templates, the Bynder integration allows you to insert any asset directly to your Kentico Xperience webpage. Instead of downloading a file from Bynder and uploading it to Xperience, you can use Bynder Selector, find the respective media in Bynder via fulltext search and assign it directly to your document. It helps content editors save lots of time and effort, especially if they’re already using Bynder. |
Making content more available with new search index
We have extended the options for searching through content in Kentico Xperience. Instead of setting up various search indexes for different document types, the New Search Index enables searching in all kinds of content, using just one index. Both structured and non-structured content are included, which makes working with Azure so much easier for developers. These flexible search capabilities also make it easier for customers to find the content they need.
Advantage for developers | Advantage for marketers and content creators |
Developers will appreciate the ability to create a single search index for all content types, as it supports Azure search. The new search index represents an out-of-the-box way to exclude repetitive parts of the index content. The smart search is based on Lucene.Net—a .NET platform port of the Java Lucene search engine—resulting in significantly better performance compared to linear SQL query search. | Administrators gain better control over the settings of search results on their websites as it’s now possible to set up the search without making changes in the code, even to a detailed extent. The new, combined index also simplifies the already existing configuration of page types, as it allows searching through structured data, as well as crawling the displayed content of pages, which saves lots of time, especially for agencies. Visitors on a website can search amongst its content by using fulltext search. |
Refining the efficiency of the .NET Core technology
Being aware of the importance of leveraging this future-proof technology, Kentico Xperience is now even more efficient when it comes to developing on .NET Core. Being one of the first DXP vendors to switch to .NET Core MVC, we keep investing in improving its functionality by adding .NET Core Debug. When developing a website, it is now possible for developers to check what is going on in the live site, what has possibly gone wrong, or what type of data is being sent there, and fix it more effectively. This makes developing on the .NET Core technology much easier as well as cost-effective.
Advantage for developers | Advantage for marketers and content creators |
.NET Core is the most modern implementation technology out there, and now it’s getting even more advanced tools that support its use. The .NET Core Debug process simplifies development by resolving performance issues. The communication between web admin and the website under construction is now enabled, giving developers the possibility to check the updates, inputs, or errors on the running site and fix them right away. | Leveraging the full potential of the .NET Core technology makes your website more future-friendly, cross-compatible, and high-performing, increasing the visitor lifespan. |
Summary of the last 10 SQL queries, requested by the live site. The total amount of displayed SQL queries can be set up in the administration.
Rounding up the cutting-edge tech-stack
More valuable additions have been included in Refresh 1, improving the platform’s functionality and preparing its users for a stable future. Namely Cache Tag Helper, Object Selector, and Legitimate interest activity logging. These technical features improve the website’s performance and facilitate more seamless digital experiences.
Leverage the full potential of Kentico Xperience 13
Once again, this Refresh is only the first one of four planned for this year. If you’re excited by the changes above and interested in what’s coming up next, make sure to keep your ear to the ground, as the next Refreshes are due in June, September, and December 2021.
Can’t wait? Want to learn more now? You can speak to an expert who will walk you through how Kentico Xperience 13 will boost your project. Regardless of whether you’re a developer or a marketer, we speak your language!