Sitecore 9 Forms – Google reCAPTCHA form element

nikkipunjabi 24 Comments

Hello Sitecorians,

Hope you’re playing around with Sitecore 9 and with the newly introduced cool features in it. Recently, I’ve been exploring Sitecore Forms and implemented the Google Re-captcha form element within the Sitecore forms. Re-captcha is the basic requirement for the form submission process and in order to implement this, we’ve to write some code to it.

Before you go through with this post in detail, you must know the basics of Sitecore Forms.

We will go through step by step process to implement the Google Recaptcha with Sitecore Forms using the custom form element. And will create a generic component which you can use for any other form as well.

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Remove Sitecore Personalization Rules in Bulk

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

Hello Sitecorians,

Do you need to remove the Personalization Rules for many items in bulk or you would like to learn about that on how to do that quickly? If yes then you are at right place. 🙂

Recently there was a requirement to add personalization throughout the site. So the team did that at the template level for the required pages. But they didn’t want that for the specific node and all it’s child items and wanted to keep that away from all personalization and also it will never be applied to that items. There were approx. 1000+ items, so if they remove it manually for each item — it will take ample amount of time. In order to save the time we created a utility that will do the job in few minutes.

We need the following:

  • Parent Item ID – So that we can iterate through all the child items
  • Rendering/Sub-layout ID
  • Data-Source Value – If you would like to add/update

Let me explain to you what I did in above code.

  1. Get the default device from Sitecore
  2. Iterate through all the child items
  3. Proceed further if an item has any rendering assigned to it
  4. Proceed further if an item has the required rendering, if not then continue with next item
  5. Get the layout definition and the device
  6. Get the rendering and remove all the rules
  7. Save the changes

This is the quickest and easiest solution I found, as there was no Sitecore Powershell installed. If you know any other better solution then do comment below.

Happy Sitecoring!

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Add Sitecore Rendering in Bulk

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

Hey Sitecorians,

Hope you’re doing well with Sitecore.

Many a time we need an option to have some utility that will do the job easily and save the time for the content team to get things done faster and take the bunch out of the plate. One such requirement was for adding the sub-layout/rendering in bulk. I quickly built a utility that will do the job easier for the content team.

A simple utility that will do the following:

  1. Add Rendering
  2. Assign placeholder key to a newly added rendering
  3. Add appropriate data-source value

The utility will ask for the following:

  1. Parent-item ID
  2. Template ID – Which items, defined from the given template need to have the rendering.
  3. Rendering ID
  4. Data-Source Value
  5. Placeholder Key

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Sitecore and GatherContent Integration Overview

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

The only reason people visit your website is for content. You have it; they want it.

Content plays a vital role on the website. Thus, when designing a website, we have to ensure that every silver of content – from microscopic blocks of text to enormous banner images and everything in between – is included.

Every website will try to have a rich content, which engages user to read. It will be packed with thousands of words, images, and interactions. How do we ensure that when a new website launch, it’s filled with right content in the right places?

GatherContent – that’s how.

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Sitecore SXA | How to Export, Update and Import a Web Design with Creative Exchange

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

Sitecore SXA (Sitecore Experience Accelerator) is the buzzword nowadays in the Sitecore World. The Sitecore Experience Accelerator provides reusable, templated UX layouts and components to help you get up and running quickly. One of the important features of Sitecore SXA is Creative Exchange, which is helpful for executing the development and designing process to be done in parallel. The Creative Exchange process is designed to facilitate several different teams working on a website. For example, the team that is working on the theme of the site can work in parallel with other teams.

In this post, I will go through the step by step process to show you how to export, change the color of the text and then import back in Sitecore with the Creative Exchange.

I installed:

Create New Site

Create new site – I’m creating a new Sitecore site called sxasite. 

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Schedule Publishing Items in Sitecore

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

Hello Sitecorians,

You can now easily configure Sitecore Items for Scheduled Publishing using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions. PowerShell has a great Power. It saves developer life a lot by providing the way of Integrated Scripting Environment and without Web Deployment, you can execute the script on the different environments easily.

Schedule Publishing Items – A Sitecore MarketPlace Module 🙂

Schedule Publishing Items

It allows you to set the following options:

  • Items To Publish
  • Date and Time
  • Publishing Target
  • Publishing Language
  • Publish subitems

On date-time arrival – once the scheduled task is executed the script will start publishing items if the values are selected properly.

Make sure item is not in workflow and is allowed to publish, otherwise it won’t be published.

This module has following Items:

1) PowerShell Script – /sitecore/system/Modules/PowerShell/Script Library/Schedule Publishing Items/Internal/ISE Plugins/Scheduled Publish
2) Schedule Task: /sitecore/system/Tasks/Schedules/Schedule Publishing Items
3) Template Configuration: /sitecore/templates/Modules/Scheduled Item Publish/Schedule Items
4) Configured Item for Scheduled Publishing: /sitecore/system/Modules/Schedule Publishing Items/Schedule Items_DD-MM-YYYY

You can create any number of configured items for publishing at – /sitecore/system/Modules/Schedule Publishing Items/

Schedule Items_DD-MM-YYYY — This is just a sample item without properly selected values. You just need to add the values properly and Enable the checkbox for publishing at Scheduled Time.

Scheduled Publish Item

There is an option to disable an item or delete an item once publishing is done so that it should never process next time when the scheduler looks for the scheduled publishing task. If you do not select to disable an item after publishing is done and do not select to delete an item then it will execute every time the scheduler check for schedule items to publish as the time is passed away.

Note: The script will execute, once the scheduler starts scheduling jobs. The default time is 10 minutes, so every 10 minutes system will check for scheduled publishing. Therefore, while setting the time you need to be aware of the scheduled task execution time. Refer below in your config. If you have changed the value then it will work accordingly.

<!– An agent that processes scheduled tasks embedded as items in the master database. –>
<agent type=”Sitecore.Tasks.DatabaseAgent” method=”Run” interval=”00:10:00″ name=”Master_Database_Agent”>
<param desc=”database”>master</param>
<param desc=”schedule root”>/sitecore/system/tasks/schedules</param>
<LogActivity>true</LogActivity>
</agent>

PowerShell will to your scheduled publishing.

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And you can enjoy your weekend.

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Happy Scheduling! 🙂

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Publish Bulk Items in Sitecore using Sitecore Powershell Extensions

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

Every Sitecore site will have a different set of requirement and one of the requirement could be Publish Bulk Items in Sitecore. If you have the same requirement then you are at right place. 🙂

Publish Bulk Items In Sitecore

 

This post is in accordance with my previous two posts:

  1. Export Sitecore Items
  2. Update Sitecore Items

This might be the case for your requirement, first Export Sitecore Items, then it could be Update Sitecore Items in bulk and then I’m sure there would be the third one to Publish Sitecore Items in Bulk.

I’ve written Sitecore Powershell script which would do the job easier. In Update Sitecore Items — I provided the sample file, the same file you can use for Bulk Publish.

Sample CSV File: pt_Publish_Sitecore_Items (I generally prefix the file with language so that we know which language version items are getting published)

Below script will first ask the user for the CSV File. Then it will ask for Target Database to publish Sitecore Items — The reason for providing this option is because every Sitecore site have the staging environment and it’s always better to verify the changes. So you can accordingly select the target database and after verifying you can push it Live. Once processing is done file will be deleted. Publish Mode is set to Smart.

Note, Sample CSV File has two important columns which are required by this script, ItemPath and Language — Items will be published in the provided language.

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Remove Sitecore Item Language Versions

nikkipunjabi Leave a comment

In Multilingual Site, Content Authors many times create duplicate items or copy items and in that case, all the versions of the items are getting copied. And they want to remove the language versions in bulk so that no wrong language version with wrong data gets published live.

If you are implementing and looking for the quick solution, see below code:

If content authors are working on many items and if they remove language versions manually then for each it will take hours of them to get it done. This tool will help content authors to remove the unnecessary language versions from the Sitecore Items in few seconds/minutes.

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Update Sitecore Items using Sitecore PowerShell with CSV Data

nikkipunjabi 8 Comments

Hello Sitecorians,

 

Are you looking for quick and easy way to update Sitecore Items — Sitecore PowerShell does that job very easily.

 

In my previous blog — I provided the PowerShell script/module by which you can export data using Sitecore PowerShell Extensions. If you see that script/file properly – First two header rows are “ItemPath” and “Language“. These columns are required for the below script to update the data. I’ve kept the language column as required for this because I work on Sitecore Site having more than 10 languages and in that case, we need language option so that correct language version gets updated. And other header rows in the file are the field names. Once I have exported the data in CSV – do the required updates in Excel and import the same file using below script. It will import updated data back to Sitecore Items.

 

I referred a couple of blogs for importing CSV File and in all, we have to provide the Path for the file but for providing the path, that file should reside on the server. So I looked for some other way around and found an easy way to upload the file, process it and then delete it. Let me know if you have any other ideas/suggestions for it.

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Export Sitecore Item Data using Sitecore PowerShell

nikkipunjabi 2 Comments

I heard a lot about Sitecore PowerShell – it’s the great tool and one of the best module on Sitecore Marketplace. Also the most downloaded module crossing SIM. One fine day I was installing SXA, that also said — Before you install the SXA package, please make sure that you have installed: Sitecore PowerShell extensions (full 4.5 for Sitecore 8) from https://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/S/Sitecore_PowerShell_console.aspx. Then I started exploring PowerShell from the Video Series by Michael West on YouTube. These are awesome videos to learn and understand Sitecore PowerShell. And once you have viewed the videos, after that when you look at the script, you will easily understand it. For every Sitecore Developer, it’s worth exploring Sitecore PowerShell. You’ll really like and enjoy with it. You won’t open Visual Studio to code, you will only open Sitecore for scripting – as it says – Sitecore PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment).

 

Export Sitecore Items Data — We are using this tool a lot to give the reports or data to the client, created in a .aspx file – It was written by my friend. And then I modified it based on requirements. After exploring PowerShell. I thought to implement it in PowerShell. And it got ready in couple of hours as I knew how to work with Sitecore PowerShell 😉

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