Episerver features - September 2016
What was Episerver doing during the summer of 2016? This page summarizes new features added in updates 116 through 127 of the Episerver platform, including the general release of Commerce's Campaign and Discount feature (including many new discounts), the release of Forms 3, and several new technical changes for CMS developers. Check out all of the new features below.
Note: Updates are cumulative, so the latest update includes previous ones.
What is new for..?
Features for Commerce users
The campaign and discount features listed below became available since the spring release.
Campaigns and promotions: General availability release
This marks release of the new Campaign and Discount system, including previously-released discount types. Prerelease tags on related APIs are removed, declaring them as stable (subject to semantic versioning).
Campaigns: Preview images for discount types
Added preview images for built-in promotion types.
New built-in discounts:
- Spend [currency amount] and receive a [discount] on selected items
Shopper gets discount off selected items if total order value exceeds a threshold. - Spend [currency amount] and receive selected gift items
- Shopper can get one or more gift items if the order value exceeds a threshold.
- Buy [N] quantity from multiple content reference and receive free shipping
Buy a minimum number of items to get free shipping. You determine which shipping methods are eligible. - Spend [currency amount] and receive free shipping
Spend a minimum amount of money to get free shipping. You determine which shipping methods are eligible. - Buy [N] quantity from multiple content reference and get a [discount] for every selected item
Buy at least the specified quantity from a selection of products, and get a discount on every item. - Buy [N] quantity from multiple content reference and get the most expensive item for free
Buy at least specified quantity from a selection of products, and get the most expensive item for free.
Note: You cannot use both the old and new Campaign systems at the same time.
For information, see the Campaigns feature in the Episerver User Guide.
Features for Find users
Improved Swedish stemming
A new dictionary and dictionary stemmer have been added for Swedish, providing a more precise selection of relevant search hits.
Features for add-on users
New add-ons
- Marketing automation connector for Episerver Forms
A new marketing automation connector for Episerver Forms has been released. It lets you use the following Episerver marketing automation connectors with Episerver Forms 3: Eloqua, ExactTarget, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Pardot, Salesforce, and Silverpop.
Updated add-ons
- Episerver Forms
Episerver Forms has been updated. See section Episerver Forms in the Episerver User Guide for information and examples about creating forms on your website.
Features for CMS developers
Explicit (null) fallback behavior to LocalizationService
A fallback behavior for the LocalizationService has been added that makes the service return null (rather than an empty string), if a missing resource is requested. In a future major release, this behavior will replace the current method of passing in null as the fallback string.
Improved validation system
Improved validation system to include context (save action, etc.). A new state, AwaitingApproval, and content locking API in preparation for approval functionality. The Episerver CMS Developer Guide will be updated later, when more parts are available.
Support for .NET Diagnostics Tracing in Azure Web Apps
Adds a built-in logger for writing log messages from the Episerver Log API to .NET Diagnostics Trace. The logger can be used in Azure Web Apps without making changes to the application. See Logging to learn how to enable this trace logger via an app setting.
The following classes were changed to reduce chatty-ness:
- ContentProvider
- ConnectionContext
- DBDataStoreProvider
- DynamicDataSerializer
- EventMessageValidator
- EventProviderService
- HttpRuntimeCache
- InitializeEngine
- LanguageSegment
- ModuleFinder
- OptimisticCache
- ScheduledJob
- SchedulerService
- SqlDatabaseHandler
ASP.NET Identity support
See Episerver CMS UI AspNetIdentity OWIN authentication in the Episerver CMS Developer Guide.
A public API for navigating back in the context history
A new API lets developers clear the current context and return to the previous context. See section "ContextHistory and navigating back to previous context" in Context-sensitive components in the Episerver CMS Developer Guide.
Features for Commerce developers
Quicksilver updated to Commerce 9
Support for Episerver Find 12
Campaigns and discounts: New order API
Can use order system abstractions and new order APIs without needing workflows or order implementations.
Campaigns and discounts functionality no longer in Beta
This marks release of the new Campaign and Discount system, including previously-released discount types. Prerelease tags on related APIs are removed, declaring them as stable (subject to semantic versioning).
Discount types can be hidden
You can prevent marketers from creating certain types of discounts by determining which discount types appear on the Edit Discount view. To do so, use the PromotionTypeHandler class, which provides methods to hide discounts on the Edit Discount view. For details, see Show/hide promotion types in the Episerver Commerce Developer guide.
Features for add-on developers
Episerver Forms
Forms 3 is released.
New features:
- Form can be submitted asynchronously in Ajax mode.
- Built-in jQuery updated to the latest version.
- Built-in WebHook changed the format of JSON data.
- Modules-files should not be installed into non-web projects.
- An abstraction was added to EPiServerFormsSection.Instance.
- New abstract dependency injection of StructureMap used in Core 9.5.
See release information and Breaking changes for details.
New Forms Marketing automation connector
A new marketing automation connector for Episerver Forms has been released. It lets marketers use the following Episerver marketing automation connectors with Episerver Forms 3: Eloqua, ExactTarget, HubSpot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Pardot, Salesforce, and Silverpop.
Updated add-ons
- Episerver Languages 2 - see breaking changes.
The following connectors have been updated with support for the new Forms Marketing automation connector:
- Episerver Connect for Marketing Automation
- Eloqua
- ExactTarget
- HubSpot
- Marketo
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM
- Pardot
- Salesforce
- Silverpop
Third-party add-ons
- New Lionbridge Connector for Episerver Commerce.
Related information
Last updated: Sep 05, 2016
