I just wanted to share this useful snippet to find out about the Content hub version in use within your instance, just browse this url api/status/version and you will get a useful JSON with all the versions in use within your content hub

I have recently been more involved with Sitecore Content Hub and I just wanted to share a few tips that maybe useful within the troubleshooting of SSOM
2. Debug your ACS
if you are in the scenario that you can login using SSO but you are missing the correct credentials on Content Hub you may need to review the claims issued by your SAML provider for the SSO, the simpler way is to get your /sso/Acs page from your browser console and review the SAML token that should look like:
SAMLResponse=PHNhbWxwOlJlc3BvbnNlIHhtbG5zOnNhbWxwPSJ1cm46b2FzaXM6bmFtZXM6dGM6U0FNTDoyLjA6cHJvdG9jb2wiIElEPSJfM2I2ZjZlYjhhNDZmOTY5MzUzNDAiICBJblJlc3BvbnNlVG89ImlkNGYzNzVjOGQ5MmY3NDcwN2I3M2Q2OTZkNTcxMTVlMzYiICBWZXJzaW9uPSIyLjAiIElzc3VlSW5zdGFudD0iMjAyMS0xMS0zMFQxNTo1NjoxNC4xNTZaIiAgRGVzdGluYXRpb249Imh0dHBzOi8vaWtlYS1wLTAwMS5zaXRlY29yZWNvbnRlbnRodWIuY2xvdWQvc3NvL0FjcyI%2BPHNhbWw6SXNzdWVyIHhtbG5zOnNhbWw9InVybjpvYXNpczpuYW1lczp0YzpTQU1MOjIuMDphc3NlcnRpb24iPnVybjppbmdrYS1pY293LXByb2QuZXUuYXV0aDAuY29tPC9zYW1sOklzc3Vlcj48c2FtbHA6U3RhdH
this can be easily decoded using tools such as: https://www.samltool.com/decode.php
and the response should look like
<samlp:Response xmlns:samlp="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol" ID="_3b6f6eb8a46f96935340" InResponseTo="id4f375c8d92f74707b73d696d57115e36" Version="2.0" IssueInstant="2021-11-30T15:56:14.156Z" Destination="https://YOURINstance.sitecorecontenthub.cloud/sso/Acs"><saml:Issuer xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion">urn:SSOISSUEREntity.auth0.com</saml:Issuer><samlp:Status><samlp:StatusCode Value="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:status:Success"/></samlp:Status>
I have noticed that even if Analytics and tracking are turned off and Sitecore is used only as Content Management, all the SOLR indexes are still in place and in some circumstances, your Sitecore CM instance can have a performance hit related to SOLR…
In this tip I am sharing a snippet to disable the SOLR indexes that are effectively not required in case you are using only CM functionalities of Sitecore…
Here I have put together the key take away from Sitecore symposium 2021
Sitecore vision
Composable DXP:
Sitecore Send – MooSend
SitecoreOrderCloud: Four51
Sitecore CDP & Sitecore Personalize: Boxever
Sitecore Search: Reflektion
Sitecore Roadmap for the coming year
Sitecore Developer portal has been launched https://developers.sitecore.com/
Sitecore Symphony – Frontend as a Service big news for modern Sitecore developers!
Sitecore search coming in Spring 2022
Sitecore 10.2 has been released in november: https://doc.sitecore.com/en/developers/102/what’s-new/what-s-new-in-sitecore-experience-platform-10-2.html
in case you are not aware and you want to find when a package or installation module was installed in Sitecore, there is a secret path for you in the core database
sitecore/system/packages/installation history
here you will find a list of who has installed what and when… note that if the package was installed as part of the ARM template this may be missing in the history….
In case you are running you Sitecore instance in an Azure WebApp this is an essential trick to configure correctly the backup of your webApp for CD and CM server
As you probably are aware Sitecore FileSystem backup works pretty well but obviously if the folder to backup is too big, you may have some issue backing up and restoring your app.
Therefore my golden trick is to configure the backup filter for your web site excluding the following folders using _backup.filter in the root of your site, here the list of folders to exclude in most of the scenarios on CD & CM instances:
in case you want to explore further options for your backup of the webapp this documentation explain all the additional settings
Sometime Coveo hidden behind SOLR errors… one issue that I have found is the following one:
Could not find add method: AddIndex when loading my sitecore instance
Everything points to an unexplained SOLR error but in reality I still had to configure Coveo and that’s why was throwing random errors….
The secret to fix this issue is to temporarily disable Coveo with the following appsettings in web.config <add key=”coveo:define” value=”disabled”/>
once I disabled Coveo, Sitecore instance will load and I can proceed with Coveo Modules installation and configuration…
One of the big news within Sitecore 10 is the support for ASP.NET core Rendering SDK for dotnet core 3.1 (note that in November MS released .net 5 and hopefully Sitecore will update the support and starting kit for .net 5
Sitecore released a starter kit and I would suggest to check the following links to get you started with the environment configuration:
Anyway I wanted to give a simple explanation and breakdown of the ModelBoundView component that is the equivalent of the classic MVC ViewRendering exploring all the elements required to get your first ModelBoundView working.
Typically you would use a ModelBoundview when you want to bind simple content to a frontend component without having any specific backend/data composition logic but you envision a straight mapping between Sitecore Items and a cshtml view…
Code elements required within the asp.net core solution:
here you can see two example of syntax asp-for and sc-text in action
important elements within the startup.cs
Sitecore elements
data Template
Rendering creation using Json Rendering Template
rendering datasource configuration:
Content Item
Assigning the rendering to the Item
rendering datasource configuration
Layout Service
in case you need to trouble shoot having a look at the layout service is always a good idea http://sc10nsc.dev.local/sitecore/api/layout/render/jss?item=/&sc_apikey={xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx}
if you were wondering how it looks like:
further reference to the Sitecore documentation and sample project:
https://github.com/Sitecore/Helix.Examples/tree/master/examples/helix-basic-aspnetcore
https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/100/developer-tools/en/sitecore-asp-net-rendering-sdk.html
This is a very simple but very important tip that I would recommend almost in all Sitecore PAAS implementation that I have worked on…
Unfortunately Azure OOTB does not enable the backup of your Azure WebApp, that means that if you delete some files or break something within your deployments, there is not an easy way to get back in time and restore it the files that you have changed.
My recommendation is to enable the Backup functionality of CD & CM web apps so that you can always easily restore a copy back in time in case something goes wrong.
The Backup will cover the entire FileSytem of your webApp therefore all the original Sitecore solutions + all the config files + All the deployed assets
You can either backup on demand or backup on the schedule, the schedule option or take a backup before deployment is my recommendation
This tips is required in the case you have multiple instances of your web app and it will prevent Azure bringing into the load balancer the cold instances until the cold instances have been warmed up and ready to serve traffic effectively..
Application Initialization was introduced few years ago with IIS 8 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/iis/configuration/system.webserver/applicationinitialization/
but it is surprising to see that not all the website hosted on Azure use this useful feature…