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Sitecore XM Cloud

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Sitecore is one of the leading enterprise-level content management systems, enabling web content editors and marketers to have full control over all aspects of their website from social integration and blog posts to advanced personalisation, ecommerce and more. This app focusses on the integration between Sitecore items, languages and the rest of the Blackbird ecosystem. Contrary to other Blackbird apps, in order to get up and running you need to install a custom-built plugin on your Sitecore instance.

This app is built for Sitecore XP. For Sitecore XM Cloud see this guide instead.

Before setting up

Before you can connect you need to make sure that:

  • You have access to XM Cloud Deploy, its credential management and an active Sitecore project.
  • You have access to the source code repository (Github) of a Sitecore project and the ability to configure new plugins.
  • You have downloaded the latest Blackbird Sitecore plugin package from here.

Installing the plugin

Assuming your source content repository is forked form this repo.

  1. Extract the files from package.zip
  2. Copy the 2 config files from package\files\App_Config\Include\BlackBird in the package to authoring\platform\App_Config\Include\ in the source code repository.
  3. Copy the 2 dll files from package\files\bin in the package to authoring\platform\_dlls in the source code repository.
  4. Open the XmCloudAuthoring.sln in Visual Studio (or any other .NET compatible IDE) and add references to the added .dll files in the Platform project.
  5. Also include file references to the 2 config files.

Your solution should look something like this now:

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  1. Build and/or push your code so that a redeployment is triggered.

Creating an API key

  1. Go to Content Editor.
  2. Navigate to System -> Settings -> Services -> API Keys.
  3. Insert a new API Key item.

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  1. Populate the following fields:
    • Allowed controllers: set to * or choose controllers.
    • Impersonation User: the request will be executed as this user. Sitecore admin can create users with some limitations if needed. Anonymous users will be impersonated as this user if the field value is empty.
  2. Publish the item.

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  1. Copy the Item ID (including the parentheses) - this is your key and can be used in the next steps.

Creating an XM Cloud Client

  1. In XM Cloud, go to the credentials tab.
  2. Click Create credentials and add a recognizable label.
  3. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret for next steps.

Connecting

  1. Navigate to apps and search for Sitecore XM Cloud.
  2. Click Add Connection.
  3. Name your connection for future reference e.g. ‘My Sitecore connection’.
  4. Fill in the base URL to your Sitecore instance.
  5. Fill in the API key from the Creating an API key section.
  6. Fill in the Client ID and Client Secret from the Creating an XM Cloud Client section.
  7. Click Connect.

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Actions

  • Search items finds items based on your search criteria, including last updated, created, language, path, etc.
  • Get all configured languages returns all the languages that are configured in this Sitecore instance.
  • Get item content as HTML get the content of an item represented as an HTML file so that it can be processed by NMT or TMS. You can specify which version/language should be retrieved.
  • Update item content from HTML updates the content of a specific version/language. Additionally, you can choose to always create a new version.
  • Delete item content deletes an item.
  • Get Item ID from HTML retrieves the item ID from the HTML content. When you receive translated HTML content we will add the Item ID to the header of HTML file, this action allows you to receive the Item ID from the HTML document.

Events

  • On items created triggers when new items are created.
  • On items updated triggers when any item is updated.

Example

This example shows how one could retrieve a subset of items, based on custom criteria, download these items HTML files, translate them using any NMT provider and update the translations.

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Feedback

Do you want to use this app or do you have feedback on our implementation? Reach out to us using the established channels or create an issue.