A new Sitecore Symposium has passed and as everyone expected, we received plenty of information that I will try to summarize and focus on the most interesting topics that were discussed through some sessions, Sitecore 9.3.

It comes with SIA, the Sitecore Install Assistant’s user interface guides you through the Sitecore XP Developer Workstation (XP Single) installation. Use it to review system requirements, install prerequisites, and complete the entire installation process.

Sitecore Experience Platform 9.3.0 includes

•  Sitecore Blob storage. Sitecore stores media items, such as documents or images, in a Sitecore database by default. Sitecore Blob Storage allows you to store these files in Azure Blob Storage, thereby reducing the hosting costs and improving performance.
• You can now use the Sitecore bot detection functionality to verify whether visitor is human. This removed the need for a Captcha element.
• GDPR improvements to support the right to be forgotten.

Sitecore 9.3 will release Horizon with some basic features

• Create and manage web pages
• Preview the web pages and simulate visitor experiences
• Support experience management with contextual content insights
• You will be able to extend UI and business logic
• You will see a new button on the Launchpad to execute Horizon. For now, it’s independent from Content and Experience editor

Obsoleted functionality removed from the product

• Lucene Search Provider
• Sitecore.Nvelocity
• Replaced deprecated SQL data types

xConnect Improvements

• Web tracker: session expiration batching support
• New interaction aggregation pipeline that handles batches of interactions

Experience editor improvements

• Navigation and Control bars are now enabled by default
• Introducing Sitecore.Context.PageMode.IsExploring

Sitecore AI

• Auto personalization: no need to set up user segments. Machine learning provide user segment insights from analyzed data.
• Select any components on your website to turn on Auto Personalization and the ML will drive personalization
• You can decide whether to use rules or not.

Forms

• New Confirm email and File upload elements
• Forms use platform bot detection to verify if the input is from human
• Redirect to external URL and pass form fields as URL parameters
• Publish forms from the Forms UI.

 

More information about Sitecore 9.3: https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Sitecore_Experience_Platform/93/Sitecore_Experience_Platform_93_Initial_Release.aspx

Here you can watch some online content from the last Symposium: https://symposium.sitecore.com/symposium-online