Author: Jason St-Cyr
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xConnect – Delete inactive Contacts from xDB
Starting with the Sitecore 9.2 release, the xConnect API added new API functions to delete information from the xDB. This allows you to make sure your data is cleaner, more relevant, and not costing you unnecessary data storage fees. Want to read more? Full blog on the Sitecore community site!…
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Building Trust – Have you been kind today?
Bringing kindness to marketing and developer relations sounds like something that couldn’t possibly work in a hyper-competitive business world, where we value “crushing the competition” and “winning at all costs”. However, consumers are tired of that, they are tired of the shouting, the constant pushing. They want it to be…
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#SitecoreSYM 2019 – Be a Better Neighbor
Come see me on Wednesday, November 6th, at 10:30am to learn about building your personal brand trust! Be a Better Neighbor
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Sitecore Symposium 2019 – So you think you can DevOps?
This year at Sitecore Symposium we launched a new DevOps track, with two rooms of sessions delivering what you need for day-to-day tactical solutions, but also bigger-picture, strategic guidance. Do you want to know how to deploy your code with Azure DevOps? We got you covered. Or maybe you are…
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Building Trust – Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?
When we were little kids, we were taught that we should always tell the truth. Never lie, that’s not the right thing to do! Nobody will trust what you say. Always telling the truth sounds great on the surface, but as we grow up we learn that things are not…
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Trust – The Power of Being a Better Neighbour
I took my first attempt trying out the blog editing on both dev.to and on Medium with my thoughts around advocacy, Developer Relations, and being kind! Read the full article on dev.to
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xConnect Upgrade to 9.2 – Where did the web request handlers go?
Recently, I needed to update my xConnect Tutorial from 9.0 to 9.2 so I could start looking at the new data purge API (more on that another day). I figured it should be an easy enough upgrade, my tutorial wasn’t doing anything complicated. Just some basic Create Contact or Register Interaction stuff. So, I…
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Are you ready for the MongoDB 3.4 EOL?
If you are running Sitecore version 8.2.x, you are running MongoDB 3.4. Unfortunately, that also means you are impacted by the announcement by MongoDB that version 3.4 will reach end-of-life in January 2020. You have some options on how you want to fix this and it sort of depends on…
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Soul in the Machine – Can we avoid the Google Duplex outrage in Conversational AI development?
This is Part 5 in the Soul in the Machine series. In the Soul in the Machine series, I will be delving into our collective responsibility to ensure that computing systems are treating users fairly and responsibly. Specifically, I will be raising the ethical questions around current trends such as data privacy…
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Tiny tips for speakers
With our Sitecore Virtual Developer Day just wrapped, and more speaking events around the corner, I was thinking back to some tips I provided for speakers right before Sitecore Symposium 2018. Here they are, in one place, for you to find if you ever need them! PPTX files are…
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Preparing for AI-driven customer experiences
Digital marketers today are caught in the middle of a huge digital transition. Behind them lie the old, slow, and manual methods of creating content, connecting with customers, tracking engagement, and measuring the results. Ahead of them is the promise of the brave new intelligence-enabled world, teeming with possibilities—task automation, massive-scale…
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Soul in the Machine – Combatting Unconscious Bias
This is Part 4 in the Soul in the Machine series. In the Soul in the Machine series, I will be delving into our collective responsibility to ensure that computing systems are treating users fairly and responsibly. Specifically, I will be raising the ethical questions around current trends such as data privacy…
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Preparing your CMS infrastructure for traffic spikes
We’re living in the days of “going viral.” Consumers move faster than ever, and businesses need to be ready to respond to sudden demand the moment it arrives—or risk losing out to competitors. The right endorsement from the right person can generate global exposure and cause unprecedented numbers of people…
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I hate best practices and so do you
NOTE: This article first appeared in 2016 on the nonlinearcreations.com blog and was migrated to Valtech’s blog. “What would you say are the best practices for [your thing here]?” I’m about to slam my head into my keyboard, but I restrain myself. It’s a simple enough question and I probably have…
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Mitigating CMS implementation risk
Prior to joining Sitecore as a Technical Evangelist, I worked as a consultant on many projects implementing Sitecore in various types of scenarios. The implementation is where things can really start to heat up! The stakes are high. More than that, implementation projects can also be long, costly, and susceptible to error,…
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Soul in the Machine – Top AI/ML Orgs and Unconscious Bias
This is Part 3 in the Soul in the Machine series. In the Soul in the Machine series, I will be delving into our collective responsibility to ensure that computing systems are treating users fairly and responsibly. Specifically, I will be raising the ethical questions around current trends such as…
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Soul in the Machine – Building with Integrity
This is Part 2 in the Soul in the Machine series. In the Soul in the Machine series, I will be delving into our collective responsibility to ensure that computing systems are treating users fairly and responsibly. Specifically, I will be raising the ethical questions around current trends such as…
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10 Content Editor Features for your new CMS
When looking at content management systems, there are several features that you need to look at for your content authors. The content editing team spends most of the time in the system, so they will be your number one customer of the CMS. This third article in the series covers…
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Building the business case for a new CMS
The second part of a new series on choosing the right CMS system has published on the Sitecore blog! This second article focuses on the business case you will need to put together to get the approval for getting that new CMS. Read more on sitecore.com…
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Soul in the Machine – Benevolent Guardians of Personal Data
This is Part 1 in the Soul in the Machine series. In the Soul in the Machine series, I will be delving into our collective responsibility to ensure that computing systems are treating users fairly and responsibly. Specifically, I will be raising the ethical questions around current trends such as…
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Warning signs you might need a new CMS
The first part of a new series on choosing the right CMS system has published on the sitecore.com site! This first article delves into some of the reasons you might be thinking you need a new CMS, and some other situations where you might be okay to just incrementally improve…
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Getting started with Sitecore Marketing Automation
With the latest Sitecore 9 release, a completely new Marketing Automation tool is available for users to quickly plan and extend their automation activities with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Also, a new fully-scalable engine architecture is now available so that you can make sure to process new activities as quickly…
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Evangelist Year One – a Retrospective
Just over one year ago, I wrote about a big change in my career as I joined the Sitecore Technical Marketing team to work as the North American Technical Evangelist. Over the last 12 months, a lot has happened, and in typical agile fashion I’m looking back at what has been…
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Sitecore 9 xDB Sharding
Have you ever wondered what is going on with those new Shard databases in Sitecore 9? This is the new xDB! The new Shard Manager stores data based on the contact ID. A contact ID is a GUID identifier that is unique for each contact. It looks something like this:…
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New Microsoft Planner Due Date Notifications
A short while ago I wrote about our team’s initial adoption of Microsoft Planner. At the time, we were having issues with the due dates feature because there seemed to be no way to view our schedule. A few months later, we ran into another issue with due dates. The…
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Scaling Sitecore 9.0 XP Services
The blog here has been a little quiet lately as I have started moving to creating content on the corporate site. I wanted to share something I worked on and has been posted on the Community blogs. Here you go: Scaling Sitecore xConnect and XP Services architecture In the linked blog…
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Continuous Improvement for Sitecore DevOps
Did you miss out on my Montreal SUG presentation a few weeks back? Not to worry, I got your back! I recorded a run-through of my presentation and uploaded it so you can hear my thoughts on how we can continuously improve and invest in DevOps practices for our Sitecore…
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Microsoft Planner – The task tracker we deserve
For years, I have been a dedicated user of Trello as you may have seen in some blog posts. Recently, however, my team has been using O365 and Microsoft Teams in an effort to push Teams to its limit and get the most out of the integrations Microsoft has put…
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Sitecore + SOLR + SSL
When you are doing local Sitecore development, you might need to setup a local SOLR instance to host your indexes. This is especially important if your project isn’t using Lucene indexes in production and you need to replicate the environment. When replicating production for troubleshooting, it is also useful to…
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Continuous Improvement for Customer Engagement
Sitecore’s Customer Experience Maturity Model has been around for a while and it is still as relevant today as it was when it was first released. The model helps a team to understand where they are right now and where they could possibly be with customer engagement. However, it isn’t…
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Managing feature flags with LaunchDarkly
I had the chance to work the Sitecore booth at MSBuild in Seattle last week and took the opportunity to walk around and meet some of the other partners in the Hub. A lot of folks are doing cool things, but one that caught my eye was the work being done…
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Meet Sitecore at MSBuild 2017 conference!
This year, Sitecore will be exhibiting at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle. This will be my first time attending the conference and I look forward to getting the chance to meet so many of the developers in our industry! I have been working with the team to put together…
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A new challenge with an old friend
Today I embark upon a brand new journey in my career. Excitement. Trepidation. Giddiness? Perhaps! Part of me is sad to leave my Nonlinear family behind, but I am so very excited about the opportunity to join Sitecore as a Technical Evangelist starting today. That’s right, no more MVP for…
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Using Epics to drive a fixed-price backlog
You probably read the title and said to yourself: “Epic: you keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you thinks it means”. It is true. The fixed-price agile backlog exists. Now, if you are lucky enough to have never faced such a beast, then I bow…
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Speaking this week at Toronto SUG
On Wednesday evening I’ll be visiting Toronto to speak about all the buzz about Sitecore and Azure. You should come on out and say hello! JOIN US to learn about #Sitecore #Azure Deployment and Personalized Promotions on March 29th https://t.co/xUWYgecT6Y pic.twitter.com/639giWwvnm — Nonlinear Digital (@nonlinear_DIG) March 23, 2017 To get…
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The Sitecore Shibboleth Login module – SSO one header at a time
When you start using Sitecore as an intranet you inevitably must face the identity management scenario: where are the users who are visiting the intranet going to be stored? In most established organizations, a centralized identity management system is already in place. For a recent project, I came across the…
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A first look at IBM Bluemix
On Thursday evening, I got my first taste of this hip and happening Internet of Things (IoT) by attending a workshop at the Ottawa IBM campus organized by Hacking Health Ottawa. The workshop was centered on getting folks ready for a hackathon coming up in April where we will focus on…
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Sitecore 8.2 ProtectedImageLinkRenderer throws “Length cannot be less than zero” exception
I ran into this particular bug when upgrading a client to Sitecore 8.2 update 2. Whenever a RichText block had both a link to a media document (like a PDF) and an anchor with no HREF the processing pipelines that update the HREF links would blow up. For those who…
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Sitecore announces 2017 MVPs
With a new year upon us, the time has come again: Sitecore has announced the 2017 MVPS! I was again honoured to see my name on the list for the fourth year in a row. You can see the full list of 2017 MVPs on the Sitecore MVP site. There are also…
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Trello acquired by Atlassian
If you use Trello (and there are more than 19 million of us that do) you have probably heard about the acquisition of Trello by Atlassian. While Trello will essentially still be what it is today, the team behind Trello now has some serious R&D backing. As somebody who uses the…
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Twelfth day of Christmas… Deployment memes!
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… twelve Deployment memes! …eleven blogs a-plenty, ten women of Sitecore, nine sessions of training, eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Last year I brought you an installment…
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Eleventh day of Christmas… Blogs A-Plenty!
On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… eleven re-blogged posts! …ten women of Sitecore, nine sessions of training, eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. As a fun twist, each post has…
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Tenth day of Christmas… Women of Sitecore
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… ten women of Sitecore! …nine sessions of training, eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Nick Wesselman said it well in his post asking…
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Ninth day of Christmas… Sessions of Training
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… nine sessions of training! …eight tweets a-tweeting, seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Throughout 2016, Akshay Sura and Mike Reynolds have been bringing unofficial Sitecore…
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Eighth day of Christmas… Tweets a-tweeting!
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… eight tweets a-tweeting! …seven VSTS features, six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. With this blog, I’d like to bring back some of the tweets I liked in 2016 to…
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Seventh day of Christmas… VSTS features in 2016
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… seven Team Services features! …six GIFS a-dancing, five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. If you have been using Visual Studio Team Services, you know that Microsoft regularly releases new functionality to…
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Sixth day of Christmas… Animated GIFs!
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Six GIFs a-dancing! …five Golden Rules! Four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. SIDE BAR: I don’t care what the creator of the acronym says, it’s pronounced with a hard G… I like my Gifs…
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Fifth Day of Christmas… 5 Golden Rules
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Five Golden Rules! …four Community Sites, three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Last year I provided a list of golden rules for DevOps and this year we tackle golden rules for continuous delivery!
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Fourth day of Christmas… Community Sites
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true blog gave to me… Four Community Sites! .. three Maturity Models, two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Community Docs Built by the community, this documentation covers everything from MVC to xDB to SPEAK: https://sitecore-community.github.io/docs/ Sitecore Community Forums Built by Sitecore,…
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Third day of Christmas… Maturity Models!
On the third day of Christmas my true blog gave to me… three maturity models! .. two Sitecore PaaS features, and Sitecore in a NuGet feed. Customer Experience Maturity Model Sitecore released a maturity model a while back to guide organizations through the various stages of engaging a customer. Great for seeing…
St-Cyr Thoughts 