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Thinking Outside the Box - Customizing Sitecore XM Cloud

In today's digital world, businesses want customizable solutions that fit their needs. Cloud-native #saas tools become more popular, but they can be limited in customization.

However, if you approach the problems from a new angle - you'll often find even better solution. In this article I’ll explore a few tools and APIs that work with Sitecore #XM #Cloud which I found useful and more flexible than the ones in self-hosted XM or XP and share an example of the custom UI for #Sitecore Cloud.

🛠 Authoring and Management GraphQL API

The Sitecore Authoring and Management API provides a single endpoint and schema that allows you to manage your Sitecore content using GraphQL. You can use the API to perform tasks previously possible only through the Sitecore user interface. You can use the APIs to create custom authoring experiences.

What you can do with it:

  • Create new items
  • Update item fields
  • and more!

☁ XM Cloud Deploy API

XM Cloud Deploy uses a REST API to manage projects, environments, and deployments. You can use this API or the Sitecore CLI to automate XM Cloud Deploy operations.

What you can do with it:

  • Create projects
  • List recent deployments
  • Trigger new deployments

🔥 Sitecore PowerShell

The Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE) module is a Sitecore development accelerator that can drastically increase your productivity and curtail the amount of time it takes to deliver a Sitecore solution. It can be installed in your on-premise Sitecore instance and is always available in XM Cloud instances, so you can rely on it to perform massive content migrations and bulk item changes.

🕸 Sitecore Webhooks

You can create a webhook that tracks a system event or workflow action. When a tracked event occurs or a workflow action runs, Sitecore instance sends event details in an HTTP POST request to a specified endpoint.

What you can do with it:

  • Notify an external system when an item is created
  • Receive an update when the field value changes or new version is added

🚀 Ultimate Sitecore Cloud Dashboard

To showcase what is possible with the new API, I tried (with developer help) to arrange a sample dashboard that would show Sitecore Cloud resources (just XM Cloud for now) of any organization.

Not only it will pull the information from multiple APIs but also visualize the data and calculate some stats based on recent deployments. Check out sample screens below and try https://dashboard.annadomarketing.com/ to see your own data visualized! Simply launch the dashboard, click 'Authenticate' you'll see the data in a few seconds.

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🤝 Just so... you know

If you are planning a new project on XM Cloud, or need help with any of Sitecore's products (composable or good old, content editing, migration, etc.) - the author of this blog post is looking for a Digital Marketing Specialist job! Part-time or full-time, on-site in Ottawa or remotely anywhere in the world! Simply DM me on LinkedIn to get in touch.