Bill Cava provides a timeline of significant features and improvements made to Ektron over the past four years and helps you understand how upgrading can help you get your job done, faster with more control and less effort

1. Don't Let Your User Experience Fall Short
Upgrade to v8.6
Bill, Cava, Chief Evangelist
@billcava

2. Why Upgrade to v8.6?

3. Major Release Themes
Ektron for …
• Content Managers
• Ektron for Marketers
• Ektron for Developers
Improving user efficiency and productivity
Improving performance and system architecture

4. Release Chronology – 3 Years
8.0 Released – September 2009
8.02 – October 2010
8.5 Released – September 2011
8.6 Released – June 2012
8.6 SP1 – September 2012

5. Workarea User Experience
V8.0 HIGHLIGHTS

10. What you didn’t like…
• Extra paragraph tags being added
• Disappearing images
• Font tags messing with the code
• Images moving to the top
• Copy paste not working
• Major issues found in the editor
http://dev.ektron.com/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=33368

12. Other v8.0 Highlights
Marketing Tools
– In-Content Analytics
– Content Targeting
– Multivariate Testing
Architectural Improvements
• Calendars become first class content

13. The Developer Release
V8.5 HIGHLIGHTS

15. Ektron 8.5 for Developers:
Productivity
• Ektron Framework API .Net Framework
– .Net 4.0 Support
• Ektron Framework UI
introduced in v8.5
• XSLT No Longer Needed
• Microsoft® Visual Using the Framework
Studio® Web API and LINQ in 8.5,
Application projects the solution would
– Web Site Projects require less than five
lines of C# code. Vs.
– Web Application Projects
100 in XSLT.
– Single Assembly

16. Framework API
• Comprehensive Framework
• Guiding Principles
• Discoverability
• Consistency
• Simplicity
• Fundamentally changes how you develop
your website
• Improve Developer Efficiency & Productivity
• Do more with less code
• Reduce complexity
• Less code means reduced risk

17. element #1: framework managers
• Look for Framework Managers in the Framework
Namespace
Ektron.Cms.Framework
• Managers are responsible for performing all
CRUD operations
–
–
–
–
–

18. element #2: data class
• Look for Data Classes in the Cms Namespace
Ektron.Cms
• Every Manager has an associated Data Class it
works with:
–
–

19. example – contentdata class
using Ektron.Cms.Framework;
using Ektron.Cms;
ContentManager contentManager = new
ContentManager();
ContentData contentItem = new ContentData();
contentItem.Title = "Hello, Webinar";
contentItem.Html = "<p>Hello, Again</p>";
contentItem.FolderId = 87;
contentManager.Add(contentItem);

20. example – folderdata class
using Ektron.Cms.Framework;
using Ektron.Cms;
FolderManager folderManager = new
FolderManager();
FolderData folderItem= new FolderData();
folderItem.Name = "Hello, Folder";
folderItem.Description = "Hello Folder";
folderItem.ParentId = 0;
folderManager.Add(folderItem);

21. element #3: criteria object
• Argument to GetList(Criteria criteria)
• Look In Namespace
Ektron.Cms.Common
• Criteria object used to:
– Specify characteristics of the items returned
– Restrict the number of items returned
– Sort the data set

22. element #3: criteria object
• Get list of content items from a folder
– Published by a particular user
– Authored after a specified date
• Sort and Order results
• Set a limit on the number of results returned
• Page through results
• Apply additional Filters and Group using LINQ

23. Templated Server Controls
• Fully Control the Markup
Output of Ektron 8.5 .NET
Controls
• Style output of controls as
needed
USER INTERFACE CONTROLS
• Rapidly Construct User
Interfaces
• Bridge the gap
between jQuery and
.NET

25. 8.5 Search
• Microsoft
Search Technology
• Supports All Types of Content
• Features Include
• Faceted Navigation
• Narrow/Expand Queries Based on Taxonomies
• Suggested Results
• “Did you mean?”
• Federated Search
• Search Ektron, SharePoint, SAP, OpenText, IBM, Etc.
• Dynamic Relevancy
• Re-Order Search Results Based On User Behavior
• Entirely new Search Architecture
• Provider model
• Designed for Extensibility

26. Search Architecture Highlights
• Search Developer Experience
– Keyword Query Syntax
– Search Framework API
– Search Framework UI – Templated Controls
• Search Architecture
– Crawling, Querying, Ranking, Diagnostics

27. eSync Enterprise Dashboard

28. SCALABILITY, INTEROPERABILITY, PERFORMANCE
3-Tier Architecture
• Only .NET Vendor with True
Enterprise Architecture
• Scale Horizontally
• Support Multiple Delivery Technologies
• APIs & .NET Controls Use the
Microsoft Unity Framework
• Scalability, Security, Performance,
Availability
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
• 33% Faster Page Rendering
• Decreased CPU Utilization
• Decreased Memory Usage

30. The Developer Release
V8.6 HIGHLIGHTS

31. v8.6 Editor

34. v8.6 Cloud Manager
• Deploy websites and web pages in the cloud, authored in an
on-premise or cloud-based platform
• Bi-directional content replication and differential deployment
capabilities
• Scalability and elasticity to easily match utilization
requirements

35. Next step…
v8.0.2 or less?

36. Next step…
v8.0.2 or less?
v8.5

37. Next step…
v8.0.2 or less?
v8.5
v8.6

40. Q&A

41. http://www.ektron.com/Partners/Upgrade/
thanks!
@ektron
@billcava