Overview
Umbraco Heartcore is our headless SaaS offering with the content management capabilities of Umbraco CMS and a broad suite of tools and APIs purpose-builts to provide the best possible headless development experience. You get things like GraphQL, REST and Preview APIs, webhook support, and much more. It only takes a few seconds to spin up a new headless project so try out the 14-day free trial and see it all for yourself.
Umbraco Heartcore is running on the Umbraco Cloud platform and shares a lot of the same infrastructure with a lot of energy going into developing an entirely new infrastructure for Umbraco Cloud which also meant that the Heartcore infrastructure had to be updated.
At the beginning of the year, all new and existing Umbraco Heartcore projects were running on the new and improved infrastructure. With that in place, it has allowed us to put more focus on providing new features and improvements for Heartcore. In fact, a dedicated Heartcore team has been formed and as you’ll see in this update, they’ve been busy delivering value for Heartcore users and preparing the roadmap for the future of the product.
Let’s begin with all the new things already out for Umbraco Heartcore. This includes a number of enhancements across the board. New features, continued improvements to performance as well as a number of fixes.
A big improvement in security and ease of use has just been rolled out. You now have single sign-on for all new Umbraco Heartcore projects powered by Umbraco ID. This means you only have to manage one Umbraco Cloud/Heartcore user profile and this will be used to handle backoffice authentication across all your projects.
With single sign-on for Umbraco Heartcore, you only have to log in once and you’re good to go. This works across the portal and the backoffice on all environments. It benefits everyone using Umbraco Heartcore from developers to editors by providing a smoother experience with fewer interruptions and making it easier to manage and update passwords on a regular basis.
Single sign-on for Umbraco Heartcore was released for new projects on April 5th, 2022. Existing projects will be upgraded to use the Umbraco ID during the month of April, project owners will be contacted directly with information on scheduling and what to do on the first login.
Umbraco Heartcore users can now configure Content Notifications. You can select from a variety of triggers such as Publish, Move, Copy, and many more. Simply right-click on any node in the Content Tree to set up notifications.
When a selected action is triggered you receive an email notifying you that the action has been performed.
When a selected action is triggered you receive an email notifying you that the action has been performed.
This can be used for many things e.g. setting up basic review workflows.
Content Notifications were enabled for all Umbraco Heartcore projects on March 29, 2022.
The Eye Dropper Color Picker property editor is now also supported in the GraphQL feature for Umbraco Heartcore. It allows you to add a more advanced color picker to a property. You might recognize this from the configuration of the current Color Picker Property Editor.
It makes it possible to choose any color with an eyedropper or enter the hex code and even adds options for choosing the alpha (transparency) and displaying a palette for selecting colors.
We've started looking into adding Property Editors available for Umbraco CMS that fit well and are in demand for Umbraco Heartcore. The Data Property Editor is from the popular Contentment package for Umbraco CMS by Lee Kelleher. All Umbraco Heartcore projects have a new property editor which lets you add JSON or XML feeds and manage them as content.
The new property editor also works with CSV files and you can even enter list items manually. Once a feed (or source) is added you can select how to interact with them in the Content section such as a radio button list or checklist.
A big shout out to Lee for allowing us to add this great functionality to Umbraco Heartcore - HIGH FIVE YOU ROCK 🙌
The Data Property Editor was released to Umbraco Heartcore projects on March 29, 2022.
Throughout Q1 (January - March) of 2022, we have continuously been rolling out improvements and fixes that provide both enhanced performance and address reported issues.
Among other things, we have re-evaluated the caching layer (CDN) that ensures performant querying of Heartcore data, and released several updates. We’ve also improved queries made to our data store providing significant enhancements to the GraphQL and Preview APIs. More are coming as part of the scheduled maintenance on April 12, 2022.
We are currently working on additional enhancements for how Content is processed and cached in Umbraco Heartcore in order to provide further improvements to both performance and stability.
If you’re following along in our bi-weekly Product Updates, you might already know there’s been quite a lot of activity in the past couple of months. Below, I’m going to highlight the items on the Umbraco Product Roadmap that are directly related to improving Umbraco Heartcore. As you can see from the Features section above, several new features and improvements have already been rolled out in 2022 and these have all been added to the Roadmap History page.
We are adding a Google Maps Property Editor to Umbraco Heartcore, which will enable developers and editors to utilize Google Maps by bringing their own API key as part of configuring the Property Editor.
The editor stores coordinates and zoom level, which can be retrieved via the REST API and as well as through GraphQL.
Based on the Google Maps Property Editor by Arnold Visser.
Target: Q2, 2022
On the road towards custom editors in the Umbraco Heartcore backoffice, we are starting with custom editors for the Grid. Grid editors are simple additions to the Grid, which will be possible to create via the Backoffice. A Grid Editor will be created using HTML/javascript/CSS and WebComponents, which enables developers to tailor the editor experience of the Grid in Heartcore.
Target: Q2, 2022
With Umbraco Id added to all existing and new Umbraco Heartcore projects we are enabling 2 Factor Authentication, so users of the Backoffice and Cloud Portal will be prompted to provide an auth code (sent via email or SMS) after having entered their username and password.
2 Factor Authentication will be an opt-in feature on a per-user basis.
Target: Q2, 2022
As part of this feature, we will be adding a new version of the REST API, which will be based on the Open API standard (https://www.openapis.org/). The first iterations of the current REST API are based on the HAL standard. By moving to OpenAPI you’ll see several improvements such as a reduced amount of metadata in the JSON response and improved performance. Open API is a widely known standard with lots of tooling, which we believe will benefit Heartcore and our users.
The new REST API will be the standard for new projects and opt-in for existing projects. This is done to ensure that existing implementations will continue to work without any changes needed.
The .NET Client Library and NodeJs Client Library will both be updated to a new major version, which will work with this new version of the REST API.
Target: Q3
As part of this feature, we will make API Keys independent of Backoffice Users. Currently, an API Key is created for a Backoffice User, so the key will get the same permissions as that user.
With this feature, we will enable the creation of API Keys and setting permissions on a per-key basis. We believe this will make it easier for developers to work with and more secure, as the key is not tied to a specific backoffice user.
Target: Q4, 2022
In addition to the current configuration options for Webhooks, we’ll be adding the option to specify security headers for the endpoints, which are called. The intention is to add flexibility around the configuration options for webhooks and be able to call into secured endpoints.
Target: Q3, 2022
We will be adding additional client libraries for the Heartcore REST API (version 3), which are native to Android and iOS to make it easier to integrate Heartcore for mobile apps.
Target: Q4, 2022
Make sure to check the Product Roadmap for the latest updates.
Umbraco has a strong foundation in the open-source community and we want to encourage feedback and feature requests for Umbraco Heartcore. With the new Heartcore development team in place, we can engage even more with our users and we have several initiatives in the works to facilitate this.
As mentioned above, we’ve started adding Property Editors that are useful for headless projects, the first being the new Data Property Editor and soon the Google Maps Property Editor will be available as well. These have been requested by existing users and partner agencies looking to start new projects on Umbraco Heartcore. As you can also see from the roadmap, we’re adding more capabilities to customize the Heartcore editing experience with both Custom Grid Editors in Q2 and Custom Property Editors later in the year, and we welcome feedback on these new features as well.
Here are some of the ways you can help shape the future of Umbraco Heartcore and headless Umbraco development:
Just as with all the other Umbraco products, Heartcore has a dedicated issue tracker. This is the perfect place to provide feedback, whether it’s in the form of raising potential issues or adding your ideas as feature requests, the issue tracker is an invaluable tool to help provide the best possible experience.
You’ll be able to become a team member on the upcoming Umbraco Headless Community Team. The team will function as a sounding board for new product initiatives, help provide feedback for roadmap prioritization, product communication, and more. We’re excited to get even closer to the developers, editors, and agencies using headless in general and Umbraco Heartcore specifically. So, if you’re using Umbraco Heartcore and/or have domain knowledge in the headless space we’d love to have you on the team - more on this in the near future (hint: read below 👇).
At the end of April, we’ll be live-streaming a webinar focusing exclusively on Umbraco Heartcore. The webinar will be for anyone already using Umbraco Heartcore today and for everyone interested in adding a headless option to their service offerings.
The webinar will take place on April 26, 2022, at 15.00 PM CEST (Convert timezone)
Here you’ll get an update on the roadmap, demos of new features, and the opportunity to ask questions directly to the people working with Umbraco Heartcore. You’ll also get an update on the Community team with information on the application process and more details on what the team will be up to. We’re looking forward to providing some exciting updates and answering all your questions:
Update: The webinar has taken place, you can watch the recording here:
Remember, if you haven’t done so already, you can take a 14-day free trial of Umbraco Heartcore and try it out for yourself:
I want to tray Umbraco Heartcore
It’s full speed ahead for Umbraco Cloud and there’s plenty to get updated on! New features are available in the Umbraco Cloud portal, numerous updates to the Roadmap, and a glorious list of new releases and patches available for your Umbraco Cloud projects.