Overview:
- New release: Umbraco Deploy 3.5.3
- Upcoming release: Single sign-on for Umbraco Cloud
- Upcoming release: Umbraco 8.10
- Progress on Project Unicore (Umbraco on .NET Core)
- The Package team proudly presents: “UI examples”
- New RFC: Future of Umbraco’s backoffice
New release: Umbraco Deploy 3.5.3
A new patch for Umbraco Deploy was released on December 8th. This release addresses issues around how the “sort order of properties” is handled when they have moved between groups, as well as the ordering of “Allowed types dialogue” after a deployment.
The patch has been rolled out automagically to eligible projects (with Deploy 3.5+) on Umbraco Cloud and is available as a minor upgrade for everyone else. You can find the release notes on the Umbraco Deploy page.
Upcoming release: Single sign-on (SSO) for Umbraco Cloud
On Monday the 21st of December, SSO will be enabled for the Umbraco Cloud portal. This means that you’ll be met with a new log-in screen when you log in to the portal. Use your login credentials as usual and you’re up and running. Please be aware that this first step doesn’t activate SSO for backoffice logins - yet:
- SSO infrastructure and portal login (December 21st, 2020)
SSO infrastructure will be released and login for the Cloud portal will be handled using this. - SSO for new projects (January 4th, 2021)
All new projects created from this day will be using SSO for logging in to the Umbraco backoffice. - Upgrade existing projects with SSO (beginning mid-January)
Existing projects will be upgraded to make use of SSO functionality, so you will enjoy the benefit of only having to sign-in once no matter which of your projects you are accessing. This is a small upgrade but will require the site to restart. We will provide you with detailed information on the upgrade schedule and reach out to projects that have implemented external login providers to ensure a smooth upgrade.
With SSO for the Umbraco Cloud platform, you only have to log in once and you’re good to go. This works across the Cloud portal, the backoffice on all environments and even on local clones. It benefits everyone using Umbraco Cloud from developers to editors. All will have a smoother experience with fewer interruptions.
Last week we announced the journey to a new and improved infrastructure for Umbraco Cloud. Aside from providing benefits now, SSO helps ease the shift to a new infrastructure. You can read more about this in the Future of Umbraco Cloud blog post.
Upcoming release: Umbraco 8.10
Umbraco 8.10 has more than 100 features and fixes that’ll make Umbraco even friendlier for editors and developers alike. Sounds like a great Christmas gift, right? Unfortunately, we’ve had to postpone the release until December 28th, 2020, due to the discovery of a critical issue. So it’ll have to be a great New Year’s present instead.
The bulk of additions in this release was contributed by the wonderful and hard-working Umbraco community during this year’s Hacktoberfest.
If you want to see what’s in the release, there is a release candidate available for Umbraco 8.10 and a blog post with all the details. And then keep your eye peeled for the release blog post on the 28th of December.
Speaking of Hacktoberfest, we’re a little behind in processing the incoming pull requests so we’re going to have the form for your rewards ready in early January of next year. Thank you for your patience 🙏
Progress on Project Unicore
Bjarke Berg, Unicore team steward and lead developer on the project, published a blog post on the status of migration to .NET Core last Friday. It’s fantastic to see the amount of progress and contributions since the last update.
We’re firmly on track for a third alpha release in January which includes website rendering. You can actually render content in Umbraco on .NET Core - Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:
And there’s more good news. The package tool in Umbraco now supports media 😍 This has been a very, very highly requested feature and it’s wonderful to see it happen. Finally 🎉
.NET Core docs
The Documentation Curators team have some exciting plans for 2021. Among those is the start of a new documentation project to go along with Umbraco on .NET Core. It’s a great opportunity to clean up the docs, maybe choose a better platform and ensure the next major release of Umbraco will have beautiful documentation to go along with the new framework. You can get all the details and a round-up of all things documentation in Sofie's Docs Diary vol. 23.
Nightly builds
You now have access to nightly builds of Umbraco running on .NET Core. It’s been added to the .NET Core documentation so it’s easy to find and keep up-to-date with the latest progress.
Configuring Umbraco on .NET Core
Today Emma Garland, Unicore team member and senior developer at Rock Solid Knowledge, has published an article on “Demystifying config in Umbraco .NET Core”. Another great article in the Umbraco Christmas calendar, 24 days in Umbraco, and a must read for anyone interested in the changes made to configuration.
The Package Team proudly presents: “UI Examples”
The Unicore Team and Documentation Curators are not the only teams with big news. The Package team came up with a brilliant idea at the community team virtual meetup a few week’s back: Make it easier for developers extending the backoffice to create great UX and UI that feels like Umbraco. In order to achieve this they have, in less than a month, built a package that you can install into any Umbraco solution and it will show you examples of UI components, complete with code examples and more:
The package also provides an overview of all the icons available in Umbraco and as with the components you can copy code directly from the examples and add them to your own extension/package.
Truly a great achievement. This provides a style- and code-guide for the Umbraco backoffice. It’s all built using Umbraco backoffice components, so even the files installed can be used as a reference 🤯
You can install the UI Examples package via the great Package Templates, also built by the Package Team, or simply install it via the backoffice - It’s available on our.umbraco.com now 🎉
Last but not least, it’s all open source. If you want to contribute, head over to the Github repository. Here you’ll also find a list of missing components and ideas to enhance the package. We can’t wait to see how this evolves!
Speaking of the backoffice...
New RFC: Future-proofing Umbraco’s backoffice
Umbraco’s backoffice is going to get a lot of love in 2021! Today, we’re publishing a new Request for Comments (RFC) on how we want to future-proof the backoffice.
This has been a hot topic in the Umbraco-sphere for a long time now. The current tech stack has served Umbraco well for almost a decade now but it’s starting to show its age and we’re excited to announce that we will be addressing this in the coming year. Our focus will be to deliver a marked improvement over the current offering for everyone be it editors, developers, contributors, etc.
The RFC will be published during today's episode of UmbracoCoffee - So make sure to tune in for the live stream on YouTube and get the full story from Filip Bech, CMS Program Manager at Umbraco.
The project has been added to the Product Roadmap, in the “Later” section and we’ll provide more details on this in January. For now, we’d love your input on the RFC and look forward to working together with all the clever package developers, the Package team and everyone else interested in this.
That’s all folks…
2020 has been a wild ride. I think most people are looking forward to next year with a good feeling that better things are to come. One of the things that have been really positive for me this last year is writing the bi-weekly Product Update. It’s hard to stay negative with all the fantastic progress we’ve seen at Umbraco, all the contributions, ideas and discussions fostered by the best community in tech and the amazing work done by the community teams.
So thanks for a good Umbraco year, even a global pandemic can’t beat the friendly out of us 😊
The next Product Update will be on January 15th, 2021 - and I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be full of even more exciting news and releases to start off the new year.
… Until next year
For issues and specific feature requests, you can find the issue trackers for our products on the Umbraco Github account.
If you have feedback for our Product Updates or our products in general, you’re welcome to reach out to us on product@umbraco.com.
Happy holidays and get safely into the new year 👋