Overview:
- New release: Umbraco Forms 8.7
- Upcoming release: Umbraco 8.13
- Upcoming release: Umbraco on .NET Core beta
- Status on new Cloud infrastructure
- Updates to the Roadmap
- Future-proofing the backoffice
- Codegarden registration is open!
New release: Umbraco Forms 8.7 (and 8.7.1)
Umbraco Forms 8.7 is out with great new features such as support for reCaptcha v3, copy/paste fields/groups and a long list of improvements and fixes. 8.7 also contains an update to data integrity with the addition of database keys and constraints. All in all a very valuable release both for editors and developers using Umbraco Forms.
You can get the full scoop on the new version in the Umbraco Forms 8.7 release blog post.
Released on April 6th, 2021
Today, we’ve released a patch (version 8.7.1), addressing some minor issues that were discovered in the release. You can get the latest version on the download page or via NuGet.
Upcoming release: Umbraco 8.13 (Release candidate is out 🎉)
The next minor for Umbraco CMS is a week and a bit away. This release contains more than 70 new features and improvements including a new color picker Data Type which allows for more freedom in choosing colors, the ability to copy Member Types and much more.
The new advanced color picker available in Umbraco 8.13
You try out all the new things in the release candidate, which is out now. We’d love your feedback, both on new installs or if you have the chance to upgrade an existing site with 8.13. See all the highlights in the Umbraco 8.13 release candidate blog post.
Target release date: April 22nd, 2021
Upcoming release: Umbraco on .NET Core beta
Project Unicore is coming along nicely. We’ve just released the 4th alpha of the project, mainly targeted at package developers, and next up is the beta release. Reaching the beta milestone means that Umbraco itself is feature-complete and running on .NET Core. After this we’ll start focusing on polish and migrating our commercial packages (Forms and Deploy) leading up to the release candidate.
Last week the Unicore community team hosted a Community Office Hours QA session. We received some really great questions, watch it to get the latest status on the project.
Target release: End-of-April
Status on new Umbraco Cloud infrastructure
A couple of weeks back we published a status on the new Umbraco Cloud infrastructure announcing that the new infrastructure is. This means we can start migrating sites from the old infrastructure, this has already been done for several of our internal Cloud projects and they are now running on the new infrastructure! In the coming weeks we’ll start collaborating with Cloud powerhouses and Pro clients to migrate their sites. We’re starting out in small batches and are in close collaboration with our partners on these initial migrations to ensure each step of the migration is satisfactory.
There are some requirements for existing projects before they can move to the new infrastructure. These all help to ensure a smooth migration with minimum impact on running projects:
- Media served from blob storage - DONE
We have completed the migration to Cloud storage for all eligible projects. - Updated DNS settings - you might need to update settings
Your projects need to be updated to use the new DNS settings. If you aren’t using this already you will be contacted directly to update your DNS entries.Please be aware that from May 1st, 2021, we will deprecate the old DNS settings.It will no longer be possible to setup a CNAME record pointing to the internal hostname for an Umbraco Cloud Project ie. project-alias.s1.umbraco.io nor will it be possible to set up an A-record pointing to the old Public IP (23.100.15.180). We continue to recommend that everyone updates their DNS settings as described above, see the Manage Hostnames documentation for more information.
- Minimum versions for Umbraco CMS - you might need to upgrade your project(s)
As we get ready for the new infrastructure, we are aiming to reduce the number of versions currently present on Umbraco Cloud. By helping customers get to the latest versions, we can improve security, stability and overall experience of using Umbraco Cloud.If you have projects on versions 8.6.6, 7.7.7 or earlier, we highly encourage you to upgrade to the latest minor and patch version and if possible, do this within the next 2 months. Minimum supported versions will be: - Umbraco 8.6.7 for version 8 projects
- Umbraco 7.7.8 for version 7 projects.
We’re really happy to see so many of the projects on Umbraco Cloud have been updated to meet the requirements 🙏 Later this month we’ll post another status update on the new infrastructure and the plans for migration.
Updates to the Roadmap
It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look at the product roadmap, so here’s a little update on the latest changes and additions.
New in “Now”
Tabs for Umbraco CMS
In a previous product update I mentioned that we’ve added the (re)introduction of tabs for organising properties on a Document Type. Since then we’ve started working on this and it has been moved from “Next” to “Now” on the roadmap.
Tabs will be an additional tool that complements the existing groups as a way of organising properties. It is fully incorporated in the Document Type editor letting you add multiple taps in an intuitive way and works with the reorder functionality, so you can both drag and drop tabs as well as set the sort order with integers.
Example of multiple tabs added in the Document Type editor.
Tabs is currently targeted for Q2, 2021. We'll make sure to keep you updated on the progress in future product updates and update the roadmap as soon as we have a release date.
Mediapicker v3
We’ve also been working on an updated version of the Media Picker, this almost made it in to 8.13 but needed a little more testing and tweaking. It has been added to the roadmap in “Now” so you can keep track of it.
The new UI for image cropping via the media picker. This opens as an infinite editor and provides more space to do crops as well as neatly organized list of crops on the right.
The new Media Picker provides an updated UI that provides a more intuitive experience. It also contains new functionality such as support for multiple new Media Types (Article, SVG, Video and more), copy/paste of Media Items between pickers and support for local image crops.
WIP example of the configuration of the new Media Picker. Yo can now choose which Media Types are allowed, enable/disable focal point and add crop definitions for the new local crop functionality.
The new Media Picker is targeted for release with Umbraco 8.14, May 3rd, 2021.
Improved subscription management for Umbraco Cloud
We’ve unfortunately had to delay the release of an Improved Subscription management for Umbraco Cloud a bit. It was set to release on April 7th, this has been changed to Q2 and we’ll update the roadmap as soon as we have a final release date.
Future-proofing the backoffice
We’ve closed and accepted the Request for Comments (RFC) for the first part of the project: UI Component Library. Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion.
As teased in the last product update, the next part of the project, Defining the extension API, has now officially been started.
Mads and Filip from Umbraco HQ joined UmbraCoffee to talk about the new project and community team.
As part of this project we’re also starting up a community team. You can get all the details on this new endeavour and the community team in the blog post.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 14th, 2021, we’ll open up applications for the backoffice community team - So keep and eye on the blog 👀
That’s all folks…
Before I leave you, I just want to highlight that you can now register for Codegarden, the official Umbraco conference. As with so many other events over the past year, Codegarden will be an entirely virtual experience AND it’s completely free to join - So head on over to the Codegarden site and sign up!
Part of Codegarden is recognising all the wonderful work that is being done with Umbraco by our partners, MVPs and community. You can submit nominations for both the Umbraco Awards and Package Awards. More details on the award categories and how to submit your nominations can be found on the Codegarden website.
… Until next time
A large part of the work we do is inspired by the feedback we get from you. For issues and specific feature requests, you can find the issue trackers for our products on the Umbraco Github account.
If you have product feedback, you’re welcome to reach out to us on product@umbraco.com.
