News 📰
Before diving into new and upcoming releases, there are a few announcements that are worth highlighting:
Umbraco acquires Outfield Digital
You’ve probably already heard the news but it bears repeating: Umbraco has acquired Outfield Digital 🤩 This means their two amazing products: the e-commerce add-on Vendr and Konstrukt, a backoffice UI builder for external data, joins the official product portfolio 🎉
And it’s not just the products themselves that are an exciting addition to Umbraco; we're incredibly delighted to welcome, Matt and Lucy Brailsford, to the Umbraco HQ team. They’ve both been a huge part of the Umbraco community for years not only contributing with packages but also creating the Codecabin un-conference and so much more.
Stay tuned for updates on this in the coming months!
New dates for Umbraco 11.4 and new backoffice
Just to make sure it’s “above the fold” I’d like to highlight that Umbraco 11.4 has been postponed 1 week, due to a public holiday. And, more importantly, the new backoffice implementation has received an updated target release of May 2024 Umbraco 14. You can read more about this in the roadmap section.
New releases ✨
Umbraco 11.3 and 10.5
The latest version of Umbraco CMS introduces the ability to sort domains (hostnames) in the backoffice and add inline macros in the Rich Text Editor. You’’ also find improved indexing of complex data from editors such as Block Grid and Block List. Most features are available for both Umbraco 11 and 10, and a long list of improvements and fixes are added as well.
11 first-time contributors helped make the releases possible with 57 features, improvements, and fixes for Umbraco 11, and a whopping 87 for Umbraco 10. You can catch the full story in the Umbraco 11.3 and 10.5 release blog post.
Released on April 13, 2023
Features and updates on Umbraco Cloud
Numerous features and updates have been rolled out to Umbraco Cloud during April. You’ll find revamped pages for both “Security” and “CDN and Caching” settings. There are optimizations to baselines in the project creation flow, improved patch roll-outs for projects based on Umbraco 7 and 8, and more options for managing multi-factor authentication for organizations.
And that’s just a sample of the updates - get the full story and more details in the Umbraco Cloud release notes for April 2023.
Umbraco UI Library 1.2
The latest version of the Umbraco UI Library introduces a host of new features and bug fixes, as well as an upgrade of Lit to the latest version. Notable features include five new components suitable for working with and picking colors made by our 6-time MVP winner, Bjarne Fyrstenborg, as well as new components suitable for working with modals. You can read more about this release and its changelog on the GitHub releases page.
Released on April 20, 2023
Integrating Aprimo DAM with Umbraco CMS
If you're looking to optimize your digital asset management you just might want to check out the latest DXP release. A new integration is available for Umbraco CMS making it possible to browse assets uploaded to the Aprimo digital asset management (DAM) system.
Learn about the new Aprimo Media Picker, options for searching and filtering assets, rendering, and more in the release blog post.
Released on April 18, 2023
Patches
Patch releases for Forms (10.3.2 and 11.1.2) and Workflow (10.1.2 and 11.1.2) were released. Both include some minor bug fixes as detailed in the releases note for Forms and the issue tracker for Workflow.
Release date: April 18, 2023
Upcoming releases 💫
Umbraco Workflow 11.2 and 10.2 (release candidates are out 🎉)
Approval Thresholds is the next big feature coming to Umbraco Workflow allowing you to set rules (or thresholds as it were) for how many reviewers are needed to approve a change. You can set different thresholds for each stage in a workflow and even configure if approvals are retained or reset if rejected.
On top of this great new feature, you get all the good stuff from the latest patch such as Delayed Content Locking as and additional fixes and tweaks.
You can try it all out today, release candidates for both Umbraco 11 and 10 are out, and read more about it in the release candidate blog post.
Target release date: May 9, 2023.
Umbraco 11.4 postponed 1 week
Later this week, Thursday, May 3 to be exact, the next release candidate for Umbraco CMS is available. We’re extending the standard 2-week RC period with an additional week due to a public holiday in Denmark.
Keep an eye out for details on the release when the release candidate is available. In the meantime you can get a sneak peek of the release notes and what’s in the release right here.
Updated target release date: May 25, 2023.
Updates to the Roadmap 🛣️
Let’s take a look at the latest changes and updates to the Product Roadmap:
New in “Now”
New target release for “New backoffice for Umbraco CMS”
As we have known since the beginning of the project, which started back in 2022 with multiple RFCs, creating a new future-proof and componentized UI along with all the supporting APIs is a big undertaking. In reviewing the remaining parts of the project we do not feel confident in being ready for the launch of Umbraco 13 at the end of the year.
And ready is the keyword here! There have not been significant changes to the scope of the project but, as with all large software projects, there are things that surface during development. What is most important for us is that there is enough time to test the new UI and API layer and that the entire ecosystem can confidently start the switch as soon as possible.
As a consequence, we have updated the target release for the new backoffice implementation to May 2024, along with Umbraco 14. There are some significant breaking changes as part of the new UI layer, so we have to move the target release to the next major release.
We are publishing this change as soon as possible to give all Umbraco users as much of a heads-up as possible. We do know that there has been a lot of talk about the backoffice change coinciding with a long-term support (LTS) release (Umbraco 13 is the next LTS), so for some, it might actually make planning upcoming projects a little easier - and definitely make the upgrade path to the next LTS smoother.
It also means we will ship another LTS that includes AngularJS, which is not optimal and are looking to introduce some updates in coming releases to mitigate the effects of this.
For those of you that have been following closely, and maybe attended some of the conferences and meetups over the past few months, you will know we plan to make a pre-release available version in Q2 of 2023. This is still the plan and will allow package developers, partners, and the community an even longer period for testing and feedback. There will of course be plenty of updates and sessions about the project at Codegarden and upcoming Umbraco conferences.
That doesn't mean you have to wait if you want to know more about the project (and maybe even get involved). The repository for the new Backoffice project is open and includes a readme detailing how to get the project up and running locally. There is an active issue board with up-for-grabs issues, an active discussion board, and detailed contributing guidelines as well.
Updated target release: May 2024 (Umbraco 14)
Availability and Performance Insights for Umbraco Cloud
We have updated the title for this item from Developer Insights to Availability and Performance Insights to better convey the new features that will be available in the Cloud Portal.
Target release: Q2 2023
Backoffice Preview for Umbraco Forms
A new feature will be made available in an upcoming release of Umbraco Forms. With Backoffice previews you get a better idea of how your form will look and get to test out the UX without having to add it to a page in the content section.
Target release: May 2023
Import and display package install information for Umbraco Marketplace
In the coming month, we’ll add additional information to packages on Umbraco Marketplace based on Package Telemetry data.
Target release: May 2023
Authorized services package for Umbraco CMS (DXP)
We're working on a new, open-source component that we expect to help with building integrations with third-party services that require authentication using an OAuth flow. The idea is to provide the "plumbing" when dealing with access tokens, serialization, and other aspects of authentication and authorization flows, leaving the developer free to focus on implementing business functionality using the chosen API.
Target release: June 2023
Moved to Roadmap History ✔️
Integration with Aprimo for Umbraco CMS
Package providing a new Media Picker, allowing selection of media from the Aprimo Digital Asset Management system. Read more about it in the Integrating Aprimo DAM with Umbraco CMS release blog post.
Released April 18, 2023
It’s almost Codegarden o’clock…
As you can see, there’s plenty of progress on all things Umbraco and the next Product Update will be out just before Codegarden, our yearly developer conference, which takes place June 14-16. It’s the place to get updated on all the latest features, find out what will be the focus both on the roadmap and for Umbraco as a company, meet the people behind the software, and a whole lot more.
The best thing is you get to share it all with 100s of like-minded Umbraco enthusiasts and take part in all the activities, sessions, and just plain old fun - we can’t wait to see you all. If you haven’t booked your ticket already, head over to codegarden.umbraco.com to learn more.
… Until next time
A large part of the work we do is inspired by the feedback we get from you. If you find issues or have 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 at product@umbraco.com.
