The Umbraco Roadmap

New feature for Umbraco Forms allowing for preview of form display and functionality via the backoffice.

Target release: July, 2023

When you create a new project on Umbraco Cloud, we want to give you the option to add packages. We will focus on providing access to Umbraco Commerce and Umbraco Workflow as a first step. The package when taking a trial or creating a new project and will be installed by Umbraco Cloud - ready for use when you start working on the project.

Target release: Q2 2023

We'll investigate if Entity Framework is a viable Object Relational Mapper and can replacement for NPoco. NPoco has done a good job but, if possible, we want to benefit from the broad usage of Entity Framework, its support and its alignment with .NET core versions which we believe will introduce a more standardized development process.

Target release: June 2023 (Umbraco 12)

We'll introduce a headless API based on Open API in close collaboration with the Heartcore team, so that our API's share the same schema. This way we'll add "out of the box" headless functionality including a hybrid mode in the core CMS while making it easy to move from a standard installation of Umbraco to Umbraco Heartcore.

Target release: June 2023 (Umbraco 12)

Integrate your own repositories and build pipelines into the Umbraco Cloud processes.

Target release: Q2 2023

We are completely rewriting the backoffice with the usage of our new UI Library. As part of the project we are also rewriting our management API's together with the Heartcore team, so that the new API's can be used efficiently in headless setups including Umbraco Heartcore. With the new backoffice we have a strong focus on a customizable editing experience offering the best possible opportunities for package developers to produce good and truly integrated applications.

You can read more about the project in the Implement the New Backoffice RFC.

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. 

Target release: May 2024 (Umbraco 14)

Once a new extension API has been proposed and accepted through the RFC process, implementation can begin in collaboration with the Backoffice Community team.

This is Part 3 of Future-proofing Umbraco's backoffice.

Improved performance monitoring, logging and alerting for Umbraco Cloud projects. Exposing data and statistics to customers to visualize for example CPU, memory and uptime statistics.

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

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.

One of the strong features of the Umbraco Backoffice is the ability to extend it with custom Property Editors to fit the needs of the Content Editors. This feature will enable for Umbraco Heartcore as well by creating Property Editors through the backoffice using html/js/css and WebComponents.

As part of improving the Heartcore speed and reliability, we intend to move the REST API to be served by our Content Delivery Platform (CDP). Currently, the REST API IS served by the CMS instance by default while both the GraphQL and Preview APIs are served from the CDP. By having the REST API served from the CDP we run it independent of Umbraco and allows for scaling it better and more efficiently. An added benefit is that the APIs running on top of the CDP will not be affected by upgrades or deployments within the Heartcore project.

Adding progression display to default theme and inclusion of an optional final confirmation page for review or edit of the pending form submission

We want to enhance performance for sites with large amounts of content by introducing more efficient caching and memory management. This will be introduced through a lazy-loaded content cache. Most installations thrive with the current "cache all the things" approach so this will be an opt-in feature that can be used in specific scenarios.

We'll be looking into providing a feature for import and export of content from Umbraco, using Umbraco Deploy. This will allow for the extraction of content as an archive of ".uda" files - the same format that schema is managed - and to apply that to other environments. We also plan to provide a hook for migrations, such that content migration between Umbraco versions is possible.

Allows you to schedule automatic upgrades of Umbraco CMS, Forms and Deploy. You will be given a timeframe in with you can schedule the upgrade to ensure better planning and handling of automatic upgrades.

In an effort to make it even easier and faster to get started in Umbraco Cloud, we will add the option to pick a starter kit(s) that will be pre-installed with your new cloud project.

Allow for partners with Umbraco integrations to provide potential customers with the ability to run a trial on Cloud pre-installed with their package and supporting content. This is part of our Composable DXP (Digital Experience Platform) strategy.

With persisted queries you can define and save your GraphQL queries up front, so you only allow pre-defined queries to be executed against your Content. Another benefit of having persisted queries is that the popular Apollo GraphQL client library supports this approach and will thus send a hash instead of the entire query, which might be a a big payload to send multiple times, so a lot less to send across the wire.

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.

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 being able to call into secured endpoints.

Allowing for payment to be handled by others than the project creator. 

We want to make variations available on the Block level, so that we e.g. have better support for multiple languages in blocks - whether it's in the Block List Editor or in the Block Grid Editor.

Together with the Umbraco Heartcore team we'll introduce webhooks in the core CMS, so that clients can be notified when changes happens in the Umbraco backoffice. This functionality will introduce callback functionality within the core CMS but also make it easier to later migrate to Heartcore.

Add as many environments to your project as needed. Both horizontally and vertically.

Introducing reusable blocks so that the same block content can be used on multiple pages. With multiple Block Editors now available (Block List and Block Grid Editor), we want to make it possible possible to share block content across pages and between the two block-based editors.