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Hello 7.8. - can you show me around?

But of course - follow me...

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Written by Jacob Midtgaard-Olesen

The latest Umbraco minor is out - so please go enjoy! This time we’re not talking a “big” minor, however, that doesn’t mean it's not full of amazing stuff. The most impressive new feature (and one we’re very proud of) is the new Umbraco Tours. These tours basically make sure that you’re not left hanging, all alone, in an empty back office the first time you try Umbraco. Good news is that this feature is not just handy for newbies, as you are able to wow your editors and clients with your own customised tours…

Step-by-step friendliness

Remember your first trip to the Umbraco back office? Did you feel a bit, lost? Confused? Abandoned?

One of the main benefits of using Umbraco, and the one we get the most praise for, is that it's a blank canvas. As a developer you’re able to unfold your talent and build solutions to clients that fits exactly their needs. No extra fuss added.

But we are also aware that a blank canvas can sometimes feel overwhelming and intimidating. We don't want to compromise with the freedom you get in Umbraco - but we do love to guide and inspire.

So to make the learning curve less steep (and hopefully make you fall in love with Umbraco a bit faster 😉 ), we have now introduced the Umbraco Tours in Umbraco 7.8:

Wow clients with your own step-by-step friendliness

If you’re already using Umbraco we won’t bother you with these Umbraco-basics, step-by-step tours.

But that doesn’t mean this new feature it not relevant to you.

Imagine you having a client whose editors don’t visit their website very often. Say, only once every other month to update some statistics. They are busy people. This is not their first priority. They’ll forget how to do it. And it will annoy them that they forget - and after spending 20 minutes on trying to remember, they’ll pick up the phone and call you.

This is where you and this new feature come to the rescue. By being able to customise tours in the Umbraco back office you’ll be able to make the editing for your client a 2 minute, straightforward task - with no need for them to break a sweat or pick up the phone.

You’ll remove the barrier and the worry for them which might even mean they’ll want to update their website more frequently with new content.

Oh, and imagine how fast you’ll be able to train new editors on your Umbraco site!

If you want to wow your clients with this, download 7.8. and learn how to implement your own tours (more documentation will follow on this shortly).

 

There’s more to 7.8

The back office tours are not the only thing in Umbraco V 7.8. Once you’ve upgraded your sites, you’ll also be able to enjoy:

 

  • A new and improved “Properties” tab - now called “Info”

  • Enhanced support for Load Balancing

  • Security improvements

 

Read more about the above in this 7.8 beta announcement (just remember that now it’s all real 😉 ).

 

Get your hands on Umbraco 7.8 today!

If you want to try the back office tours, see this new “Info” tab and discover what else this new version of Umbraco entails, go take a free 14 day Umbraco Cloud trial and start exploring in just 2 minutes!

 

As always, for our Umbraco Cloud customers this delightful upgrade is only 2 minutes away. We’ve wrapped it all up for you, so all you have to do now is follow these steps:

  • Add a Development Environment to your project, if you do not already have one (Add a Development environment by clicking “Manage Environments” in the project view)

  • Make sure you also restore the content to the Development Environment from your Live.

  • When the Development Environment is all set up and you’ve made sure you don’t have any pending changes on the Development Environment - you are all ready to upgrade to 7.8! 

  • It's as easy as clicking a button - like, literally clicking the "Upgrade Available" button on the Development Environment. The auto-upgrader will take care of everything from here!

  • Once it's done, check the Development Environment to make sure everything is looking right.

  • When that's confirmed, you are ready to deploy the upgrade to the next environment - Live or Staging, and start taking full advantage of all the new features.


Non-Cloud and release notes:

As always, installation and release notes can be found on OUR: https://our.umbraco.org/contribute/releases/780

This release is also available from Nuget: https://www.nuget.org/packages/UmbracoCms/7.8.0

Please be aware that: 

When you're using Umbraco on a server with a different timezone then your local timezone, the new info tab has some problems using the date pickers. A workaround in the form of 2 javascript files is available:
http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-10937

When you upgrade Umbraco using NuGet, the UI.xml file doesn't get updated correctly, a workaround is available:
http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-10939


These two issues do not occur on any Cloud sites. A fix for these issues will be rolled out in version 7.8.1 shortly.

 

Loved by developers, used by thousands around the world!

One of the biggest benefits of using Umbraco is that we have the friendliest Open Source community on this planet. A community that's incredibly pro-active, extremely talented and helpful.

If you get an idea for something you would like to build in Umbraco, chances are that someone has already built it. And if you have a question, are looking for documentation or need friendly advice, go ahead and ask on the community forums.

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