Release notes

5.0.0 (June 29, 2021)#

New features#

Edge-based personalization and decoupled tracking is available in Uniform Optimize.
Uniform Optimize can also be used with or without Uniform Deploy.
Fully integrated incremental cache purge for Akamai (using Fast Purge) into the Sitecore publishing process. (Content Editor users have the ability to manually purge cache, as well).

Improvements#

Support for Sitecore JSS 16.
Ability to configure warnings that are shown to content authors when they try to make changes that once published will trigger full site redeployment.
New re-sync page and check page data buttons are added to facilitate in development and troubleshooting.
Item-based configuration has 'enabled' checkbox for temporary disabling services that were configured either via the item-configuration or even file-based config.
npm package dependencies updated across the board.
Improved content and media sync performance.
"none" publish target is now different from "fake" ("none" used to be an alias for "fake") and throws exceptions to remind that publish target needs to be configured.

Bug fixes#

Map Service and Page Service no longer perform ContentSync by default and require ?uniform_sync=true query string parameter.
Fixed duplicate messages in logs
uniform_token url parameter is now hidden from exceptions shown in publish dialog.

Compatibility matrix#

The following combinations of technology/features are currently supported:

Front-end	Deploy	Optimize	Navigation	Supported
JSS	Yes	No	server-side routing	Yes
JSS	Yes	No	SPA	Yes
JSS	No	Yes	server-side routing	Yes
JSS	No	Yes	SPA	Yes
JSS	Yes	Yes	server-side routing	Yes
JSS	Yes	Yes	SPA	No*
MVC	Yes	No	server-side routing	Yes
MVC	No	Yes	server-side routing	Yes
MVC	Yes	Yes	server-side routing	Yes

(*) can be enabled on demand, contact support@uniform.dev for more info.

4.0.1 (Apr 21, 2021)#

This is a maintenance release focused on bug fixes and improvements.

New features#

New (experimental) In-process MVC mode.
This capability enhances SXA support and improves the support for the Sitecore solutions with customized rendering pipelines (ref #1375)
Official support for Sitecore 10.1 version.

Improvements#

Incremental deployment scope service now depends on EventQueue instead of FastQuery, it is now a prerequisite that EventQueue is enabled in the solution (in Sitecore it is enabled by default)
New include/exclude rule type for Map service - Item template ID rule, allowing to include/exclude map service items based on template id. Learn more here.
Forgiving mode described here (ref #1066)
Revampled approach to configure rules that trigger full site deployment described here.
Uniform admin page now lists all environment variables (ref #859)
Critical information about Content Sync, Media Sync and Deployment operations is displayed at the end of the Publishing Wizard (ref #1309)
Better reporting of pages that are being exported in console (ref #1274)
MVC Support performance improved by skipping unused renderings or same renderings with parameters given in different order (ref #1371)
Support of full item path as a datasource (ref #1171)
Deploy timestamp separately after successful deployment (ref #1263)
Uniform APIs don't use .json extension anymore to avoid conflicts with customer solution-level code (#1137)
Ability to attach the jss-render middleware without the scjssconfig.json requirement (ref #1252)

Bug fixes#

Initial Sync button does not work in Azure PaaS (ref #1313)
Sometimes Initial Sync UI does not indicate progress (ref #1055)
Known issue with running Uniform on the specific Sitecore versions (9.0.0 and 9.0.1) has been fixed (ref #1294)
Incremental deployment is now supported in Sitecore 10.1 (ref #1311)
Content Sync is running despite disabled publish handler (ref #515)
Not all items are synced to the Azure blob after Initial Content Sync using Sitecore 10 (ref #1219)
CD server errors out when trying to request map/page service (ref #1237)
Page Service renders the fields in editable mode (ref #1314)
Sitecore personalization and testing rules applied during Uniform API execution (ref #1316)
Uniform placeholder markers should not appear on page rendered by Sitecore in normal browse mode (ref #1333)
Edited media doesn't sync to Azureblob when IncrementalDeploymentScopeService is incremental (ref #1266)
RenderingsController does not validate token (ref #1298)
Duplicate renderings are displayed when the item has multiple devices configured (ref #970)
Layout html caching is incorrect (ref #1013, #1135, #832)
Some script tag attributes are omitted after html-jsx parser conversion (ref #1078, ref #1300)
Item delete, rename and move operations are now handled by the incremental Content Sync and Deployment operations (ref #880 and #1350)
UNIFORM_API_TOKEN is not required to be lowercased anymore (ref #1374)
CheckParentItemLinkDatabaseReferrers doesn't detect page dependencies correctly (ref #1368)
Publishing items that are excluded from map service trigger content sync and site deployment (ref #1306)

Configuration changes#

Uniform.HtmlController.* settings renamed to Uniform.MvcSupport.*

4.0.0 (Feb 23, 2021)#

New features#

Next.js 10 support (along with getStaticProps/getStaticPaths)
Sitecore 10 support.
Uniform now supports Sitecore 8.2 Update-7 to 10.x.
Sitecore XM topology support, previously Sitecore XP was required.
HTML Service's role is now bundled with the Page Service, which now returns both rendered HTML for MVC renderings or serialized Json of rendering's data source item, depending on rendering configuration. Separate HTML Service now removed.
Netlify is now fully supported as a managed deployment service.
Enhanced support for incremental static site export.
Media synchronization process with parallel upload and incremental change detection and related media resolution support, allowing to offload media delivery from Sitecore Content Delivery to Azure Blob Storage with a CDN in front.
GUI for the Initial Content and Media Sync with the ability to monitor the status of the content and media sync process within the Sitecore shell.
Revamped site configuration management, allowing for more flexible and advanced configuration on items or config elements or both.
First-class support for both self-hosted build/export service and managed/hosted service with Netlify.
Limited support for Sitecore SXA.

Enhanced extensibility#

Ability to control item children serialization via AddExpandChildrenRule.
Ability to resolve page-level items that require export getPageDependencies pipeline, this facilitates support for incremental export when datasource items are published.
Map service extensibility, allow to support custom item wildcard scenarios or aliases, or any other custom item resolution logic you have in your solution.
Page service extensibility.
Ability to extend the HTML → JSX processing instructions to override DOM during MVC site export (Reference id 1144).

Improvements#

Starter kits refactored and simplified.
Administration page /sitecore/admin/uniform allows the check of the current configuration of the Sitecore module.
More out-of-the-box field expanders allowing to serialize more field types in JSON out of the box.
Override the origin host of where the data from Uniform APIs will be fetched from using the new fetchHost site attribute (#890).
Accessing rendering parameters in React rendering (#896).
Ability to control whether a given rendering needs to be excluded from MVC rendering process and its datasource serialized as JSON by adding it tojavaScriptRenderingOverrides in the configuration. Previously had to change the rendering item template.
Ability to configure content items that trigger full redeploy via fullDeploymentRules (#901).
Uniform version is now checked and validated before start.
Enhanced support for self-hosted preview service integration.
MVC Precompilation kit, allowing to improve MVC rendering speed which helps speed up export time (#926).
Uniform Service status request will now fail when Sitecore is not responding (#671).
?token query string parameter renamed to ?uniform_token (#1040).