In the process of upgrading a 9.3 instance to 10.1, we chose to create copies of the 9.3 databases and upgrade those, leaving the 9.3 DBs intact. Then, we could just simply point the upgraded 10.1 instance to these new databases. All was going pretty well with this approach until I started seeing this error in the xConnect logs: Could…
Tag: xdb
xConnect: Searching for Contacts in Sitecore 9
In previous posts, xConnect was introduced, Contacts were added to xDB and a custom model was deployed. But what about searching for existing contacts? Let’s take a look at a couple of examples! Searching for Multiple Contacts In this example, we’re going to search for any Contacts who have had Interactions recorded in the past 30 days. One particular call…
xConnect: Adding custom facets in Sitecore 9
The default collection model in xDB comes with many of the fields you would normally need for storing information about a visitor, but there are almost always those special cases where you need to store something very specific to your business that doesn’t come out of the box. As with previous versions of xDB, the collection model is very flexible…
xConnect: Creating Contacts in Sitecore 9
As discussed in the previous post, the schema for the collection model in xDB changed from earlier versions, making it simpler and more flexible for different types of interactions. Also, the way you connect to xDB to search, add or retrieve data has changed. Now, everything goes through the XConnectClient. Initializing the XConnectClient In this example, I will be creating…
Introducing xConnect for Sitecore 9
The Experience Database in Sitecore is one of the platforms most differentiating features over its competitors in the Web Content Management System space. It stores all analytics and interaction data for users across all of your digital properties, whether those users are known or anonymous. From the documentation: The Sitecore Experience Database (xDB) collects all your customer interactions from all…
xDB Session Info and MongoDB Availability
What happens to session information about an xDB Contact if MongoDB is unavailable when the session end event fires and Sitecore attempts to flush it to the collections database? That is a great question, and one a client asked me earlier this week. Since we always recommend highly-available solutions to our clients, including MongoDB replica sets, it’s an edge case we…
WFFM and CMS-Only mode in Sitecore 8.1
When Sitecore 8 was released, the default location for form data saved from WFFM moved to MongoDB. If your organization or client was not ready to adopt MongoDB but still wanted to leverage WFFM to save form data, you were forced to either create your own data provider or create custom save actions for each form to save your data…
Visualizing xDB and CRM data through Power BI
Since the introduction of the Experience Database in v7.5, Sitecore has steadily been introducing more and more tools to allow you to get a better picture of the users interacting with your brand. In a previous post, I showed a proof of concept on synchronizing data from your CRM directly into xDB. From there, you can tailor the user’s experience based on what…
Syncing data from Dynamics CRM directly to xDB
If you’ve ever worked with the Dynamics CRM Campaign Integration module from Sitecore, you know that this will sync up Contacts in CRM with the Membership database in Sitecore. If you have users authenticating in Sitecore with credentials from CRM, this is still the preferred form of integration. The problem, however, is that Users in Sitecore’s membership database are not…
Top 5 Takeaways from SUGCON 2015
My RBA colleague, David Hake*, and I had the privilege of attending the Sitecore User Group Conference (SUGCON) in New Orleans earlier this month. For an inaugural event, it was pretty amazing what the organizers pulled off. Hats off to Mike Shaw, Mike Reynolds, Akshay Sura and all of the sponsors for putting this thing together in only five months!…
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