December 2018 – released Sitecore Experience Commerce 9.0 Update-3
Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-3 focuses on corrective content and improving performance with larger scale commerce catalogs. The release also adds a Static Bundles feature.
New features/improvements
| Area | Description | TFS no. |
|---|---|---|
| Static Bundles | Added support for Static Bundles. The Merchandiser can configure product bundles that comprise multiple Sellable Items (Products, Services, etc.), which are sold together and priced as a unit. The existing Sitecore XC pricing mechanisms – multicurrency list pricing, price cards, and promotions - can be applied to Static Bundles. Static Bundles can be created and managed using the BizFx - Merchandising tool. Import and export of Static Bundles is supported by the Sitecore XC Import/Export API. | 288864 |
| Static Bundles - Storefront | In the Storefront, a Bundle means the use of sub-lines in a Shopping Cart. Bundle price is fixed and inventory depends on availability of constituent bundled items. A new Product Bundle component has been implemented in the Storefront, which handles sellable items of type Bundle, e.g. a new Commerce Bundle template in Sitecore. The Product Bundle component is added to the Product Detail Page (PDP) that contains the existing components, including Product Variant. The Product Variant component is presented for normal sellable items, whereas the Product Bundle component is presented for bundles at run time. At design time, both components are presented in the Experience Editor so that each can be configured. Storefront components have been updated to support Bundles as follows: Shopping Cart Lines, Order lines, Add-2-cart, JavaScript brokers/services. When upgrading from a previous version, the Product Bundle component is NOT added automatically to the PDP. This has to be performed manually if so desired. | 288865 |
| Storefront | Component specific JavaScript has been moved to themes. Previously files were loaded using AssetMedia pipeline and was configured. Now, all scripts have been moved into base themes including 3rd party core libs. Benefits are 1) multi-tenant support allowing individual base theme overrides per tenant and site, and 2) performance improvements by having SXA bundle and minify the theme content and scripts. | 268810 |
| Storefront | New custom themes will automatically get commerce content included. A new Storefront Branded Extension theme has been introduced and will copy it's content into new custom themes that use commerce components and foundation. The existing Storefront Branded Theme is now empty, but referencing the extension theme, so the end result is the same for sites pointing to it. | 268810 |
| Storefront | Added support for custom views for components, which was added in Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) 1.8. | 276388 |
| Storefront | Added support for grayscale view mode, which was added in SXA 1.8. SXA 1.8 includes a new view mode functionality that allows individual users to work in design mode using different view modes. Out of the two new modes, grayscale view mode is supported. Wireframe is not. With view mode introduced, the two Storefront mockup themes have become obsolete and therefore moved to a sub-folder under themes and marked Deprecated. | 276388 |
| Commerce Connect | For those seeking Commerce Connect only e.g. for deployments that integrate Sitecore Experience Platform with other non-Sitecore commerce systems, download the full Packages for On Premise 2018.12-2.4.63 package and extract the Sitecore Commerce Connect Core 11.4.15.zip file. If also interested in analytics and marketing automation features, optionally extract files: Sitecore Commerce ExperienceAnalytics Core 11.4.15.zip Sitecore Commerce ExperienceProfile Core 11.4.15.zip Sitecore Commerce Marketing Automation Core 11.4.15.zip Sitecore Commerce Marketing Automation for AutomationEngine 11.4.15.zip | N/A |
| Connect - Product Sync | The Commerce Connect Product Synchronization feature was added in Sitecore XC release 9.0 Update-2, but was added as a stand-alone addition after the release. Now for Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-3 this feature is included as part of the release, within the Sitecore Commerce Connect Core 11.4.xx.zip file. This feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled in deployments that integrate Sitecore Experience Platform with other commerce systems. There are no functional or corrective additions to this feature in Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-3. | 191319 |
| Browers - Storefront | Confirmed/added support for Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge browsers in the Storefront. Previous XC releases had supported these browsers for the Business Tools but the Storefront did not, per the Sitecore XC Compatibility Table. | 281240 |
| SolrCloud | Added Sitecore XC support for SolrCloud, bringing XC in line with Sitecore XP's support for SolrCloud. Sitecore provides the ability to configure connection to a SolrCloud deployment. Sitecore XP/XC does not provide the tools specifically for setting up the SolrCloud deployment itself; this is the responsibility of our customer/partner. More setup information can be found in the Setting up SolrCloud Walkthrough. The addition of SolrCloud support resulted the renaming and addition of packages (scwdp zip files) within the XC release package for Azure App Service. As of XC 9.0.3, you now select whether to deploy Azure or Solr web deploy packages. | 276393 |
| Business Tools | Added pagination to Catalog lists in the Business Tools. | 276370 |
| Engine | Added a runtime check to ensure the Engine's database is at the correct version level. The database adds a version number in a new custom table. | 277921 |
| Engine | Created a new Order Maintenance minion (PurgeCartsMinion) that deletes expired carts after a configurable amount of time. | 279083, 279348 |
| Performance | Reduced file-based Catalog import and export times by 80% for small to medium sized catalogs. Unblocked import and export of large Catalogs of up to 1,000,000 Sellable Items. Import times linear with increased catalog size. Reduced the memory consumed during processing. Similar improvements demonstrated in custom Catalog import examples using updated API guidance. | 277358 |
| Performance | Reduced cold load CM/CD times in a PaaS deployment by over 80%. | 291755 |
| Performance | Reduced indexing times by 50% on average by using cached metadata in Commerce Engine Connect rather than service calls to Commerce Engine Connect, optimizing Commerce Engine Connect data structures and Commerce Engine Database level improvements. The improvements greatly reduce the risk of indexing failures occurring for very large Catalogs, and reduce indexing times for Commerce items to be more aligned with indexing times observed when indexing Sitecore content items. | 277263 |
| Upgrade | Added the ability to upgrade from Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-2 to Update-3. Refer to the Upgrade Instructions on the Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-3 download page of dev.sitecore.net. | 277748 |
Resolved issues
| Area | Description | TFS no. |
|---|---|---|
| Business Tools | The default Composer Template fields appear in the Commerce Engine, but the values in the fields do not display. | 276449 |
| Business Tools | The user interface does not select the correct product version. The new version is highlighted correctly, but an old version gets actually selected. | 278385 |
| Business Tools | The Edit Inventory dialog does not display the fields' current values. Instead only the ID is shown and all other fields are empty. | 278407 |
| Pricing | Price updates are not displayed on Product Details page until ItemCache, DataCache, HtmlCache and CommerceCache are refreshed on the Sitecore side. | 276680 |
| Orders | Pending Orders lists are not displayed. Fixed in Commerce 9.0 Update-1 and ported forward to later releases. | 288563 |
| Promotions | IncludeInGrandTotal property of AwardedAdjustment class isn't taken into account in CalculateCartTotalsBlock. Fixed in Commerce 8.2.1 Update-3 and ported forward to this release. | 288867 |
| Customers | The most recent customers view hangs for minutes when there are thousands of customers. Fixed in a previous Commerce release ported forward to 9.0 Update-3 and later releases. | 287238 |
| Indexing | Indexing Commerce List fields returns a single string of IDs, instead of the expected list of values. | 279103 |
| Storefront | The Storefront does not work with a multiple hostnames/wildcards, for example when setting the HostName field to "sxa* | site". This capability is provided in the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) but is not working in the Storefront built on SXA. |
| Storefront | Search functionality does not correctly search all the descendants of a Category of a custom Catalog when this category is selected as "Start Navigation Category". | 276611 |
| Storefront | An AJAX request fails because the request URL gets altered to something invalid. This occurs when the Virtual Folder field has a value in it. | 276615 |
| Storefront | The request api/GetBulkStockInformation from the Storefront gets incorrectly sent with the default shopName, whereas it is supposed to he sent with the in context ShopName. | 277492 |
| Storefront | When inspecting the page source in a browser, the Storefront page contains multiple instances of the same markup. | 277528 |
| Storefront | Performance: UriFormatException is being thrown in the StorefrontUrlManager when navigating through a page that contains relative links. | 276529 |
| Storefront | An error message is displayed in the export results window when exporting a page with a Minicart through Creative Exchange… Error while downloading /sitecore/content/New%20tenant/New%20site/Home%7B158DFB56-F719-48C6-94AE-30C000CEC6E0%7D file. The issue is reproducible intermittently. | 292946 |
| Storefront | It is not possible to select the Product Variants component in the Experience Editor. | 276376 |
| Storefront | Catalog items are included in the export from Creative Exchange which makes it time out. | 276539 |
| Storefront | Mobile Responsiveness - Top Bar Links component - tapping action over hover effect consequences - components overlapped. | 282118 |
| Storefront | Top Bar links are difficult to select because they disappear easily. The sensitivity of these links needs to be adjusted. | 276621 |
| Storefront | The Minicart component are difficult to view and select because they disappear easily. The sensitivity of these links needs to be adjusted. | 290178 |
| Storefront | The Storefront logo is not displayed in all checkout pages. | 276816 |
| Storefront | Mock data for the Product Variant component is missing in the Experience Editor. | 276868 |
| Storefront | The hover area on the Language Selector & Minicart is incorrect on Firefox and Chrome, so that these items display even though they are not selected. | 276900 |
| Storefront | The product broker/service/event handler does not correctly discriminate by event type; all types are called. | 276946 |
| Storefront | Gift Card price and variant are not displayed correctly on the Product Details Page. | 276959 |
| Storefront | Selected product variant options do not display on lines and sub-lines for Shopping Cart Lines and Order Lines for any variant option type. | 277049 |
| Storefront | The Site does not get created during the site scaffolding step. The previous workaround was: Before creating a new site, copy the following item "/sitecore/templates/Branches/Foundation/Commerce Experience Accelerator/Commerce Foundation/Storefront Control Panel" to "/sitecore/templates/Branches/Feature/Commerce Experience Accelerator/Commerce Components/Storefront Control Panel". | 277474 |
| Storefront | Upgrade: The Category Navigation links are broken on the Storefront site after a Commerce 9.0.2 to 9.0.3 upgrade operation. | 292584 |
| Storefront | Upgrade: The Storefront Control Panel setting for the site does not get created during site creation (scaffolding), and duplicate Commerce data folders appear on new site after an upgrade. | 277467 |
| Storefront | Upgrade: Unable to sign out after signing in as an existing user after upgrading (SyntaxError: Illegal Return Statement). | 277483 |
| Performance | Performance issues experienced when importing large Catalogs with the Commerce Catalogs API. | 279260 |
Breaking changes
Sitecore XC 9.0 Update-3 introduces configuration changes pertaining to the new Static Bundles feature, and due to performance improvements. Refer to the Sitecore XC Upgrade Guide for 9.0.3, which identifies the files containing configuration changes.
| Area | Description | TFS no. |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Commerce Engine Database schema and stored procedures updated. A database table has been added to manage catalog hierarchy data including the new variant structures. Executing the .sql files specified in the upgrade documentation will create, update and populate the required database artifacts. | 277809 |
| Performance | A new Catalog item crawler AllCatalogItemsCrawler was added into Commerce Engine Connect. This new single crawler replaced the following deprecated crawlers: CatalogsCrawler, CategoriesCrawler, SellableItemsCrawler. | 277932 |
| Performance | Introduced changes to the global policy configuration. Added a new property Version to the EntityStoreSqlPolicy in the Global.json file. | 277921 |
| Performance | Introduced changes to the global policy configuration, for the runtime database version checking feature. Added a new property Version to the EntityStoreSqlPolicy in the Global.json file. | 277921 |
Known issues
| Area | Description | TFS no. |
|---|---|---|
| Business Tools | Exporting Catalogs do not contain Price Book, Promotion Book or Inventory Set associations. Upon re-importing a Catalog, the associations will need to be made using the Merchandizing tools. | 296591 |
| Connect | Marketing Automation (MA) campaign functionality is disabled by default in the XC 9.0.2 deployment. To enable MA:1. Deploy the manual steps outlined in the following two MA KB articles: https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/065636 (needed on Azure PaaS deployments only) https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/1995062. Enable Live Events by setting the field IsLiveEvent to true.3. Add the xdb.processing.pools to <ma_ops/wwwroot/app_config/ConnectionStrings.config of the marketing automation operations role:<add name="xdb.processing.pools" connectionString="user id=poolsuser;password=ODPYFLX7R2D3Qkzpbw2jdctry6KZPBW2JDCTRY64@;data source=xc902rc4a180705-sql.database.windows.net;Initial Catalog=xc902rc4a180705-pools-db" />You can copy the entry from the <xc_collect/wwwroot/app_config/ConnectionStrings.config file to make sure you are using the proper database user id. | 198729 |
| Connect | The reports in Experience Profile, showing abandoned cart information is always showing zero abandoned carts because the Abandoned Cart outcome on which these reports are based, is currently not being triggered as part of the Abandoned Cart MA campaign. | |
| Connect | The Commerce-specific Analytics models for events, goals and outcomes are not included in the Analytics index, so they cannot be queried. This is required to ensure the number of fields in the index remains below the Azure index limit of 1,000 fields. | 227486 |
| Connect - Product Sync | Exception thrown in Currency Provider code when the Product Synchronization feature is enabled. To reproduce: Enable Sitecore.Commerce.Products.config under /App_Config/Include. Create a Product Repository. Run a full synchronization. Result: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. | 40877 |
| Connect - Product Sync | For a product template the "Manufacturer" field has odd behavior with 3 large controls that overlap in the UI. Multiple "TreeList With Search" controls will overlap controls beneath it so you cannot see the field name. | 250292 |
| Connect - Product Sync | The Resources item (Product Resources template) for a product only provides ability to see the first of several images. To reproduce: Use the filebasedECS sample to synchronize products. Select a product resources item and that has two images as child items. Select the main image. Result: Can only see one image, cannot see both images as options. | 250293 |
| Connect - Product Sync | Field labels are not localized in the predefined templates. | 250388 |
| Connect - Product Sync | Subdivisions are not synchronized as part of the Product Synchronization feature. Sub-divisions nested to a division do not get created in the Sitecore tree structure. | 102140 |
| Connect - Product Sync | Product types do not support hierarchies as they should. When product types are synchronized there is no way to specify ProductTypes in a hierarchical manner. | 250926 |
| Commerce Engine Connect | The wrong environment name is set for the Sitecore Commerce Engine Connect Crawler. An environment value "HabitatAuthoring" has been incorrectly set for "sitecore_web_index" crawler. This could result in wrong catalog information (for example, template view values) being indexed. Refer to this Sitecore KB article for the resolution. | 298894 |
| Commerce | On Azure, the SXA configuration for Azure indexing (\App_Config\Include\Z.Foundation.Overrides\Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Search.Azure.config) has been disabled to allow indexing to work properly in conjunction with Commerce. SXA Search components are not used in the SXA Storefront, but plain SXA sites without commerce will be affected if deployed in the same instance: - The sxacontent computed field is missing – SXA search will not work at all as it’s using this field to find results. - Geo-search will not work – no ordering by distance or searching within radius. - Dynamic search results boosting (boosting rules in the search scope) – some rules will not work as they require computed fields which are defined in this config (on the other hand, there will be nothing to boost as you won’t have search results anyway). - Field readers for tag and treelist will no longer be there – SXA tags will not work. | |
| Commerce | Unable to register accounts on newly created SXA Storefront sites. When a new Storefront is provisioned/created using SXA scaffolding, a corresponding new security domain is created in Sitecore. By default, the Commerce Engine is configured to only allow a few known domains:"Storefront" for the optional default Storefront site, "Extranet" and "CommerceUsers" for backward compatibility. Solution: Edit the JSON configuration file for the environment in use and set the value of the Domain property for the policy Sitecore.Commerce.Plugin.Customers.CustomerPropertiesPolicy to include newly created domain names, which by default matches the names of the Storefronts. For more information, see the Sitecore XC DevOps guide. | 279595 |
| Storefront | Promoted and Related products do not display actual products in design mode, even when a specific product is selected. | 276471 |
| Storefront | In metadata, canonical links are incorrectly specified to always use the HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS which is the default protocol. Search engines might reject the canonical links. | 278594 |
| Storefront | On a storefront site, right click on the site and select Add Site Module. Sometimes an error message occurs, "Cannot bind argument to parameter 'Item' because it is null. | 279565 |
| Storefront | CreateDefaultTenantAndSite Task fails with 424 error message during Sitecore XC9 installation. | 276479 |
| Storefront | Creative Exchange shows error when exporting a Storefront site. Expand the Experience Editor ribbon and select Export. Result: error message, "Error while downloading /sitecore/content/Sitecore/Storefront/Home%7B8546B801-B278-443F-8EEA-5FA8FBDEEB73%7D file." | 286659 |
| Storefront | Illegal recursion detected: GetModel error message. Restart the CD role in an Azure PaaS deployment with a Storefront site provisioned. Refresh the Storefront site. Result: infrequent error message that goes away after a few tries, "Illegal recursion detected: GetModel. An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. | 276657 |
| Storefront | An existing Product Catalog item is not set to point to new local "{home}/Catalogs/Habitat_Master/Department", as expected. | 276729 |
| Storefront | In Firefox, when you open a site exported using SXA Creative Exchange, the font icons are not displayed because Firefox prevents the font files from loading due to the File Same Origin policy. For more information about this policy, see the Firefox documentation: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Archive/Misc_top_level/Same-origin_policy_for_file:_URIs A work around is to disable the security.fileuri.strict_origin_policy browser configuration file. | 282956 |
| Storefront | Errors are observed in Sitecore Powershell Extension (SPE) logs while installing SXA Storefront languages during deployment. | 276919 |
| Storefront | On the Product Detail Page for a product variant, discount text is shown when not expected. The same list price is duplicated with a strikethrough when there is no discount configured. | 278935 |
| Storefront | On Azure, the Japanese language is corrupted in the Content Editor when Japanese language has been chosen as the client language. | |
| Storefront | Storefront upgrade script shows blue screen after upgrading, and the user is not informed on what to do. | 282114 |
| Storefront | Product cards on Product List component are not aligned. This happens on the last row when the remaining items does not take up the full width of the row. | 276906 |
| Storefront | Unable to see Catagory page in Experience Editor mode when we click on any Category navigation item in an Azure environment. The workaround is to launch Experience Editor directly on the Category page item and it will show up with mock data | 281165 |
| Storefront | It is not possible to create a Storefront using VDIR with a hostname which is the same as another Storefront, because it will be hidden. | 278039 |
| Storefront | The Product Detailed Page does not display the "Visited Product Page" in the Buy Gift Card and Landing Pages. | 276885 |
| Storefront | Search: Searching on the home page returns different results when deployed in the Azure App Service, as compared to an on-premises deployment. On Azure the search results are insufficiently restricted so too many results are returned. Issue was discovered during side by side testing. More investigation is needed to resolve all occurrences. | 278752 |
| Storefront | Search: An invalid catalog Id error message is displayed when searching in a new site without a catalog configured. To reproduce: create and publish a new site, add IIS bindings, and load site in the browser. A no Catalog configured message is correctly displayed. Enter a search key e.g. 'audio' and press Search button. Expected: Search page returns no result. Actual: Error message: Server Error in '/' Application. Invalid catalog Id. | 281284 |
| Storefront | xAnalytics: The chart under Experience Analytics/Commerce/Regional Settings does not display the expected data. No data is reported. | 276661 |
| Storefront | In an Azure App Service deployment, executing the CreateDefaultStorefront script on the Sitecore Platform returns a Sitecore Powershell Extension (SPE) error. Possibly due to a timeout issue, and insufficient handling of long running tasks. | 278743 |
| Storefront | In an Azure App Service deployment, Japanese language translations are not displayed correctly in the Content Editor. Instead of the translated language, question marks "???" are displayed in the Content Editor. | 276911 |
| Storefront | In an Azure App Service deployment, Japanese language translations are not displayed correctly in a Storefront live site. Instead of the translated language, question marks "???" are displayed in the some fields in the Storefront user interface. | 281200 |
| Storefront | Internet Explorer 11: Some pages do not display all information correctly in IE11, for example on the Order Preview page the Product Title is not displayed correctly, and pricing information is not displayed correctly. | 294864 |
| Storefront | Internet Explorer 11: Search Page results are displayed inconsistently in IE11, for example on Chrome a search correctly returns 33 items whereas on IE11 an incorrect amount of 45 items are returned. | 294874 |
| Storefront | Internet Explorer 11: Portions of a displayed page content is not retrieved over an HTTPS secure connection, so that an error message displays on the browser prompting the user to select whether to show all content or not (over HTTP). | 270186 |
| Storefront | When creating a site with a virtual folder (vdir = ‘/virtual’), error messages are not displayed as expected. For example, creating a site without a virtual folder without a domain configured correctly results in expected error messages as follows…Invalid or missing value for property 'Domain', and User created but external Id was not provided. However, when repeating the same test in a virtual folder, the operation is reported successful even though it is not. | 288915 |
| Deployment | Occasional indexing timeout can occur during an on-premise deployment. If an indexing timeout occurs during deployment, re-index using the Sitecore Index Manager. | 294588 |
| Upgrade | The Engine SDK contains an obsolete Plugin.Sample.Upgrade that does not function. This plugin did not get removed in time for the release. Please do not use it. |
Documentation updates
We completely overhauled our Sitecore documentation delivery, from back end authoring system through to our new doc.sitecore.com website (was doc.sitecore.net). For Sitecore XC this includes separating the Developer from User experience. Most documentation that was previously in separate html documents is now embedded into our consolidated website. Information is easier to find, by role and by commerce function, and with improved search.
We continue to publish install, upgrade, and migration .pdf documents on our downloads site.
| Area | Description | TFS no. |
|---|---|---|
| Install Guide | Added instructions on how to install Sitecore XC without Storefront. This applies to the on-premise guide only. | 277350 |
| Upgrade Guide | Added migration steps related to breaking changes and configuration changes introduced by performance improvements | 277217 |
| Upgrade Guide | Added migration steps related to configuration changes introduced by the Static Bundles feature. | 277283 |
| Business Users | Added Business Tools documentation for the new Static Bundles feature. Link to documentation. | 277294 |
| Business Users | Added Storefront documentation for the new Static Bundles feature. Link to documentation. | 277294 |
| Business Users | Added Storefront renderings for Shopping Carts in support of the new Static Bundles feature. Link to documentation. | 30122 |
| Business Users | Added Storefront renderings for Orders in support of the new Static Bundles feature. Link to documentation. | 30122 |
| Business Users | Clarified information on order states, for example problem orders, and available actions. Link to documentation. | 277258 |
| Business Users | Added user documentation for new Composer Template functionality. Link to documentation. | 279184 |
| Business Users | New topic "Setting the Rendering View Provider" outlines how to override the path to the /Views folder using the Rendering View Provider. Link to documentation. | 286216 |
| Business Users | New topic explains how to use the Commerce base themes. Link to documentation. | 268810 |
| Business Users | Added new videos related to the topic "Create a new tenant and site with commerce features". Link to documentation. | N/A |
| Business Users | Added a note to the topic "Create a new tenant and site with commerce features" about bootstrap 3 not being supported by the Storefront template. Link to documentation. | 287825 |
| DevOps | Added information on cloning a Catalog. Link to documentation. | 279179 |
| DevOps | Added a paragraph describing what the Clean Environment request does. Link to documentation. | 279186 |
| DevOps | Documented Catalog export via script (CURL). Link to documentation. | 286791 |
| DevOps | Documented IIS configuration for importing Catalogs. Link to documentation. | 288803 |
| DevOps | Documented SolrCloud configuration. Link to documentation | 287189 |
| DevOps | Added documentation pertaining to synchronization content request path, e.g. that it does not need a manually entered version field value. Link to documentation. | 277060 |
| DevOps | Documented how to pass PolicyKeys in a code-first approach, for importing Catalogs. Link to documentation. | 288861 |
| DevOps | Documented how to optimize the CommerceContext cache for a long running process. Link to documentation. | 288862 |
| DevOps | Added more description of how to use sample Postman API calls. Link to documentation. | N/A |
| Developer | Documented how to rebuild Sitecore indexes.Link to documentation. | 268929 |
| Connect Developer | New parameter IncludeBundledItemsInventory for GetStockInformationRequest added to the Connect Developer's Guide. Link to documentation. | 251160 |