Web CMS: Sitecore 6 - Customer Driven Usability

Sitecore recently announced the coming version of their flagship web content management system and today the product is officially out the door.

Our technical and editorial teams had an opportunity to test drive the new Sitecore 6 product last week. And with this latest version out of the gates today, we thought it apropos that we share a bit of what we saw.

In a very few words, version 6.0 is a nice corner-rounding release that demonstrates both that the company cares about its customers and that it has a successful process of building client feedback into the product development cycle.

A Focus on Ease of Use

Probably the most important thing about this new version of the Sitecore Web CMS is that it's based largely on customer-driven usability enhancements. Sitecore says they collected a lot of feedback from their customers and used that to design a new interface that is very simple to understand and use with a minimum of keystrokes and clicks.

You see this in action in several ways:

New Page Editor

The new version of Sitecore has a new Page Editor — replacing the WedEdit client. This new editor contains an inline editing interface that provides “the right piece of functionality for the right person”. This means you can create a number of editor roles which have different levels of editorial capability. What this does is allow you to not confuse your editors by showing them capabilities they don't understand or know how to use.

An editor sees what functionality they have via a “ribbon” at the top of the screen they want to edit. To know what sections of a page they can edit, flyover boxes appears as they move their mouse over the page. These flyovers can contain content specific commands like add an image.

Sample editor ribbon

As soon as an editor begins editing a section, it is automatically locked. Others can see this when they attempt to edit the page — as shown at the top of the page — and in the site structure navigation view — as shown by a lock.

Nicam home page editing ribbon plus inline edit

Editing in Sitecore is in-context, so the editor navigates to the page they want to edit, selects the section of the page they are allowed to edit and can immediately start editing “in-line”. At the bottom of the section or page component that is being edited, you'll find an editor toolbar that will provide formatting options.

Page Designer

The Page Designer enables non-technical people — like the marketing group — make changes quickly to a page or part of a page (i.e., a “sub layout”) without having to write code. This is a big benefit when you want to put something up on a page quickly and/or for a short period of time without having to involve a development or design team.

Once you have navigated to the page you want to modify, you simply select the Design button at the top of the page. Each page is made up of a set of placeholders — or sections. These are shown at the top of the screen and the controls that already exist within these Placeholders are shown on the right when you click on a specific Placeholder.

Page Designer - target section of page

Web CMS: Sitecore 6 - Customer Driven Usability

\n\nSitecore recently announced the coming version of their flagship web content management system and today the product is officially out the door.\n\nOur technical and editorial teams had an opportunity to test drive the new Sitecore 6 product last week. And with this latest version out of the gates today, we thought it apropos that we share a bit of what we saw. \n\nIn a very few words, version 6.0 is a nice corner-rounding release that demonstrates both that the company cares about its customers and that it has a successful process of building client feedback into the product development cycle.

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