What’s New in Sitecore: December 2024 Feature Roundup by Icreon

Sitecore December month’s roundup highlights exciting new features and enhancements to craft future-driven digital experiences with Sitecore. These features span from WCAG-compliant XM Cloud Forms to advanced API management tools, Angular starter kits, and early access to Sitecore Stream. With improvements across platforms like Content Hub and CDP, these updates cater to developers, marketers, and organizations striving for seamless digital experiences and robust marketing automation.

Feature Updates

Discover the latest Sitecore updates for December 2024 and explore new features designed to elevate your website’s performance and enhance customer engagement through cutting-edge tools and seamless integration capabilities.

Accessibility Compliance within XM Cloud Forms

XM Cloud Forms now enable form creators to create WCAG Level A compliant forms. Most organizations aim for a level AA standard; however, this is a valuable feature as it provides basic compliance adherence by default. There are four common accessibility issues that are checked by this utility:

• Alt text missing from image
• Label missing from field
• Low contrast of element's text
• Link missing descriptive text

Learn more about WCAG compliance tool and form summary pages

XM Cloud items can be shared across environments

With the release of XM Cloud forms, one core need was to ensure the movement of an already built form from a lower environment to an upper live environment. This sharing feature has now been extended to share not just the form but also its building blocks (layouts and elements) without sharing the form.

Learn more about sharing forms

Content Hub API updates (Action Required)

Continuing with Content Hub optimization, entities and search API’s now handle related paths differently within the API response to make it easier to interpret and be more standardized.

These updates will be auto applied to Content Hub instances on the following dates:

• For non-production environments, January 13, 2025
• For production environments, February 10, 2025

Learn more about content hub API updates

For teams that prefer Angular JS Framework, a starter kit is now available

Expanding the support for Rendering SDK across frameworks, with the addition of Angular, the following JS frameworks are now supported: Next.js, React, Angular, Vue, and React Native.

Starter kits are now available for Next.js and Angular frameworks to quickly start development. Although in the nascent stage, the Angular starter kit will support additional JSS functionality, such as component builder and meta-framework SSG/SSR, in the future.

Learn more about Angular JSS starter kit for XM Cloud

Sitecore CDP order Rest API now upgraded to v2.1

If a CDP-based solution uses the 2.1 data model API, v2.1 should now be utilized, as this version adheres to modern RESTful API standards and ensures simplified data entry.

Learn more about API upgrades

Claims mapping through Sitecore Portal

SSO allows users to authenticate via an identity provider, which sends a token with user claims to the application. The application uses this token for sign-in instead of requiring a username and password. Sitecore Portal now supports 20 claim mappings per SSO connection.

This feature enables organizations to securely project digital identity and entitlement rights across security and enterprise boundaries.

Learn more about claims mapping setup

Sitecore Stream early access now available

Sitecore Stream, the latest product in the Sitecore Suite, was launched in October 2024 during the symposium. It is now available for early access.

The early access to tools like Brand Aware AI and generative Copilots will boost marketing productivity across Sitecore Products, starting with Content Hub by enabling AI Content generation and assisted visual search with the platform.

Learn more about Sitecore Stream

API Platform for Sitecore Connect

Sitecore Connect customers can now add API platform on top of the existing solution to enable simplified creation, exposure, and management of APIs as part of Sitecore Connect recipes.

The API platform supports various use cases across Sitecore products:

• For XM Cloud, API platforms allow secure data transfer to third-party platforms.
• For CDP REST API’s, the platform provides improved control and monitoring of access to customer and behavioural data.
• Content Hub API endpoints can be grouped together to better manage, create content, and enable data transformation processes.
• Secure Send and Search API’s by restricting data to authorized users and enforcing rate limits.

Learn more about new introductions in Sitecore Connect

Explore our accelerators programs

Icreon's Sitecore Professional Services Accelerator by Icreon enhances brand visibility and competitiveness, leveraging features like personalized portals and ChatGPT integration.

Icreon's Sitecore Manufacturing Accelerator by Icreon optimizes operations and sales processes with BOMs, Digital Twins, and augmented reality support, tailored to the manufacturing sector's unique needs.

Our accelerator programs are designed to optimize your digital strategy, ensuring you stay competitive and deliver exceptional value to your customers.

Unlock Sitecore Potential with Icreon

With the December 2024 updates, Sitecore empowers organizations to improve accessibility, streamline operations, and enhance customer engagement. Icreon is here to help you leverage AI, advanced APIs, and seamless integrations for scalable growth and superior digital experiences—to maximize your Sitecore investment.

Connect with our Sitecore experts today to explore how these updates can transform your ecosystem.

Stay tuned—there are even more exciting updates on the horizon!