A Flashback of Sitecore Journey in 2016!

Hey Sitecore Heroes, first of all wish you a very Happy New Year!
Let's welcome 2017 year with some new resolutions... and let's look back at Sitecore Journey of 2016.

Year 2016 was really fruitful for Sitecore Journey. I had achieved many mile-stones during this year - 2016.

1) Achieved Sitecore XP 8 Certification with 97%

It was one of the most memorable moments when your Sitecore Journey scored 97% and achieved Sitecore XP 8 certificaiton.

2) Contributed Four More Sitecore Modules

Sitecore Journey helped many content authors and developers by writing very useful Sitecore Modules in year 2016.

3) Attended Sitecore MVP Summit and Sitecore Symposium 2016 Event

How can one forget Sitecore MVP Summit and Symposium event of 2016 year? Sitecore Journey got a chance to meet and greet community members during this event. 

4) Founded Sitecore User Group UAE (SUGUAE) in Dubai

One of the most successful user groups SUGUAE is founded in this year - 2016. We got a huge response from Sitecore community in Dubai after launching SUGUAE.

5) Contributed many useful blog posts to community

Sitecore Journey released lots of news and helpful modules for Content Authors, Developers, Marketers and Administrators in year 2016.

6) Got 34000+ Hits on Sitecore Interview Question Book

Got a tremendous response of 34K+ hits on Sitecore Interview Question book.

7) SUGUAE Grand Event with Sitecore Partner Days Dubai

Sitecore sponsored SUGUAE event on Sitecore Partner Days at Dubai. SUGUAE rocked this Sitecore Event at Dubai!

I am looking forward to 2017 and wishes you a Spectacular Sitecore Journey in 2017!

Facing Required meta tag missing (twitter:text:description) Error in your Blogger?

Are you facing issue in setting up Twitter Card for your blog hosted on Blogger? If yes, then this blog post may help you on this.

You will find below code snippet everywhere to setup Twitter Card for your blog. Add below code snippet before </head> tag in your template.

<!-- twitter card details -->
<meta content='summary' name='twitter:card'/>
<meta content='@ThakkarNilesh' name='twitter:site'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.url' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='twitter:title'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='twitter:description'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' name='twitter:image'/>
<!-- end twitter card details -->

But once you add this code snippet, the very next moment you will below error when you validate your twitter card through card validator at https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

meta tag missing (twitter:text:description)

If you are facing similar error then you can fix it by surrounding your code with condition as suggested below.

<!-- twitter card details -->
<meta content='summary' name='twitter:card'/>
<meta content='@ThakkarNilesh' name='twitter:site'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.url' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='twitter:title'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='twitter:description'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' name='twitter:image'/>
<!-- end twitter card details -->

Now try to validate your twitter card again at https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

Hurray... It's showing twitter card. right?

Now enjoy sharing your twitter card!

Publish Bulk Items in Sitecore using Sitecore Bulk Publishing Tool

You will be agree with the fact that many times you want to publish a huge amount of Sitecore items and unfortunately there is NO way to select multiple items while publishing. So you need to select single item at a time and publish it. This is very time consuming process.

This situation is especially happening with content author team in their day to day life of working with Sitecore to pop and publish the content.

In order to increase efficiency of my content team, I have created a tool or you can say utility to publish bulk items in one go.

I am happy to contribute my 9th Sitecore module to the community.

This is how Bulk Publishing Tool will look like when you install it from Sitecore Marketplace. The package contains one ASPX page named "BulkPublish.aspx" page which will be deployed under Sitecore -> Admin folder when you install this package.

You can give either Sitecore Item Path or IDs separated by new lines in right side text box. Clicking on publishing will show Publishing Summary of given page(s) as shown below.

You can download this tool/utility from Sitecore Marketplace.

Feel free to customize this page as per your Sitecore environment and need.

Sitecore Language Checklist Report Tool

Smart programmer hates manual and time consuming task, hence they are always looking for automating those manual boring task.

In-fact that's why you are programmer - to automate such stuff and help your team.

Recently I found that my content team member was asked by client to prepare a report to show all available languages for particular set of items. For example: Prepare a report of all available languages for articles, events, news.

Just imagine that how much time will it take to go and check whether particular language is available or not from 18 languages (yes, we have 18 languages configured for our Sitecore website) and hundreds of articles, events and news.

In order to help my content team to automate this process, I thought that it's good idea to create a Language Report Tool which will show all available languages for particular set of Sitecore items.

This is how report look like. Basically this tool is a kind of Sitecore Language Checklist for all the sub-items of given page.

0 indicates no language version available for that item.
1 indicates  language version available for that item.

You can click on download button to generate report of this language statistics. It will download a complete report in XLS format.

Click here to download Sitecore Package for this tool/utility from Sitecore Marketplace. You simply need to install this package from Sitecore desktop editor, it will deploy the page under Sitecore - Admin folder.

For security reasons, you should place this tool/utility under Sitecore --> Admin folder. Although this page is intelligent enough to  redirect you to login page, if your are not admin and try to access this page.

Hope this will save your lots of time if your client has such crazy requirement :)

How To Use SkyScanner API in ASP.Net?

In this era of technology, we think that we can get everything on internet. But we forgot that if we don't share then how will we/others get that.

This happens with me as well few weeks ago!

Well, I was given assignment of creating traveler page by using SkyScanner API. I thought that I will be able to do it easily by referring SkyScanner official API documentation but it was not so easy. I tried to find if anyone has shared any code snippet to consume SkyScanner API in ASP.Net but not much luck.

Here is the official SkyScanner API documentation.
https://support.business.skyscanner.net/hc/en-us/articles/210645649-Overview
https://support.business.skyscanner.net/hc/en-us/articles/211308489-Flights-Live-Pricing

So I researched and created traveler page by using SkyScanner API. I then thought let me share my research and code snippets with you in case if you are in the same boat.

Below is the landing page where user can search for flight based on different criteria. User can search for either “Round Trip” or “One Way” trip as per choice.

I created one landing page named default.aspx from where user can search for flights. On clicking search button, user will be redirected to search result page name flight-search.aspx

Airport API:

 Airport API is used to auto suggest airport when user type in “To” and “From” textbox

SkyScanner Flight API:

Skyscanner API is used to pull flight details as per given input. You can study API at official documentation https://support.business.skyscanner.net/hc/en-us/articles/211308489-Flights-Live-Pricingfor further details.

Search Result Page:

This will call Skyscanner API and will display result like this

Search Result Filters:

I have also implemented filters functionality which you can explore by looking into code and integrate it as per business requirement. Below screen shows all NON-STOP flights.

Below screen shows all fly-dubai flight as per filter. Clicking on “Book” button will redirect to actual airlines website to book the ticket.

How To Test SkyScanner API

Option-1: Use Postman

You can use any tool to test SkyScanner API, but my favorite one it “Postman” which is getting used by industry.

1)  Install Postman or any other tool as per your choice to test SkyScanner API

2) Send GET request and read “Location” field in HEADER from response.

var URL = "http://partners.api.skyscanner.net/apiservices/pricing/uk1/v1.0/" + sessionKey + "?apiKey=" + "prtl6749387986743898559646983194";

3) Now send POST request with all input values.

poststring = String.Format("apiKey={0}&country={1}&currency={2}&locale={3}&originplace={4}&destinationplace={5}&outbounddate={6}&adults={7}", "prtl6749387986743898559646983194", "AE", "AED", "en-US", fromAirPort, ToAirPort, oneWayDepartDate.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"), passengers);

Option 2: Use SkyScanner Test Harness page:

SkyScanner has provided on test harness page where you can test your API key with all search paratmters to check flight search results.

This test harness page can be found at:

http://business.skyscanner.net/portal/en-GB/Documentation/FlightsLivePricingQuickStart

If you are looking for a complete SkyScanner API project or more details then get in touch with me by posting comment or send an email.

Hope this post will help you get started with SkyScanner API in .NET !

A Journey To Sitecore Symposium and MVP Summit 2016!

Hope all of you know that what is Sitecore Symposium? If you don't know then most probably you are new to Sitecore or your are not in the world of Sitecore :) 

Well, I just came back from Sitecore Symposium Event which is the must to attend event. Every year Sitecore organizes annual summit. During early years, it was known as Sitecore Dreamcore event. But now it's called as Sitecore Symposium event. Usually Sitecore arranges this Symposium event every year in Sep-Oct month followed by Sitecore MVP Summit.

Sitecore MVP Summit is free event and only for Sitecore MVPs while Sitecore Symposium is paid event and open for all. But if you Sitecore MVP then you will get some discount on Sitecore Symposium event.

221 Sitecore MVPs from 25 Countries

This year Sitecore MVP Summit and Sitecore Symposium was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA from 12th Sep to 16th Sep. It was my dream to be part of this event, I was following this event from many years, was reading the blog posts, was seeing event photos, following tweets. This year 2016 is very lucky for me, I got a chance to attend this event and I am going to share my journey to Sitecore Symposium and MVP Summit with you today.

I don't want to make this blog post boaring by writing much text. So I am going to share few clicks of Sitecore MVP Summit and Symposium journey with you.

One of the best part about this event is - you get a chance to meet with Sitecore team. You must be knowing these two pillars of Sitecore - Michael Seifert (left) and Lars Fløe Nielsen (right).

Pieter Brinkman - the man behind arranging Sitecore MVP Summit.

With Yogesh, Mark Stiles and Chris.

With Robbert Hock and Akshay Sura.

With the Sitecore MVC expert lady - Martina Welander.

Finally MVP Summit 2016 is going to start.

Sitecore MVP Summit Day 2 - Going for boating with old colleagues Yogesh and Brijesh.

Got Tattoo in boat on Sitecore MVP Summit Day-2 outing. My quote for this tatto is "Sitecore is very handy".

 Finally got realistic sketch :) !

Got a Sitecore XP book as a goodie on the table in early morning breakfast.

After Sitecore MVP Summit event, getting ready for Sitecore Symposium!

And here you go.. What a grand opening of Sitecore Symposium 2016!!!

Post Symposium Trip

Do you know this place? Well, I planned to see Las Vegas during my this trip and coincidently Sitecore announced on the last day of event that Symposium 2017 is going to be held at Las Vegas. Wow... Isn't it exciting?

See you again next year at Las Vegas on 16th Oct, 2017 in Sitecore Symposium!