XM Cloud Terminology
I recently completed my Sitecore XM Cloud certification, and I am excited to share my knowledge through a series of blog posts. In this post, I discuss some common terminologies used in XM Cloud. In a previous blog, I covered the setup of XM Cloud in a local environment. Stay tuned for more insights on XM Cloud in my upcoming posts.
Sitecore Cloud Portal
The Sitecore Cloud Portal serves as the central hub for
accessing all Sitecore DXP products. Through this portal, you can manage your
organization and users, as well as control access to applications such as XM
Cloud, Content Hub ONE, and the XM Cloud Deploy app. Access the Cloud Portal at
portal.sitecorecloud.io.
Organization
An organization
comprises related team members and Sitecore products. Each organization can
include one or more Sitecore products, with multiple instances of each product.
Large enterprise
companies or solution partners may manage multiple organizations, whereas
smaller companies typically have just one. Each organization employs a set of
rules to determine user access and define their roles within each product.
Organization management is facilitated through the Cloud Portal.
App
An app is an
instance of a Sitecore product. For example, a company might have three XM
Cloud apps within its organization: one for development, one for staging, and
one for production.
A Sitecore solution
partner's organization might contain multiple XM Cloud apps like XM Cloud, CDP,
Personalize for each of its customers.
By default, an
Organization User does not have access to any apps within the organization.
Access for an Organization User can be managed by assigning specific app roles.
Individuals with the Organization Admin or Organization Owner roles
automatically have the highest level of access across all apps.
Roles
Roles define which apps and features each team member can
access within the Sitecore Cloud Portal. There are two types of roles:
organization roles and app roles.
Organization roles determine if you can invite others to
the organization, assign roles, and perform other administrative tasks.
Individuals with the Organization Owner or Organization Admin role
automatically have admin privileges in all apps within the organization.
App roles specify which apps a team member can access and
their role within each app. Each Sitecore product has its own unique set of app
roles.
Project
A project is a logical grouping of XM Cloud environments, such as a
development, testing, and production environment. In XM Cloud, you can create a
project using the Deploy app, the CLI, or REST APIs.
Environment
Content Management Instance
The Content Management
instance is where you create, store, and edit site content; and manage
publishing, content modelling, versioning, workflows, translations, rules, and
permissions.
It includes your
page layouts, components, data source configurations, localization, and
personalization settings.
Site
A site is a collection of one or more pages, and a page can have
several components. Within XM Cloud, a site is always a headless site.
Site Collection
A site collection serves as a parent entity that organizes
related sites, grouping them by business unit, brand, or similar categories. It
facilitates content sharing among the sites, such as data templates and digital
assets.
Deploy App
The XM Cloud Deploy app provides a user-friendly interface
for managing environments and deploying XM Cloud projects. It features a
project creation walkthrough, a detailed log of each deployment step, a status
page, and a centralized hub for managing your projects and environments. Upon
successfully completing the project creation flow, the app executes the
following processes to finalize the project creation:
- Provision
- Build
- Deploy
Rendering Host
The front-end application, also known as "the rendering
host," is responsible for displaying the website to your audience. It can
be hosted on platforms such as Vercel. This application is configured and
scaled to handle live traffic effectively.
Experience Edge
Experience Edge is a GraphQL API-based service endpoint that
enables the retrieval of layout and content distributed through a CDN. It
serves as the XM Cloud publishing target and is hosted by Sitecore.
Environment Variables
Environment
variables are key-value pairs that control core aspects of your XM Cloud
environment setup. Stored outside the source code, they simplify configuration
changes. For instance, in a Next.js application, they are stored in an .env
file, while in local development, they are stored in env.local. XM Cloud
includes three types of environment variables: system, user-controlled, and
custom.
System Environment Variables
System environment
variables encompass settings and configurations essential to your XM Cloud
environment. While these settings can be modified in a local development
environment and when using an external rendering host, they cannot be changed
in a production XM Cloud environment.
User-Controlled Environment Variables
XM Cloud
environments come with predefined environment variables that you can control.
Custom Environment Variables
In addition to
predefined environment variables, you can create custom key-value pairs and
store them in XM Cloud. These can be used for purposes such as connecting to
third-party systems.
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