BloomReach Experience V12 Upgrade...

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BloomReach Experience V12Upgrade Guide

The golden rule in digital is clear, speed it the key to success. Speed of reacting to industry trends, speed of creating and publishing new campaigns and features, speed of innovation between marketing and IT, and speed of connecting the data that delivers an experience to your visitors in real time.

This speed requires the right tools. Ones that evolve and improve one step ahead of industry needs. We are no strangers to that, and BloomReach Experience has always focused on both meeting the needs of the day and preparing businesses for the needs of the future. We offered a microservice architecture long before “headless” was a common term, we focused on a tool that allowed marketing and IT to work collaboratively before enterprises fully realized digital was a company-wide initiative, we brought native relevance into the platform that is built to continuously grow with every new data integration, and we’ve made APIs easy so that you can build experiences now that can be instantly re-usable on channels not yet in existence.

Digital moves fast, leaders move faster.

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Our goal has always been to offer our clients the level of speed that makes them industry leaders. We believe that the two core principles of our platform design, Open and Intelligent, are what drives this.

OpenEvery company is unique, and your digital ecosystem shouldn’t have to be identical to your competitors. You’ve already made technology investments you do not want to rip out, and you want to be able to experiment with new best-of-breed point solutions. Our dedication to API integrations makes it simple to let all your tools, and the data they glean, talk to each other. Giving you a 360 degree view of your customer you simply couldn’t get from siloed tools

Additionally our openness allows incredible agility for your internal teams. BloomReach Experience is open source, meaning that your developers can dive in and make our platform work in the exact way you need it to. Not only does our open microservice architecture make is simple for your developers to innovate with your current experience, it makes it easy to quickly reuse and adapt that experience to whatever touchpoint arises next.

IntelligentBack in 2012 we put native relevance and personalization into our platform and have been continously improving it ever since. We make it easy to build digital on data, with the ability to connect all your systems and use the aggregate data to drive every touchpoint.

In v12 we are taking the next big leap in intelligence, as we add BloomReach’s legacy machine learning into the BloomReach Experience platform. This embedded intelligence is present in the data layer, the content layer, and the presentation layer - fueling true one-to-one personalized digital experiences and informing decision making for every team member.

BloomReach Experience Our technology came onto the market in 1997 as a content management system, Hippo CMS, and from that point onward we have continued to evolve with the waves of digital innovation. We’ve kept true to our core philosophy of being an open platform with an architecture that lends itself to innovation and integrations, while continuously improving our product and features to keep us as a true best-of-breed tool. With our recent acquisition by BloomReach, we are taking our product to the next level by merging BloomReach’s leading machine intelligence with the Hippo platform for the next wave of content delivery and personalization: BloomReach Experience.

This versioning guide takes a look at the steps we’ve taken to evolve our CMS into an open and intelligent digital experience solution, and what new tools are at your fingertips with every version.

• V7.8 brought you a truly enterprise grade content solution that enabled a consistent experience across any channel.

• V7.9 gave both developers and marketers more control over their roles in the creation of brand experience, along with a rework of the architecture for unprecedented speed.

• V10 introduced the Relevance module to put real-time insights from Trends and Experiments into the hands of digital marketers

• V11 delivered cloud capabilities, developer tools, a more intuitive interface, and OOB Relevance tools that fostered rapid digital transformation in global enterprises.

• V12 harnesses the connected power of all your business solutions to build one seamless, cross-channel journey that’s personal to every visitor.

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Product evolution: Admin and Developer 7.8 7.9 10 10.2 11 11.1 11.2 12

Page Diagnostics ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Distributed Caching ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Big data stream processing ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Parallel workspaces for developers and users ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

LiveReload for template development ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Automatic Content REST API ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Page Move & Copy Custom Actions ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Delete Channel Events on CMS event bus ✓ ✓ ✓

Create javascript event goals ✓ ✓ ✓

YAML Configuration Management ✓

Repository Synchronization ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Two-factor authentication ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Improved password strength (SHA256) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Improved security ✓ ✓ ✓

Version Guide

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V7.8 - Dec 2012

Flexibility for the expanding digital experience With version 7.8, our CMS turned into a truly ‘enterprise grade’ solution. We introduced targeting and personalization to help marketers to deliver experiences that were specifically tuned to visitors’ interest and context - across any channel and device. As it was increasingly clear that delivering coordinated content over multiple channels was the future, we introduced device previews to make it as easy for business users to design a mobile website as it was to create a desktop one. We also added robust, scalable, and high-performing features such as failover and clustering to support our large enterprise customers as their digital businesses boomed. Along with these features, we introduced professional services for the enterprise and customer support for our community edition to ensure our users’ continuously taken care of.

KEY INNOVATION + FEATURES

Targeting and Personalization Marketers can easily customize components & configurations of components based on the type of visitor, interest profile, context, device, and other characteristics. The channel manager provides the view that each customizable “alter ego” would see.

Device Preview OOB preview for common devices (desktop, mobile phone, tablet) in the Channel Manager with straight-forward capability to add additional device previews.

Failover & ClusteringClustered servers are proactively monitored and work together to maintain high availability and scalability of services. If one server fails to work properly, another in the cluster automatically picks up the slack without any downtime.

Real time visitor analysisTrack visitors on a real time dashboard over multiple visits and channels to progressively build up a profile of the visitor. Gather characteristics such as where they are navigating from, what content they have seen, and use custom data collectors to work with 3rd party solutions to deliver a more relevant visitor experience.

Advanced Search & bulk operationsSearch content using standard properties such as document type, publication status, last editing author, document location and creation, last modification, publication date or define custom filters. Perform bulk operations, such as publishing, on selected subsets.

= ENTERPRISE = COMMUNITY EDITION

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Marketing and IT needed a better way to work togetherDigital transformation was truly becoming a company wide initiative, and we were - and still are - committed to providing a platform that makes it easy for marketers, editors, and developers to work collaboratively. For developers, we introduced Groovy updater scripts and Diff-and-patch tools were added to easily move configuration changes between environments. Along with Relevance, display preview, and advanced search, usability improvements for marketers included channel manager locking and simplified component configuration in templates.

Businesses needed more granular targeting beyond A/B playout Up until then, options for segmentation and targeting was limited to tools that said “audience A gets this full page and audience B gets this other full page.” The Relevance module brought targeting beyond page based, components themselves could be targeted to an audience, or even given a specific configuration depending on the type of visitor, interest profile, context, device, and so on. Visitor characteristics could now be progressively tracked over visits and devices and data collectors could be customized to collect and integrate information from CRM systems to drive content targeting.

Rapid, reliable delivery at scale As enterprise experiences grew rapidly we provided updates that would make growth painless and stable. Along with failover and clustering, version 7.8 saw page caching updates that were designed to work with Relevance, the ability to configure and render component asynchronously for easy third party integration, and canonical access to content that lowered memory used and improved querying from the HST.

MARKET CHALLENGES + SOLUTIONS V7.8

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V7.9 - April 2014

Control & SpeedIn version 7.9 we doubled down on our vow to make an enterprise solution that satisfies all departments responsible for the digital experience. We introduced secure content replication for infrastructure teams, a more flexible SCXML workflow for developers, channel-based access control for administrations, and drag-and-drop landing page management for marketers. V7.9 also introduced a clean separation of the configuration created by businesses users and developers to further improve the deployment process. All of this was paired with updates to the structure of the repository and delivery tiers to increase performance and reduce memory usage by 30% - bringing our customers unprecedented speed.


Forms Build extensible HTML forms within the CMS. Including support for multi-page forms, easy grouping of fields and reuse of those groups across fields, conditional form fields, custom field validation, and form submission via email.

Landing Page & Navigation Management Create, modify and move navigational items for each channel without IT involvement. Marketing teams can build dedicated pages and add page elements in no time with a drag and drop interface.

Content Replication Physically separated authoring and delivery environments facilitate infrastructures with high demand for content security. This ensures that only published, live content resides in the delivery repository with firewalls protecting the delivery environment.

CKEditorThe CKEditor for rich text fields enhances usability through functionalities such as intuitive context menus, configurable keyboard shortcuts, more styling options, spell-check as you type, syntax highlighting, folding, search and many more. Easily control which formatting options are available to editors for each content type.

Essentials feature libraryThe CMS contains a library of standard components that can easily be added out-of-the-box to CMS projects by a developer. Adding blogs, RSS, news sections, events calendars and other oftenly used components can be added interactively to the project.

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Controlled and Secure Content Our customers wanted piece of mind that their content was secure and that each department had the right level of control. Secure content replication became an integral part of the core CMS architecture, replicating changes made in the user interface, importers, REST interfaces, and the JCR API between the authoring and delivery environments. The replication follows one-directional communication, so that firewalls between the zones can be configured to reject all inbound connections to the authoring zone, making intrusion impossible. Additionally, v7.9 introduced the ability for administrators to configure access rules for users on a per-channel basis.

Flexible Developer WorkflowIn our continuing quest to make the best developer experience, we introduced configurable SCXML workflows to bring increased ease and flexibility to advanced workflow scenarios. The now dynamic workflows could be customized and extended at runtime and developers could run multiple workflow processes concurrently. Please note that in V12 we have taken the next step in developer tools and have switched to YAML as the configuration language.

A solution that runs at light speedOur customers were building increasingly large and complex experiences and their visitors expected increasingly speedy delivery. We streamlined the document model in the repository tier and, in the delivery tier, the HST model (re)loading was re-implemented to meet the requirements of businesses with a vast number of channels and frequent changes. Next to the significant performance gain, the improvement also reduced the memory usage of the delivery tier by an average of 30%.

MARKET CHALLENGES + SOLUTIONS V7.9

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V10Instant analytics and your fingertips We jumped from v7.9 to v10 as we introduced semantic versioning. This version was all about putting the power of intelligent content in the hands of marketers. We introduced A/B and multivariate testing and the ability to view real time trends in visitor analytics. With these capabilities, marketers had the data to prove that their personalization and targeting efforts were impactful. We also overhauled the user interface based on customer feedback to make it even more intuitive. Developers also got a kit of new functionalities to make their jobs easier, including content replication and webfiles that increased agility in the system and the deployment process. Also, our multi-channel capabilities increased by the introduction of headless operation via REST.


Trends Provides an overview of the peak performing content categories or custom metadata fields connected to your content for your select data sets. View real time insights across the entire experience, or filter by categories such as countries, authors, external marketing automation lists, and more.

Relevance: ExperiementsDynamic content testing surpases standard A/B testing by continually adjusting the proportion of content delivery in favor of the higher performing variant - optimizing the experience in real time and minimizing conversion losses.

WebfilesRemoves the need for full redeployment to bring changed in web resources to production. Freemarker templates and all other web resource files can be stored inside the repository allowing you to dynamically add and remove templates and files in a currently running system.

Repository SynchronizationAutomatic synchronization between the files on local disk and in the repository allows developers to use their own prefered IDE to create code, templates, CSS and JavaScript, which then automatically synchronizes with the CMS repository.

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Actionable, measurable insights for marketers We’d given marketers the tools to put the right content in front of the right audience, and in v10 we gave them the tools to measure the performance of that content. This release introduced two new functions in the Relevance module. Trends provides the real-time analytics that shows which content is performing best across categories and audiences, and Experiments provides dynamic multi-armed bandit algorithms that avoid the pitfalls of standard A/B testing by continuously optimizing content and configuration based on real-time results. This approach makes Content Performance metrics actionable even with a limited number of users in a test group.

Functionality for the rising web developerWeb developers were at the helm of more and more digital initiatives and this release contained features to make their day to day tasks easier. We created a tight and optimized loop between code development and deployment with webfiles and automatic repository synchronization that, together, minimize the effort involved and the opportunity for error in the deployment process.

Channel proliferation in a headless worldDevelopers had always had the ability to implement REST APIs with our platform, but in v10 we introduced an OOB Content REST API that can read content from the CMS to use in AngularJS or mobile apps. Our architecture lets both the OOB and custom REST APIs side by side so developers can quickly experiment with apps and IoT devices, with one central platform managing and reusing the content across channels.

MARKET CHALLENGES + SOLUTIONS V10

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V11Digitally transforming the global enterprise Digital Experience had transitioned from simply being a marketing initiative to being a company-wide mission of digital transformation. We saw this in all industries and in v11 we focused on giving enterprises the power to make that transition as seamless, and rapid, as possible. The ability to now host our platform in the Cloud brought unprecedented agility to enterprises, and significant improvements to our native Relevance took intelligent cross-channel personalization to the next level.


Editing in Device Preview Edit responsive pages for mobile, desktop and tablet directly from multiple preview widths. Making it easy to continuously review and improve the responsiveness of the site while in edit mode.

OOB Relevance The addition of a native relevance store and pre-installed standard relevance collectors enables organizations to get up and running with Relevance in a matter of weeks.

JavaScript Event Goals Anything you can Javascript can now be used to score experiment goals. This opens the door to unlimited possibilities of aligning experiments with even your most unique business goals.

Second Level Caching With the Second Level Page Caching enabled, clustering runs more efficiently by reusing cached pages between cluster nodes. Only 1 node is required to create a cached page, after which that page can be served by all cluster nodes making delivery of pages to your visitors even faster.

We also focused on the day-to-day ease of our end users by revamping the user interface based on over 100 suggestions from customers and partners and improving localization to allow global teams to work in their preferred language and time zone. As always, we continued to improve the ongoing stability of our platform, including 1,800 product improvements. Overall, v11 was created for the organizations that were ready for digital experience to drive an incredible competitive advantage.

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Cloud Agility The Cloud brings unprecedented agility to the modern enterprise, and with the release of v11 came the ability to host BloomReach Experience in the cloud to instantly build, test, and deploy digital experiences globally without infrastructure overhead. This provides incredible ease when it comes to scaling the experience and facilitating continuous delivery and testing. Our classic open architecture of BloomReach Experience ensures that all this cloud-driven agility takes full advantage of interoperability with third-party data.

Global Operations Digital makes the world smaller, and the need for global tools bigger. We want to make day to day life of our global community as easy as possible, and in v11 we redesigned localisation implementation to make our user interface customizable for any left-to-right language, and added simplified Chinese and Spanish to our OOB language offerings. Users across the globe can also now work in their preferred timezone while ensuring no conflicts arise in the underlying data stores.

Next level of relevance The need for data driven personalization continued to grow, and our capabilities continue to grow along with it. Along with a native relevance store and OOB collectors, we made a plethora of updates to our Relevance module such as easie consent cookie implementation, custom view dates in the Trends dashboard, the addition of “OR” in the Characteristics logic, and many other tweaks that enables enterprise organization to get up and running with Relevance easily. We also added the option of Relevance consultancy, to help you receive the full benefit of the Relevance module as quickly as possible.


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V12 - Sept 2017

An open and intelligent digital experience


GDPR Compliance A set of tools to support your GDPR compliance strategy, including pseudonymization, consent cookies, serving personal data to visitors on request, and being able to forget visitor data.

Projects and Workflow Bundle With the new Projects capability, we introduce collaborative multi-channel workflows. Projects can manage multiple campaigns in unison, separating future changes from the core live experiences, so that you can get to market faster, while ensuring collaboration between IT and business.

Visual EditingVisual editing allows users to quickly made in-page edits from the channel manager so changes can be previewed as they are made. Importantly, the separation of content and presentation remains - so that updating content on one page automatically carries those updates to all other places this content is being used, such as mobile apps and remote display units.

Commerce ComponentsProduction-ready Content + Commerce components that make it easy to leverage BloomReach Personalization APIs and machine learning to drive personalization. Components for personalized product grids, queries and ‘more like this’ features are available to drive intelligent content personalization across the entire buyer journey.

V12 is all about bringing every tool in your kit together to build a 360 view of your customer and a relevant, consistent experience across every touchpoint. It’s time to stop using point solutions to optimize the fringes of the experience and instead combine all that data in the core of the experience. The introduction of CRISP API in v12 makes it easier than ever to unify front-end marketing tools with back-end transactional services for a simplified, tailored customer experiences across the customer lifecycle.

Life moves faster when you can work together: when developers and marketing can collaborate from the same interface, with traditional web and new headless channels delivered consistently from the same repository, when legacy systems and new tools can communicate through one central platform, and when human and machine intelligence can work in unison to drive a personal, scalable content experience.

This release also marks the coming together of the BloomReach and Hippo products, as we introduce BloomReach Commerce modules into the Experience platform and take the next big step in an open and intelligent experience platform.

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Everything as a ServiceDigital experience has long ago surpassed the standalone website. Your customers interact with your brand across a whole journey of digital touchpoints - desktop, mobile, in-store kiosks, IoT devices - and they expect a consistent experience across all of these channels. With BloomReach Experience, you get on-demand delivery of content, experiences, and digital campaigns to every user, any device, and all new and emerging digital touch points. Headless, head-optional, traditional or hybrid - the services-oriented architecture can uniquely support your needs.

There is always going to be a next screen your users demand, and our native separation between content and its presentation allows you to easily extend your experience to new touchpoints using the same underlying content and data. In v12 we have made it even easier to expand and control a cross-channel experience. A more sophisticated content sorting enables you to sort on any piece of data in your content giving you more control on how it is delivered, especially in a headless scenario. Additionally, the introduction of CRISP API simplifies the process of implementing everything as a resource - external content, external data, collections of content elements and entire application components can all be accessed via REST APIs to leverage on any touchpoint.

Embedded Intelligence Not only do your customers expect every interaction they have with your brand to be consistent, they expect it to be personal and relevant to them at each moment. We’ve seen so many companies leap into personalization by tacking on a different tool to track every piece of the journey - which leads to siloed data. BloomReach Experience is designed to aggregate your data across marketing automation, data management, social media, CRM, commerce and many more platforms to put the power of holistic real-time visitor analytics in the hands of digital marketers to target, test, and deliver 1:1 digital experiences.

This communication between technologies builds a 360 view of your customer, and it also uses the same content repository, and the data attached to it, across every touchpoint, which means that targeting and personalization can be pulled through every interaction. Marketers are empowered to target and tailor every component, asset, or content element across every experience - combining unique business insights with the power of machine learning to deliver, at scale, the 1:1 experiences that meet customer goals and business targets.


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Timeline

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A note on versioningLong Term Support Every business is different, and each one has a unique digital strategy. Some want to innovate with the latest technologies and features as soon as they are available, while others prioritize minimizing the number of times they must implement and adopt new releases.

Semantic versioning allows us to cater to both sides of the update spectrum. We release new versions 3 times a year to keep ahead of the continuously changing technology landscape. 1 major release that takes the largest steps in innovation, and is not backwards compatible with other releases, and two minor releases that focus on improvements and hardening of the platform.

This semi-frequent release schedule means that BloomReach Experience remains up to date, secure, and compatible with 3rd party technologies. This versioning schedule also gives us more chances to quickly deliver the features and functionalities our customers request, meaning you don’t have to wait to work with the latest internet browser, CRM tool, or software infrastructure.

When to Take the Next Step Releasing these new functionalities in Major and Minor versions allows our customers to choose between a pattern of multiple quick updates throughout the year, or a less frequent schedule of heavier updates. Many of our customers adopt one of the following 4 upgrade patterns, depending on their main focus when it comes to their digital strategy.

Community EnterpriseExperiences that started small can quickly grow, and quickly need enterprise features and support. Companies around the world run on our community edition and we have a lot of experience in helping them seamlessly transition to BloomReach Experience when they are ready to build an enterprise level experience. This version guide helps to highlight the additional features and benefits of the enterprise level BloomReach Experience.

Option 2: Modern FunctionalitiesFor those who want new functionalities several times a year, but would like to wait until the version has fully settled before upgrading. These users will run the release 1 previous of the latest version. 1 major upgrade & 2 minor upgrades per year.

Option 3: Low Upgrade FrequencyFor those who want new features yearly with a lower upgrade frequency. Once running a Final Minor version, 1 upgrade per year. Requires Standard or Premium support.

Option 4: Minimal Upgrade FrequencyFor those who want to have the minimal upgrade periods possible. These users are OK with delay in feature availability. Once running a Final Minor version, 1 upgrade every 2 years. Requires Premium support.

Option 1: InnovationsFor those who want the newest features and functionalities as soon as they become available. 1 major upgrade & 2 minor upgrades per year.

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ABOUT BLOOMREACH

BloomReach is a Silicon Valley firm that brings businesses the first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform (DXP). BloomReach drives customer experience to accelerate the path to conversion, increase revenue, and generate customer loyalty. With applications for content management, site search, page management, SEO optimization and role-based analytics, BloomReach is a central location for all players who manage customer experience to come together and intelligently drive business outcomes. BloomReach’s Web Relevance Engine (WRE) algorithmically understands content and users, matching demand and intent data from across the web. BloomReach is a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM, with tools to unlock the powerful creativity of humans to improve omnichannel customer experiences at scale. Together, human and machine generate millions of dollars of proven incremental sales.

BloomReach’s portfolio of customers include: Neiman Marcus, Staples, REI, Mailchimp, and Air Miles. Created in 2009, BloomReach is headquartered in Mountain View, CA with offices worldwide and is backed by investment firms Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, NEA, Salesforce Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures.

Learn more: www.bloomreach.com

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