Upgrade 12.5 to 12.6

Introduction

Goal

Upgrade a Bloomreach Experience Manager implementation project from version 12.5.x to 12.6.y.

Prerequisites

Implications of Content Branching on Project-Specific Customizations

Bloomreach Experience Manager 12.6 introduces content branching within the Content perspective and the Channel manager. If your project has any customizations in the following components, your project may require custom upgrade work:

• Document workflow has been modified. This affects the visibility of the Edit option and the options of the Publication menu. 
  The underlying SCXML configuration has modified substantially so be sure to reapply any customizations.
• Content Editor has been modified. This affects the visibility of the Edit, Publication and Restore menu options.
• Version History. This affects the number of revisions that are created and the labels of revisions.
• Derived Data. When deriving data "from another node" and more specifically the unpublished variant (that variant can be related to another branch that the currently selected branch and the output of the derived data function is unexpected ). See derived data.

If any of the above situations applies to your project, please contact BloomReach to discuss how to proceed.

Upgrade Steps

Increase the Versioning Bundle Cache

Since version 12.6.x and onward, Bloomreach Experience Manager performs more read operations on the repository version history. Version history nodes are cached in a separately configurable cache. The size of this cache needs to be increased if the configuration option is currently set too low or missing. See Configure the BundleCache for more information and recommended values.

Replace the hst:manageContent tag's deprecated templateQuery parameter with documentTemplateQuery

The templateQuery parameter of the manageContent template tag is deprecated in version 12.6.0 and has been replaced by the documentTemplateQuery parameter. The templateQuery parameter will still work in 12.6.x but a warning will be logged. It is recommended to replace any instance of templateQuery with documentTemplateQuery when upgrading to 12.6.x.

(Optional) Remove Deprecated @Color Annotations

The @Color annotation for getter methods of ParameterInfo interfaces has been deprecated in version 12.6 and will be removed in version 13.0. Once the annotation is removed, hexadecimal color values must be entered as regular string values instead.

Although not required yet for the upgrade to version 12.6, you may consider already removing any @Color annotations in your implementation project in order to be ready for a future upgrade to version 13.0.

(Optional) Replace Deprecated Label Fields in Document Types with String Fields

The Label field type in the Document Type Editor has been deprecated in version 12.6 and will be removed in version 13.0. The Label field was once introduced to support translatable strings but that functionality is now offered through Resource Bundles. That leaves the Label field type technically and functionally equivalent to the String field type and therefore without any added value.

Although not required yet for the upgrade to version 12.6, it is recommended to already replace any Label fields in your project's document types with String fields as follows:

1. Find all nodes of type hipposysedit:field where the property hipposysedit:type has the value "Label".
2. Change the property value to "String".