How to add a placeholder attribute in Sitecore module WebForms for Marketers

When I started creating forms in Sitecore module Webforms for Marketers (WFFM), the first thing that popped up was how do I add placeholder attribute in the textbox. I am sure many of you might get stuck on this issue, so here I explain how can one add the placeholder attribute in Sitecore Web Forms for Marketers. To begin, you need to create a class that inherits from SingleLineText with an additional property “Placeholder”. public class SingleLineText : Sitecore.Form.Web.UI.Controls.SingleLineText { [VisualCategory(“Appearance”)] [VisualFieldType(typeof(TextAreaField)), Localize] [VisualProperty(“PlaceholderText:”, 100)] public string PlaceholderText { get; set; } protected override void DoRender(HtmlTextWriter writer) { this.textbox.Attributes.Add(“placeholder”, this.PlaceholderText); base.DoRender(writer); } } Further you can create a new custom field type item under /sitecore/System/Modules/Settings/Field Types/Custom. Set Assembly and the Class. Oh yes! You also need to add Count Chars and Regex Pattern validation. Finally set “Textbox with placeholder” custom field type in Form Designer and Placeholder Text. And you are done. Webforms for Marketers field type with a placeholder attribute is ready for use!
Sitecore CMS installation: A step by step guide to set-up Sitecore 8.0

To start working with Sitecore, first of all you need to install Sitecore on your system and setup a development environment. Here in the blog I describe the easy steps to setup the environment for you. You can download the latest version of Sitecore from SDN. Sitecore CMS is distributed in two ways- It can be downloaded as an .exe file or one can get a ZIP file i.e. “an archived copy of a Sitecore CMS solution”. Downloading ZIP file gives more control on the installation and it’s easy to use.
On extracting the ZIP file, you will find three logical components/folders:
– WebSite : IIS document root
– Data: Store for logs and data.
– Database: Relational database files used by Sitecore solution
To install Sitecore 8.0, the basic hosting environment requirements are:
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
- IIS 7.0
- Sitecore License File
Sitecore installation uses three databases, mainly:
– Master: It contains every version of all the content and data items
– Web: It contains most recent version of all the content and data items. Data on published site is rendered using this database.
– Core: It contains Sitecore settings and.Net membership provider tables for User/Role management
Steps to Install Sitecore using ZIP file:
1. Choose a parent directory path for the project, for example – C:inetpub
2. Create a Folder with project name, for example – Sitecoredemo, and extract the ZIP folder inside that at the location C:inetpubSitecoredemo. The extraction will create folders as below:
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Website
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Data
– C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Databases
3. Place the license.xml file to the /Data folder
4. Change the location of /Data folder in the web.config file placed inside Website folder to use the absolute path as below:
<sc.variable name=”dataFolder” value=” C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Data” />
5. Open SQL server Management Studio and attach all these three databases (Core, Master & Web) using .mdf files placed in Databases folder.
6. Create new SQL server login and select User Mappings tab
7. Select Sitecore databases one by one and select the following check boxes In the Database role membership for field.
For Master and Web databases
db_datareader
db_datawriter
public
For Core database
aspnet_Membership_BasicAccess
aspnet_Membership_FullAccess
aspnet_Membership_ReportingAcces
aspnet_Profile_BasicAccess
aspnet_Profile_FullAccess
aspnet_Profile_ReportingAccess
aspnet_Roles_BasicAccess
aspnet_Roles_FullAccess
aspnet_Roles_ReportingAccess
db_datareader
db_datawriter
public
8. Modify the ConnectionStrings.config file placed inside /Website/App_Config/ folder by providing values in a line for each database, for example:
<add name=”core” connectionString=”user id=sqlserveruser ;password=userpassword; Data Source=sqlserver; Database=core_database_name_” />
9. Open IIS, create new Application Pool by inserting Projectname, appropriate .Net framework version and set managed pipeline mode as Integrated.
10. Now create new website in IIS by providing sitename as Sitecoredemo, Application Pool name as the newly created App Pool name, set physical path to the Website folder located at:
C:InetPub Sitecoredemo Website
11. Limit anonymous users access to following folders inside /website
/App_Config
/Sitecore/admin
/Sitecore/debug
/Sitecore/shell/WebService
Go to the Authentication panel and disable Anonymous Authentication for these folders.
12. Add following entry in your hosts file located at:
C:WindowsSystem32driversetc:
127.0.0.1 Sitecoredemo
13. Now access your website by browsing the below address:
You can access the Admin section using the below address:
http://Sitecoredemo/sitecore
With this, you complete your local development environment set up and now you can start with your development work.
I will be discussing the set up of website solution in Visual Studio in my next blog.
Advaiya has the Sitecore experience and expertise to integrate Sitecore solution with your business critical systems like ERP and CRM. You can contact us anytime to help you get the most out of this powerful content management system.
Cloud Security: Things you need to know

More and more organizations are embracing cloud for their own advantages such as cost effectiveness, easy setup, easy accessibility, scalability, unlimited storage, backup and recovery, agility, flexibility and business continuity. Cloud computing certainly offers these benefits to small and large organizations, but it also has its downsides in respect to security. Also, with modern business workers accessing the enterprise networks from multi-platform devices and various geographical locations, cloud security becomes paramount for any business. Cloud hosted applications open up the door for hackers, and the traditional monitoring solutions do not work anymore. With increased cloud adoption, many forces are driving the need for immediate cloud security solutions to be in place. Forces driving cloud security Protect against known and unknown threats – Sophisticated cyber threats and data hacking attempts are increasing day by day. Now, organizations are looking towards complete protection against persistent threats and attacks. Businesses want to secure web and email with increasing malware threat and data breaches to reduce downtime. They are looking for real-time protection and prevention system against advanced malware. Quickly respond to incidents – Threat intelligence and automated threat response needs to be in place to analyze the threat events and quickly respond during attacks. Privacy and data control – Organizations want to have policies in place to protect sensitive data, determine database assets and risks, and keep information safe and compliant with governance and regulations. With the increase in number of mobile workforces accessing the private network, identity and access management have become crucial. Employees go for cloud applications to remain highly productive, but as discussed above, this becomes a gateway to data breaches. Hence, organizations essentially need a robust data loss prevention system to safeguard sensitive data from breaches. Safeguard against network attacks: Mobile workforce across the globe demand security solution for protecting various devices such as laptops, smartphones, PDAs from attacks and malwares. Also, the complex IT infrastructure requires robust solution to secure network from outside attacks. Protecting applications and data in virtualized environment – Organizations have started adopting flexible, on-demand infrastructure to provide virtualized environment, which raises the need for protecting applications and data stored in private, public or hybrid environments. Hence, manageability and security becomes an utmost requirement in virtualized environment. Aspects of Security Organizations, before moving business-critical data to the cloud, need to make sure that various aspects of security are in place. Here are several security solutions that enable organizations to take control of their cloud security. Web Security – Web security helps organizations to provide complete protection against web threats with antimalware and advanced threat protection. IDS/IPS – Intrusion detection and prevention system enables a comprehensive layer of security and provides efficient monitoring and prevention of vulnerability exploits over network or system. SIEM – Security Information and Event Management is crucial for businesses across the globe and organizations need threat intelligence and analytics in place to analyze the activities before, during and after a log event. Network Security – Network Security enables organizations to continuously monitor assets and network traffic to eradicate attacks and stop them from being spread across the network anytime and wherever they appear. DLP – Data Loss Prevention protects sensitive data in organizations from unauthorized access and from moving it outside the corporate network. Encryption – Encryption enables organizations to fully protect sensitive data, whether in transit or storage and ensure security and compliance. The data or text is transformed using encryption algorithms thereby protecting it from data breach incidents. Virtualization Security – Virtualization security enables protection of data and applications stored in public, private or hybrid environments from threats. Database Security – Database security enables organizations to determine database assets and risks, and protect sensitive data in compliance with governance and regulations. IAM/IDAAS – Identity as a Service (IDaaS), offers identity and access management functions such as user provisioning, authentication, authorization and single sign-on to have secure and controlled access to applications and data on cloud based on defined IT policies. BCDR – BCDR ensures business continuity over the cloud, be it public, private or hybrid, by enabling all the disaster recovery options and data protection they need. In response to the market need for cloud security solution, many vendors are investing in providing security services for cloud. Some of the top vendors providing next generation cloud security solutions include Trend Micro, Cisco, Veracode, Netskope, CipherCloud, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Hytrust, and Akamai. These vendors are helping organizations to adopt one or the other aspects of security as discussed above. Advaiya has an extensive knowledge of building the right cloud strategy and implementing cloud solutions to meet unique needs of customers. We provide guidance to smartly choose the cloud vendor and their services and help in cloud migration phases and activities, keeping the long term goals and objectives in mind. We are also working with various cloud security vendors to help them position and market their offerings based on dynamic market trends.
Automatically organize and route email documents in SharePoint with IESS

Business documents often originate in the form of email attachments from different sources and need to be stored quickly and accurately at dedicated destinations, to enable easy processing, searching and collaboration.
Functions such as finance receive statements, proposals, reports and other documents in multiple email accounts every day. Organizing and routing these email messages involve a multi-step process to filter and classify emails and documents sent and received.
SharePoint is known to be the best in class records and collaboration management solution. It organizes information and makes it easily accessible and shareable. Organizations are increasingly adopting SharePoint technology on premise or in the cloud.
Recognizing the need for a unified solution combining the functionalities of email and SharePoint, Advaiya brings Intelligent Email Sorter for SharePoint (IESS), an intelligent solution to email sorting challenges faced by organizations in the processing of content received in the multitude of emails each day.
Let us consider a scenario where the head office of a large conglomerate receives many financial proposals, operational reports, and other types of documents. These are received in various email accounts of executives across the team, and thus leading to a situation that these documents are placed at a plethora of locations, organized in different ways, making them difficult to find and process.
With ‘IESS –Intelligent email sorter for SharePoint’ email sorter app, the rules for classification and extraction can be set, and rest will be taken care of by it. The app will then automatically sort and filter out important information based on the defined rules and process them in the appropriate SharePoint library with relevant metadata such as – ‘unit name’, ‘revenue till month ’, forecasted revenue‘ and so on. These metadata further trigger the relevant dashboard and report.
All the manual efforts involved in monitoring the email account to extract, filter information, attachment categorization, dashboard creation, etc., can be automated with IESS, in turn increasing employee productivity and overall business efficiency.
For more information on the email sorter app, you can visit – Intelligent email sorter for SharePoint (IESS)
Sitecore for enterprise

What is a Content Management System?
Content Management System or CMS or Web Content Management System is used to manage content of a website. It means you can create, measure, develop, optimize, deliver, manage, extend and modify your content on websites.
What is a Sitecore CMS?
Sitecore enterprise CMS is very flexible Content Management System. It is one of the leading enterprise-level content management system (CMS) using which you can create enterprise website and Intranet portal website.
Sitecore was founded in 2001 and it is built on Microsoft .NET platform. It also allows deployment via Microsoft Azure.
Why Sitecore CMS?
In today’s market, it is important to manage not only the content shown on the web pages but also to show the context and flow of the content appearing on the web pages. The business requirements for a corporate website are changing from a simple application that produces static web pages, to an extensible platform that gathers, combines, assembles and distributes the content for interactive uses.
Top 10 reasons to choose Sitecore CMS
Top features of Sitecore enterprise CMS which makes it better CMS than others, include solutions to website user behavior as well as tools to increase site visitors. Here are some of its popular Sitecore CMS features:
1) Awareness to website traffic conversion
2) Quickly and easily personalize each visitors experience
3) Optimizes content for different devices
4) Easily integrate with third party tools
5) Refined Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6) Microsoft technology can be integrated fast
7) Highly scalable
8) Intuitive and user-friendly design
9) A/B and multivariate testing optimizes the web experience
10) Web 2.0 and social media integration
Why Sitecore is better than other Open Source CMS
System security
Source code In Open Source CMS is available to all so it’s easy for hackers and others to find system vulnerabilities in the first place.
Ease of use for non-technical staff
Sitecore have much more ‘human’ interface than open source like Drupal, WordPress. Non-technical people can make changes on website without the need of Sitecore developer involvement.
New features and marketing tools
Sitecore provide new features compare to Open Source CMS. It is true that system like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are catching up but they are always slightly behind on features.
Integration potential
This is primarily because of the kind of pitches that licensed platforms are invited to. Integration with system like Microsoft, Salesforce, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint and Sage is allowed in Sitecore.
Is open source really ‘free’?
It is true there is no license fee for open source CMS, but sometimes the license fees of Sitecore is less than the cost of making.
With Sitecore, you can adapt your site and your content to your customer’s interests for driving new revenue. Advaiya has the Sitecore experience and expertise to integrate Sitecore solution with your business critical systems like ERP and CRM. You can contact us anytime to help you get the most out of this powerful content management system.
Structure, organize and manage information from Email to SharePoint with IESS

Email is de-facto the standard tool where information, and documents get generated and transferred. While originating as an email, these information and documents need to be subjected to formal document and records management. SharePoint is the preferred enterprise document and collaboration management solution that enterprises have invested in. Our app unifies these different worlds with a single powerful solution.
Organizations can leverage our SharePoint based email sorting solution to manage and organize the information and document from email. Our app provides automatic monitoring of designated mailboxes to extract, filter information, attachment categorization, library management and more based on the defined rules and taxonomy. It supports classifications of emails and preserves critical email in the SharePoint based on the defined filters such as “Sent,” “Received,” “Subject,” “Attachments” etc.
With the help of this app, one can eliminate the manual efforts in email categorization, filtering and storing in SharePoint. For example, an HR executive can use this app for filtering, sorting and storing the resume received through email. This app, based on the contextual rules like skill matching, desired profile and other taxonomy, can store and process the resume in SharePoint without much manual effort.
Consider another scenario, where an executive who receives lots of information, attachments, reports, tasks etc. everyday. He needs to track, manage and sort the information to be used further. With the help of this app, he can set the categorization and sorting rules, implement different classification schemes and then app automatically sort and store all these important information in the relevant SharePoint library with relevant metadata. This metadata can further be used in other SharePoint based business functionality like report/dashboard creation, workflow triggering, assigning task to team members and so on.
We believe this app can make your everyday tasks much easier and effective. To know more, contact us at connect@advaiya.com. Can’t wait to see what you think of it, how you use it and how it helps you get work done better.
Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part II

In part one of this article we talked about why organizations are looking to move from SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Online, key aspects to consider while designing a migration strategy, importance of assessing customer’s existing environment, and the various possible phases of migration. Read part one – Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part I In this part let us look at the approach to prepare and segment the questions for creating a profile of customer’s existing SharePoint 2007 environment, and how the required data can be collected from customer with minimum iterations. Profiling Questions Profiling questions helps you to better analyze the client’s existing SharePoint environment. Prepare questions to carefully assess all the business and technical aspects. Determine what type of questions should be considered to assess the client’s environment and collect the required details. Filter sufficient profiling questions and categorize them in meaningful sections. This will allow you to quickly collect relevant data in order to plan the perfect migration path. One of the ways you can categorize profiling questions could be into following sections- General info, Existing SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure, SharePoint 2007 Customizations and integrations, Expectations during migration phase etc. I would recommend to ensure that the questions are not too technical. Provide sufficient hints for expected responses like the OS names, Database name etc. This will help to collect the correct inputs from a client. In case of profiling the infrastructure or a farm environment, you can consider using an analyzer tool (like SharePoint BPA) to collect relevant data which can be used to create your report. While doing profiling, one of the best practices is to avoid asking redundant questions to the customer. This ensures getting quality inputs from client with minimum iteration. The categories could be like the following: General Information In this category ask general questions around the current SharePoint editions like SharePoint Standard or Enterprise, number of users, SharePoint test environment etc. Expectations during migration phase Include questions which help us to identify user expectations during migration phase. They could be like–‘During the migration process do you want to access your content?’, or ‘How much downtime is to be afforded during migration?’, or ‘What about the current taxonomy and URLs? Do you want to use as it is or redefine them?’ Analyze SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure In order to analyze and understand the existing SharePoint 2007 Server Infrastructure, we need to collect brief details like whether SharePoint is installed on single server or multiple server farms, virtualization of SharePoint, installed service packs and cumulative updates, Windows Server Infrastructure (AD, federation etc.), the number of web servers, database servers, load balancer, SQL Server version -32bit or 64 bit etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Information Architecture To analyze SharePoint 2007 information architecture we need to collect existing SharePoint sites, site collections and web application, size of the SharePoint content databases, existing Site navigation, Sub Site Structure, or Site Map, or search functionality etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Customizations, need following details Customization is a very critical part as the current customization is may not be supported on target system due to the fact that the feature is deprecated or whatever the reason affecting it. So to understand the existing SharePoint 2007 customizations, you should include questions around standard SharePoint customizations; like is there any customization using SP designer or any custom code for any specific feature, SharePoint personalization from branding aspects, custom workflows etc. Analyze SharePoint 2007 Integration Another critical point in migration path is SharePoint integration with LOB applications. Include questions around common and specific integrations. For common integrations we can consider integrations with messaging server, communication server, MS-Office, Outlook etc. and for specific integrations like SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) etc. Few examples are: Is your SharePoint environment integrated with Email or any corporate Instant Messaging (IM) and conferencing severs? If yes, please provide the details like version, editions etc.? What kind of Outlook features are integrated with the SharePoint environment – e.g. Calendar, Task Lists, Contact Lists, and Alerts etc.? Analyze SharePoint 2007 Backup and Restore Process Try to include questions like what are their current backup methodologies – at Farm Level or Site Collection, what’s the backup frequency- daily/weekly/once in a month? Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of the SharePoint Environment etc. A smooth migration may be attained by keeping the above details in consideration along with other additional inputs incorporated as and when required depending upon the needs. Our Cloud adoption services team has prepared a ready-to-use profiling questionnaire for you, which can come handy while profiling the customer’s environment. To request the questionnaire, click this .
Assess SharePoint 2007 (or MOSS) for Migration – Part I

As part of the Office 365 suite, SharePoint Online is available as Software-as-Service (SaaS) and helps organizations to reduce their Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and their Operational Expenditure (OPEX) costs related to servers, storage, and management overhead. To reap these cost benefits organizations are looking to move to SharePoint Online. However, moving to any cloud service required laying down successful migration path and getting proper guidance. In order to migrate their Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 to an improved version – SharePoint Online (Office 365), it is essential to consider all the technical aspects and business drivers while designing and implementing their migration strategy. In this regard, a cloud specialist or cloud consulting company should clearly understand their client’s existing environment by doing an in-depth assessment of the same. This helps long way in order to suggest a complete and actionable migration path to the client. As assessment is the first critical step in the laying the migration path for cloud, let me share experience from one of the projects (SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online migration) where our Cloud adoption services team did complete profiling of the client’s environment with a framework based approach, and made recommendations to make their environment migration ready. Our approach for this migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online included the a set of steps/phases that helped us to understand the actual SharePoint needs of a client and the complexity within their environment: High level migration phases for migrating from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online 1. Analysis and Planning: The main goal is to technically analyze the source, target systems, identify the customization level, sites and sub-parts which are to be migrated. A complete planning for migration activities has to be developed. For example which content areas can be migrated through automated process and if not then what should be the best manual method. 2. Define Migration approach: Define the strategy for validation and testing of migration scenarios. Perform test migration and finalize migration strategy for production environment. With pilot testing, analyze the issues and the solution applied for the test migration, and also capture the time consumed for the same. 3. Customization Scope: In this phase all the customization work is considered including taxonomy changes, new feature implementation, changes in existing structure and hierarchy. 4. Validation: Test and verify the migrated content, structure, and their mappings as per the targeted content. This also includes fixing of any issue regarding content, webpage links, integration point, structure, content mapping etc. 5. Post Migration Steps: After successful migration, there is some cleanup work, deploy custom code if required. Site navigation and verification of migration content needs to be addressed in this phase. In the next part of this article, we will explore a couple of points about how to analyze the existing customer environment, and how the required data can be collected from customer with minimum iterations. Stay tuned…
Designing a business solution considering the cloud and mobile devices

The role of IT is not just limited to keeping the lights on. IT is also responsible to continuously provide solutions to enhance the business capabilities and to support business processes. With the evolution of mobile devices and cloud computing the solution architects/ designers now need to expand their thought process and at the same time take care of new factors. The cloud computing provides new possibilities of capabilities that business solutions can provide. The mobile devices can now be end points and part of the solutions to make it more available and convenient to use. Before jumping in to create various solutions in the new evolving paradigm the solution architect/designer should consider the following: Understand the organization’s policies and readinessThe cloud adoption is not universal. Various organizations have adopted the new paradigm at different levels. Even within a company, different departments may have different adoption and readiness levels because of various factors. Every organization / IT has several policies regarding usage of various cloud and models devices. There are policies and requirements for public, private, and hybrid cloud use. There are various compliance and legal requirements for data access and security. A thorough understanding of the landscape is a must while designing any solution. New opportunities and capabilities using public cloud servicesThe cloud not only provides alternatives for hosting but it also provides access to various capabilities and data that is not provided or hosted within your IT. This is where an architect needs to think beyond the boundaries. For example, a sales enablement or a marketing solution can make use of services and data provided by various social platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter. They can enhance the value of their solutions by providing the intelligence about their customers/leads from the internet. Various business solutions can now make use of mapping and traffic services to enhance the value of solution. Consider the usage of these kinds of services depending on the nature of solution being designed. New opportunities and capabilities with Mobile devicesUsage of mobile devices is not a new concept but the rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets by majority has transformed it to a platform that is very significant while designing any solution. With mobile end points a solution can be made available where it is needed or used most. Mobile devices not only makes the solution more available but it also can provide new capabilities to your solution. For example, a fault reporting solution can make use of device’s camera and GPS to provide better reporting of problems. So while architecting/designing a solution, consider using capabilities like location awareness and camera. The use of some new mobile peripherals like wearable(s), mobile printers and projectors can further enhance the value. Think futureWhile designing any solution, think about not only how this solution can deliver the current needs but also how it can keep up with the future demands. The factors to consider while thinking about the future usage of the solution are scalability, extensibility, new capabilities and end points. With these considerations, the solution design may need to incorporate future migration or adoption of different kinds of cloud architectures. This may be due to change in policies or scalability requirements. The solution architecture may need to be open enough to add new capabilities or link it to any new or existing systems. Considering these at the time of architecting and designing the solution can increase the life and value of the solution. Think costThere is no doubt that cost is an important factor for any solution design. The availability of various cloud paradigm can alter the cost in either ways. So considering the cost implication of various cloud models can help in meeting the budgetary needs. Also consider different ways to deliver mobile solutions. For example, native mobile apps can be replaced by mobile web application to allow for lower cost solution. Considering various options available financially can help control the cost of the solution to a desired level. Think lifecycleApplication lifecycle elements are very important for a quality solution. Various architectural and design decisions should be made considering time available to develop and release. Sometimes a solution may not be valuable if not delivered within a certain time window. Also considering the other lifecycle elements like testing, deployment process, user acceptance and training, update process and sunset process especially considering the cloud elements and mobile devices is very important while designing/architecting a solution. Think boundaries and understand trade offsEvery architectural and design decision will affect various elements of the solution. Before making any architectural or design consider the necessity of each feature. Sometimes an important architectural decision is made for not so real requirement. Consider the life of the solution. Consider the users of the applications. Consider the reliability and availability requirements. Consider the limits and availability of cloud based services being planned to be used. Consider the limit of online usage and offline capabilities with the mobile solution. Consider the compliance and security requirements with data capture and access. Not every solution need to be on premise or on the cloud. Not every solution need a mobile end point. Think about the usage of the solution: What time during the day will the solution will be used; where will it be used; what is the readiness and capabilities of the users. IT architects/designers should keep the magic of innovation alive with new solutions. With the new capabilities of cloud and mobile end points, a thorough thinking and analysis is required before finalizing the design. Keeping in mind the boundaries and the above considerations, these capabilities can provide infinite value to business.