My Sitecore 2019 Contributions

Hi Champs,

I am writing this blog to share what I have done in year 2019, not only in Sitecore but in other tech communities also.

Year 2019 has been a very experimental year for me as at the start of the year I was working in Organization for Sitecore one of the huge/large scale Sitecore implementation. I was working as Sitecore SME/Architect there. As I was Client to Sitecore, I got a chance to speak with some great tech brain in Sitecore.

Suddenly one I got a call that you got selected and, I got a chance to move to Auckland thanks to my current Organization for this. After moving in New Zealand again I started to play with Sitecore and this time Sitecore with Azure PaaS.

Now coming back to what I have done so for Sitecore and other technologies.

Working with Sitecore:

I will take this as questions and try to answer.

How you are contributing to Sitecore from online platforms?

Answer to this question would be simple and that is– I have Modules in Sitecore Marketplace, I write a blogs, I have few Open projects in Git, I am active member of Sitecore StackExchange etc. So I will quickly give a summary via points to all this contributions as below.

• Sitecore Market Place:

The main medium for sharing the new customized things for Sitecore is Sitecore Marketplace. I have below Modules Published in Market Place.

1. Social Side Menu: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/S/Social_Media_Side_Menu_Module.aspx
2. Sitecore NFR: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/S/Sitecore_NFR_Module.aspx
3. Sitecore IoT: https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/S/Sitecore_IoT_ModuleArduino.aspx
4. Sitecore Fake SMTP: (Documentation for this module is in progress)    https://marketplace.sitecore.net/Modules/S/SitecoreFakeSMTPModule10.aspx

• Blog:

The main medium for sharing knowledge is via blogs, I try to share my knowledge and different achievements over here in blogs so that those who are finding answers to those question they can get it easily.

• Git:

https://github.com/NKulkarni92

I have repo where I have code for all the above modules and I also have few Open projects for Sitecore in Android which I am currently working on.

• Sitecore StackExchange:

The other main medium for sharing knowledge is via Stackexchange, I try to share solution which is good fit for the questions which we get in the exchange I also try to follow best practice within Solution if it is related to code or configuration.

• LinkedIn:

I have almost near to 2K connection here with different technology, I try to answer the questions which are asked here in LinkedIn for Sitecore also. But I mainly getting questions on chatbox here where I answer privately.  I also share knowledge at one of the groups created by Chris Williams for Sitecore DAM. I discussed how IoT helps to build the DAM in new era.

For this year, I’ve been working on different projects related to Sitecore. But each project complexity differs. So, with the different projects, I’ve been able to acquire experience but also to use new Sitecore features.

How you are contributing to Sitecore from offline platforms?

My offline activities haven’t changed. I keep on learning new ways, best practices on Sitecore. I am going to perform 1 presentation about the Sitecore Managed Cloud On-Boarding in SUG Auckland on 5^th December 2019. I also help beginners in the team to learn Sitecore. As a part of CoE team I also help different teams to train then and setting up the environments for them according to their client’s needs. I am also involved in sales of products technically where I do tech pre-sales PoC for different Sitecore offerings. I also do freelance or volunteer consulting with different offline clients.

What is you experience with different new features of Sitecore?

I have little different experience with new Sitecore features like JSS, SXA,  new Sitecore Managed Cloud, Sitecore on Azure PaaS, as I said different then I will explain one example here is like JSS.

I worked on hacking JSS in Sitecore 8.2 version  and then we migrated the entire Site to Sitecore 9.2 for one of my client.

One more different experience is fine tuning website migrated from AWS IaaS to Sitecore Managed Cloud. But to explain few of my project related to these experiments I made point wise details as below.

SXA

This is the basic development whereby we had to get content architecture which will help to accommodate 1500+ SXA Multisites to the major global rollout.

Difficulty level: Extreme – Need to know how Sitecore works internally.

JSS

I created a dummy project in JSS just to get the idea of how it works internally. This was the reverse engineering which I have done actually to get one of my Sitecore 8.2 website upgraded to Sitecore 9.1.1 JSS website. In actual implementation we went with disconnected architecture to get everything resolved and now the Site is live. We used Native JSS as OOTB and React for the JSS app.

Sitecore Managed Cloud

This was one of the complex projects where I worked on migrating Sitecore site from AWS to Sitecore Managed Cloud offering. This is the first Sitecore Managed Cloud Project in New Zealand. The client is very happy with what we have achieved as the load time for Site is less than 2sec which is amazing. Working with the Managed Cloud team is great experience.

Other projects

I have also been involved in projects where we have used the Sitecore PaaS, work on presales for the client to get then on Sitecore 9.2 SXA with Sitecore Managed Cloud and Sitecore Commerce. Also working on different ongoing projects to get new features developed for them.

All the projects I’ve been involved in, I have tried to share my experience via blog posts or by performing presentations.

What are your future Objectives?

I will try to answer this in bullets as below.

1. I will try to contribute more to all Sitecore community mediums.
2. I am already in process of me next Sitecore Module.
3. I am in panning phase of mobile based app for Sitecore which I will try to complete in coming year.
4. Rather than just promoting Sitecore I am trying to sell new feature of Sitecore so that implementations of website will be more code less and Client will get full authority on what they want to do in Sitecore.
5. Be a part of technical presales.
6. I am trying to get Sitecore more into AI and IoT space for which I will be working throughout next year.
7. I will be sharing the new learning and innovative things via my blogs to community.
8. Keep learning Sitecore

Now this is a small contribution to Sitecore but I have few different things in my buckets as below.

Working with Azure DevOps/PaaS.

I finally managed to work with Azure this year as I was working only in premise VM’s, I badly wanted to work with Cloud and year 2019 given me this opportunity.

I learnt most of the  things like deploying .net web applications in Azure PaaS, creating and managing ARM template in Azure, Resource creation and managements, up scaling and down scaling in Azure, Performance tuning in Azure PaaS.

I also played around to create few Azure DevOps pipelines this years with total automation in workflow manner to push everything from source control system to running environments.

I decided to share what I got in Azure via my blogs and I already shared few and few are in pipelines to get published.

Working with Arduino

Yeh year 2019 asked me to go back and get this again in plate to eat. yes Arduino one of the best IoT platform to code and automate the things with IoT devices. In year 2014 I was playing around with Arduino on extensive level to get one of my university level project completed, but year 2019 asked me to play around with this to follow my passion about all these electronic/robotic kits. I started writing codes to Arduino AWS community IDE which is basically closed group for Arduino programmer where you can write code for Arduino and share within community and help them. I have 4 different sketch in Arduino right now and working on few more.

Happy Sharing,  Happy Learning