Feature
The Gist
- Extension-first design. Umbraco 14 introduces an extension-first approach, enhancing flexibility and customization for digital experiences.
- Seamless upgrade process. Upgrading to Umbraco 14 is straightforward, reducing the typical stress and testing burden on IT and marketing teams.
- APIs boost flexibility. New management and extension APIs in Umbraco 14 support more robust and versatile platform integrations.
Over the past two to three years, Umbraco has really upped its game in establishing a product that can compete with other content management systems (CMSs) and digital experience platforms (DXPs). This has been achieved through a mix of different elements: establishing a more stable and regular release cadence, moving in step with other platforms to support headless publishing and a composable future and buying small niche providers to support additional capabilities.
Let's take a look at the new Umbraco release.
Arguably, Umbraco HQ has been able to pull this off without sacrificing two of its strongest attributes — a global professional community of developers who remain passionate and loyal to Umbraco and an ease of use that makes it a popular platform with business users.
The latest major platform release is Umbraco 14. This is now in beta, but according to the Umbraco roadmap, is currently scheduled for Q2 2024, while the release notes settle on a target date of May 30. Whatever the final date, it is due to drop relatively soon.
This is a major and important release and marks another step in Umbraco’s evolution. In this article, I’m going to explore the major elements of Umbraco 14 and what teams need to consider.
Enter the New Backoffice With Umbraco Release
At the heart of Umbraco 14 is a completely new backoffice. Given that Umbraco's reputation for being easy to administerand edit has become one of the platform's unique selling points, it is crucial to maintain this standard. The work behind the scenes on the new backoffice, given the codename Bellissima, has been detailed on Umbraco’s blog over the past 18 months or so.
Despite the promise of a potential change, there is little difference in terms of the user interface (UI), so everything remains familiar for admins and business users. According to Umbraco, most of the changes are “under the hood,” with all the fundamental code having been replaced. The previous AngularJS is now gone and has been completely replaced with web components, Typescript, Lit and the open-sourced Umbraco UI Library.
Andy Butland, senior developer and head of DXP at Umbraco, has previously said on his own personal blog that the upgrade to Umbraco 14 reminds him a little of the previous upgrade to Umbraco 9, when the platform was rebuilt in .NET Core, another fundamental release, that ultimately delivers value in the long-term.
Related Article: What Can We Expect From Umbraco in 2024?
Going Extension-First
The new backoffice, which forms the backbone of Umbraco 14, takes a new “extension-first” approach. This means that more or less every part of the backoffice experience is actually an extension and is implemented as such — for example, in the sidebar where there are now a number of different sidebar apps. The extensibility extends to the "Editor" view, which has now been renamed the “Workspace” and you can add a new set of “Workspace Views," which were formerly known as “Content Apps.” Dashboards are still called dashboards but now can be registered with a set of conditions.
The extension-first approach means the backoffice is now far more flexible and customizable for each individual client. This means:
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- You can better reflect the individual headless or composable setups within your back office, transforming it into the true command center for your digital customer experience.
- You can more easily add custom, community or vendor-produced extensions, as well as core add-ons provided by Umbraco HQ.
- You can configure a more custom backoffice experience for your team.
Related Article: 5 Improvements to Umbraco Content Management System
New APIs
A key feature of Umbraco 14 is its new APIs, which enhance flexibility and versatility, supporting an extension-first approach. In Umbraco 12, a new Content Delivery API was introduced, followed by a new Media Delivery API in version 12.2. Umbraco 14 adds management-focused APIs to complement these earlier content-related ones.
A new Management API introduces controllers for creating and managing content and other entities in Umbraco. Once it replaces the older backoffice API, it will make it possible to authorize Umbraco objects from any system, supporting both headless and composable scenarios.
A new Extension API is available for any package authors and extension developers potentially working with the new backoffice UI. The new API enables you to register extensions that will then be loaded into the user interface so you can take advantage of built-in services within the Umbraco platform, as well as any third-party controllers added to the Management API. This effectively means you can use Umbraco as that “command center” again for headless publishing or composable architecture.
It's perhaps not surprising that the new APIs were developed with the Heartcore team. Heartcore is Umbraco’s headless SaaS service, and it means that the new APIs can also work in any headless publishing scenario that already leverages Heartcore.
Related Article: Umbraco vs. Sitecore: It's All About the Marketing Use Case
Upgrading to Umbraco 14
Depending on how you are currently set up with Umbraco, there is some work to be done on the upgrade for dev teams. The current beta period is designed to help front-end package developers get their heads around the changes and manage the upgrade to the new backoffice. Fundamentally, all extensions to the back office will need to be updated, but theoretically this should be straightforward as long as you don't have customizations in your backoffice.
For Umbraco customers who have significant backoffice customizations from prior versions, those customizations will need to be rebuilt for the new backoffice, which may make the upgrade to Umbraco 14 a significant effort.
However, the good news is that upgrading sites will be very straightforward, without the usual effort and extensive testing that upgrades often require. Time-pressed marketing teams who break out in a sweat when their IT partners mention “upgrade” should be able to relax.
What’s the Impact for Digital Marketing Teams and Developers?
As already noted, this is a release more for the tech community that will support greater extensibility, iron out a few issues and annoyances and support better performance. It will also enable more developers to create custom extensions to suit individual headless and composable set-ups and could even enable there to be more community extensions.
For marketing teams, there is perhaps no immediate change, but Umbraco 14 does create the ability to craft a more focused admin and editing experience for headless publishing and composable architecture. It also extends the ability to use Umbraco as a true digital experience platform. Digital marketing teams will likely reap the rewards as Umbraco evolves with each release.
Another Step Forward for Umbraco
This release marks another step forward for Umbraco, keeping pace with competitors by offering headless and composable support. It maintains the flexibility developers love, while preserving the ease of use that marketing teams and business users don't want to lose.
