Professional Services Insights into Improving Sitecore XP

© 2022 Sitecore User Group Conference ANZ and its respective speakers. All rights reserved.
Pro Services Insights
into Improving
Sitecore XP
Sean Holmesby and James Barrow
August 18-19 2022
#sugcon

 Sean Holmesby
• 14+ years software development
• 11+ years Sitecore experience
• 9+ years Hedgehog/Sitecore
 James Barrow
• 16+ years software development
• 11+ years Sitecore experience
• 3+ years in Sitecore Professional Services
Who are we?

” –
What is Sitecore Professional
Services?

 xDB Analytics are Missing
 XM Usability
 Big Big Data (big xDB)
 XM Page Performance
Agenda

This is NOT
a Name and Shame
session

Links for this Session
 URL Prefix
• https://bit.ly/SUGCON2022ProServInsights-
• Add Postfix from each link
 i.e LINK: Intro
• = https://bit.ly/SUGCON2022ProServInsights-Intro

xDB Analytics Missing
So you bought XP, but the
analytics dashboards
aren’t showing anything...
7

xDB Analytics are Missing

 xconnect.collection – LINK: AppRoles
• 9.0-9.2
o CM should point to xConnect Collection Search service,
o CD to xConnect Collection role
• 9.3+
o CM and CD should point to xConnect Collection role
o xconnect.search connection string added to CM, points to xConnect Collection Search
 reporting.secondary – LINK: ReportingRebuild
• Only use when doing a Reporting DB rebuild
Check your Connection Strings

• Connection strings in SMM need to change – LINK:
RenameXdb
• xDB Solr index also has a SyncToken for each shard
• Sitecore.Xdb.Collection.Failures.IncompatibleSyncTokensException: Tokens are
incompatible, they have different set of shards.
• Rebuild the xDB Index from the xConnect Collection Search IndexWorker
• Sitecore.XConnectSearchIndexer.exe -rr
 LINK: RebuildXdbIndex
Shard DBs changed

• Configure processing agents
• Increase maxAgents on
o aggregation/aggregator
o aggregation/contactProcessing
• LINK: ProcessingAgents
 Configure batch aggregation
• maximumBatchSize and MultiplexingTimeout
• LINK: Batching
Tune your Processing and Aggregation

• Hotfixes
• Beware of conflicting hotfixes/patches
• Always check with Sitecore Support before using a Patch or Hotfix
• Support will validate your current environment to ensure the hotfix
is compatible
• Read the release notes, to understand what the fix is doing!
 When upgrading it is important to check your installed
hotfixes against the release notes of the Sitecore version.
Known Issues

• Analytics Performance Optimization – 9.0 – 9.1
• SC Hotfix 307949-1 – LINK: AnalyticsPerf
• Error when saving a contact to xDB - 9.0-9.3
• ERROR General error when submitting contact.
Exception: Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.FacetOperationException
Message: Operation #0, AlreadyExists, <ContactId>, Classification
• [TIMESTAMP value] [Error] Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.AddContactOperation: Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.EntityOperationException:
Operation #0, AlreadyExists, Contact
[TIMESTAMP value] [Error] Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.SetFacetOperation`1[Sitecore.XConnect.Facet]:
Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.FacetOperationException: Operation #1, ReferenceNotFound, Contact, Classification
• LINK: XdbContactError
 Device Profile conflict exception - 9.0-9.2
• ERROR PostSessionEndPipeline failed.
Exception: Sitecore.XConnect.Operations.EntityOperationException
Message: Operation #0, Conflict, DeviceProfile {c8b3cd10-631e-4c0d-9efe-53e8b7a1b97b}
• LINK: DeviceProfile
Known Issues

• Excessive load on ASP.NET Session State store – LINK: LoadedSession
 Excessive usage of threads on session expiration – 9.2 – LINK: SessionThreads
• Dedicated CD for session expiry: LINK: DedicatedCDForSession
o pollingEnabled: true, but false on other CDs
 Redis Specific Issues
• Driver timeout issues: Hotfixes and Tuning - 8.0+: LINK: RedisTimeout
o Example:
operationTimeoutInMilliseconds="5000“
retryTimeoutInMilliseconds="16000“
connectionTimeoutInMilliseconds ="3000“
pollingMaxExpiredSessionsPerSecond="20"
• Split private and shared session into two databases:
• LINK: RedisCache
Known Issues

XM Usability
Back to basics…
15

XM Usability – Make it a pleasant experience

XM Usability – Make it a pleasant experience
 Add Insert Options
 Add Placeholder Settings
 Modify Access Rights
 Ensure the Experience Editor works
 Less than 100 child items
 … and

Use Icons!!!
Credit:@victornguyen on Twitter
LINK: Icons

XM Usability – Performance
 Tune Prefetch caches
• Better performance for Content Editor/Experience Editor
 Publishing DeepScan
• <setting name=“Publishing.DeepScanRelatedItems” value=“false” />
 Disable child items
• <setting name=“ContentEditor.RenderCollapsedSections”
value=“false” />

XM Usability – Performance
 Disable Performance Counters when not required
• <setting name=“Counters.Enabled” value=“false” />
• <agent type=“Sitecore.Tasks.CounterDumpAgent” interval=“00:00:00” />
 Disable Show Locked Items Count
• <setting key=“WebEdit.ShowNumberOfLocksItemsOnButton”
value=“false” />
 Disable the show suggested test index – LINK: SuggestedTestIndex

Big Big Data (big xDB)
• With big data comes...
• Big Responsibility.
21

Big xDB is Big

How big are your xDB Shards?
 Per Month, how many
• Visitors
• Page Views / visitor
• Recurring visitors / month
 What is a typical size of a DB Contact and DB Interaction?
 How much will it grow?

xDB Shards
 Only get 2 shards by default
 Could start with more shards (across same server – move
to different servers)
 From 9.3+ - Split shards and rebalance the data
• LINK: SplitXdb

Potentially more Data than required
 Robots not being detected
 Health Checks / pings being tracked – LINK: Robots
• <excludedIPAddresses>
10.1.2.3
12.9.2.2
</excludedIPAddresses>
• <excludedUserAgents>
UserAgent 1.0
UserAgent 2.0
</excludedUserAgents>
 Pages / API endpoints that don’t need to be tracked – LINK: Tracking
• <tracking>
<untrackedPages>
<add path="/sitecore/service/error.aspx" />
<add path="/sitecore/service/Heartbeat.aspx" />
<add path="/sitecore/service/keepalive.aspx" />
</untrackedPages>
</tracking>

 Interaction Sizes
• Large number of personalization rules on a page
• Large number of Events being triggered
• Failed static assets giving 404/500 pages that are tracked

Personalization in Interaction Data
{
"@odata.type": "#Sitecore.ContentTesting.Model.xConnect.PersonalizationEvent",
"CustomValues": [],
"DefinitionId": "0fd3ef44-6c4a-40ce-8f97-6197bd9c61f2",
"Id": "efb4362a-5f60-46ab-94a7-370c81ef4701",
"ParentEventId": "f8d4656c-65cb-4ae0-a6fc-ee4b3b885d3c",
"Timestamp": "2022-03-21T03:26:13.8015913Z",
"ExposedRules": [
{
"RuleSetId": "35f61c9a-8b13-49bf-9d5a-69f473e10901"
},
{
"RuleId": "09dbe58b-f4ca-42cb-937f-d1bad1fb973b",
"RuleSetId": "99419a71-8b85-4745-affc-4905340ea9ff"
},
{
"RuleId": "6409d304-dd81-46eb-8831-ef895bcb7cf8",
"RuleSetId": "5ad65f27-0de6-46f5-baea-927a485178a8"
},
{
"RuleSetId": "1a265bed-02fa-4202-8685-16c0dc8a3e69"
},
{
"RuleSetId": "98682cfa-dc55-4304-bf64-7e1284b44de1"

Tracking static files in Interaction Data
{
"@odata.type": "#Sitecore.XConnect.Collection.Model.PageViewEvent",
"CustomValues": [],
"DefinitionId": "9326cb1e-cec8-48f2-9a3e-91c7dbb2166c",
"ItemId": "a0d2deab-0aa5-415c-a1ba-83a20ab2d622",
"Id": "420c0615-e8f8-4059-3578-ca2c6adea07d",
"Timestamp": "2022-03-21T03:28:33.7057969Z",
"ItemLanguage": "en",
"ItemVersion": 3,
"Url": "/scripts/src/bootstrap.bundle.min.js",
"SitecoreRenderingDevice": {
"Id": "be5d7dbf-89c0-4a99-9ac3-b5fbd129c8f1",
"Name": "Default"
}
},

 Logging of errors
• <setting name=“Analytics.LogLevel” value=“None” />
• Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.HandlePageError.RegisterPageErrorP
rocessor
 Logging of Page Not Found
• Sitecore.Analytics.Pipelines.HandlePageNotFound.
RegisterPageNotFoundProcessor
 Logging of long running requests
• <setting name=“Analytics.LongRunningRequest” value=“5000” />

But these already Exist in xDB.. What now?
 Find the excessive number of Interactions – LINK: ExcessiveInteractions
 xConnect Purging Tool – LINK: PurgeTool
• 10.1 – Contacts with no recent interactions
• 10.2 – Specific Interactions
 Sitecore Analytics Database Manager (ADM) – LINK: ADM
 Professional Services engagement
• (for pre-Sitecore 10)
• SQL scripts to do the equivalent
 Shard Splitter or Start Fresh

Content Testing with Personalization

Disabled by Default
 To disable – LINK: DisableContentTests
• <setting name="ContentTesting.AutomaticContentTesting.Enabled"
value="false" />
‘Test’ items will be saved to
• /sitecore/system/Marketing Control Panel/Test Lab

Big xDB Symptoms and Fixes
 Large Session Size causing timeouts – LINK: LargeSession
 Compression to fix timeouts – LINK: CompressionSession
 Async Redis session state provider – LINK - AsyncRedis

XM Page Performance
Pages are slow to load, but it
doesn’t have to be that way
35

XM Page Performance

Sitecore is still Sitecore
 CMS Performance Tuning Guide from 7.0 – LINK: CmsTuning
• Still valid
• SQL Indexes and Maintenance
• DB Properties
• Caches
• IIS Settings
• Client Optimizations
o Use SPE reports to find large number of versions, or bucketable items
• CD Optimizations (mostly included in patch files now)
o CD IndexUpdate strategies to manual
 IgnoreUrlPrefixes
 CDN
 Managed Cloud Best Practices – LINK: AzureBestPractice

Finding Performance Issues
 Use Rule-Based configs – LINK: RuleBasedConfigs
• ShowConfigLayers – showconfig for CD – LINK: ShowConfig
o Or Sitecore Config Builder tool – LINK: ConfigBuilder
 Admin Pages – LINK: AdminPages
• /sitecore/admin/stats.aspx
• /sitecore/admin/cache.aspx
• /Sitecore/admin/pipelines.aspx
 CD equivalents by enabling
/App_Config/Sitecore/CMS.Core/Sitecore.Diagnostics.config

Fixing Performance Issues
 Caches should be 70-80% full
 Don’t ignore ‘cache is cleared’ messages in the logs
• May need to increase a cache size like AccessResultsCache or
QueryStringCache
• Or if it’s allowed, disable item permissions checks on the CD
instance – LINK: AccessResultCache
 Cache Renderings appropriately
• Watch out for nested components that shouldn’t be cached

Other General Tweaks
• What else can you do to
improve performance?
40

Fixing Performance Issues
 Precompile MVC Views (or disable for faster startup)
 Find SQL Index fragmentation issues
• Add padding to rebuilt indexes – LINK: DBPerf
 Azure SQL – Add a SQL DB Maintenance Plan – LINK:
AzureSQLMaintain

Final Thoughts
 Would ‘Sitecore Personalize’ suit you
 Test
 Decompile
 Subscribe
• To the security bulletin – LINK: SecurityBulletin
 Check with Support
• Run any hotfixes/patches by them
 Get in Touch with Sitecore Professional Services or a Partner

I am a proud community member! Please contact me on the following handles:
sitecorechat.slack.com twitter sitecore.stackexchange.com
How can you find us?
@James Barrow @sholmesby @seanholmesby sean-holmesby

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Professional Services Insights into Improving Sitecore XP

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