The Digital Experience Program at Michigan State University was created to ensure that visitors to MSU’s digital properties have a cohesive, branded experience that allows them to easily fulfill their needs, while also addressing the business needs of various units across our organization. The program unites audience insights, user research and optimization learnings with communications and marketing strategy and cutting-edge technology systems.
Sitecore XM Cloud, a website content management system, or web CMS, is the foundational technology for this program.
Benefits of Migrating to Sitecore XM Cloud
Migrating from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud allows MSU to take advantage of opportunities for platform enhancements. Below are a few of the benefits of the new system:
Improved workflows and tool integration for a better author experience
Sitecore XM Cloud has a more intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, site templates and site section templates are available to speed page and site creation. The process of adding images to a website has been improved. Content changes are saved automatically throughout the production process, so there’s no risk of losing work. Campus communicators can focus on their content and make it work harder for their unit.
Component enhancements based on author feedback and user testing
Components in Sitecore XM Cloud have been rebuilt based on learnings from MSU’s experience in the old system. The content author experience has been improved, where possible, and components have been updated based on feedback from units and from user testing.
Cutting-edge technology and faster updates
Shifting to XM Cloud will allow MSU to grow our marketing and communications capabilities to take advantage of the latest product enhancements and future technology developments from our vendors. Rather than schedule large updates every few years, we can push out product and system updates much more quickly and frequently. We’ll be able to address newly available technologies as they become available, such as generative artificial intelligence, or genAI.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs related to migrating from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud
Strategy
There were many factors that went into our decision to upgrade to Sitecore XM Cloud, and it was not a decision that we made lightly. Just a few of the factors considered include:
- In 2022, Sitecore announced significant updates to its product line including release of the new enterprise web content management system. Sitecore’s investment in the current system will be limited.
- Sitecore is hinting that XM Cloud is the critical path of their future roadmap. While Sitecore XP isn’t going anywhere yet, new features and capabilities are focused on and primarily released for Sitecore XM Cloud.
- Systems that live in a vendor’s cloud can be updated as soon as new features and capabilities are ready rather than packaging them into new versions that require expensive upgrades done once a year or less.
- The new system is built on a modern architecture that positions MSU for the future and provides flexibility to easily connect complimentary systems to Sitecore.
- The new system is substantially easier to use. Users of the new system will be able to create pages and load content much more easily and quickly, saving considerable time.
- Site templates can be created in the new system enabling much faster website creation.
- AI is being incorporated into the system to assist with tasks like writing headlines.
Some key differences between Sitecore XP and Sitecore XM Cloud include:
- Improved user interface for content authors: Sitecore has drastically improved the content author experience in Sitecore XM Cloud. Page templates, section templates and site templates make quick work of adding content. Drag-and-drop features and better preview functionality make it easier to envision what your new website will look like as you create the pages.
- In-session personalization: Sitecore XM Cloud offers a set of personalization capabilities for in-session visits. These require less backend set up and are easier to use than personalization in Sitecore XP.
- Maximize Core Web Vitals: The architecture of Sitecore XM Cloud is designed to be edge friendly (referring to computing architecture). This can improve Core Web Vitals and page speed scores, ultimately helping to maximize website SEO.
- Technical differences: Sitecore XM Cloud is headless, meaning the data stored in XM Cloud can be presented anywhere (e.g., website, app, display screen). MSU’s Sitecore XP was not developed to be headless. XM Cloud is a SaaS system, hosted in the cloud on secure servers. Sitecore XP required campus servers. XM Cloud is composable, meaning that system products can be combined and integrated to meet business needs. By contrast, Sitecore XP is an all-in-one system, with unnecessary products included and limitations on what could be integrated. XM Cloud does not require future upgrades; updates are rolled out routinely. Sitecore XP requires regular full-system upgrades, at added cost.
Units with a website in development in QA that has not been launched and moved to the production, or prod, server have a few choices:
- Stop all work in QA and wait to complete the website in Sitecore XM Cloud. Once Sitecore XM Cloud is available, units can migrate the completed work from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud, finish the website in XM Cloud and launch. This approach is recommended for sites that have a fair amount of content in Sitecore XP but are not close to completion and launch. You do not have to have your site launched in Sitecore XM Cloud by Jan. 31, 2025, but you will lose all access to content currently in Sitecore XP by that date.
- Finish work in QA and launch in Sitecore XP by Nov. 30, 2024, then have the site migrated to Sitecore XM Cloud. This allows you to publish a live site prior to migrating. Since the unit would then have a live site available to the public, the site migration would need to be completed in Sitecore XM Cloud by Jan. 31, 2025. This is recommended if your website is close to completion and a new site is needed as soon as possible.
- Stop working in QA in Sitecore XP and start over in Sitecore XM Cloud. If a unit has a site instance in Sitecore XP but has not completed much (if any) work in building the website, the unit could abandon the work done in Sitecore XP and start from scratch in Sitecore XM Cloud. Content currently in QA in Sitecore XP will be deleted.
University Communications and Marketing and MSU IT are working through additional details regarding the migration process for QA websites. Check back in the future for updates.
If your unit no longer needs a website, it can be retired. Live sites that will be retired will be submitted to University Archives and Historical Collections for final archival crawl. University Communications and Marketing and MSU IT can work with you to redirect traffic to another website or to msu.edu and will delete your website. Whether they’re moved to Sitecore XM Cloud, moved to another platform or deleted, all websites must be removed from Sitecore XP by Jan. 31, 2025.
If your unit still needs a particular website but does not want to move to Sitecore XM Cloud, that’s fine. You’re welcome to move your website to another platform instead. However, all websites must be migrated out of Sitecore XP by Jan. 31, 2025. Units wishing to migrate to a different platform will be responsible for their website content migration. University Communications and Marketing and MSU IT cannot assist with migrating to any other platforms beyond URL redirects and DNS adjustments to point to the new website. Our efforts will be focused on Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud migrations.
You can submit a question using the form linked at the bottom of this page or via email to Katie Kelly at kkelly@msu.edu. Please include your department name and the Sitecore website(s) you’re managing when emailing a question.
Features and Functionality
User access will be granted with Okta single sign on using MSU Net IDs. Units will need to determine who from their unit will need access.
We’re looking forward to having templated pages, page sections, templated sites, etc., that will include some of the more common layout elements for sites. These can be edited right in the page, will save automatically and can be previewed for desktop, tablet and mobile views. These changes will make page creation simpler.
The site visitor experience (front-end) will be very similar. Users may not notice much of a difference at all.
The Sitecore user interface (back-end) will be completely different, and we think you’ll like the improvements! Several improvements or features include:
- A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor called Pages combines the features previously available in Content Editor and Experience Editor into one interface.
- Ability to edit right on the screen instead of toggling between data source and display views.
- Functionality to easily drag-and-drop components onto your page.
- Preview page options for mobile, tablet and desktop.
- An Explorer tool that provides advanced content editing, where you can add tags and access additional editing features.
- Component building blocks are largely the same. We’ve balanced the desire to improve functionality with the need to keep things familiar enough to make the migration as easy as possible.
- Page, partial page and site templates to make creating new sites even easier.
Issues related to publishing, saving and logging in should be improved by moving to XM Cloud. That said, if you’re experiencing issues in Sitecore XP, we want to resolve those. Please email Comms.WebSupport@msu.edu to alert us to issues you’re currently experiencing.
Within its cloud version, Sitecore can release new features and updates as soon as they’re available. We will no longer need to schedule costly upgrades every two to three years. New and improved features will be available much more frequently.
All the pages are served up from what is called “the edge.” Basically, there are web servers all around the country. The website will be made available on servers throughout the country so that users access the site at the server closest to their location. For example, a visitor in California would load the site from a server there rather than one near Washington, D.C. This means your website will load much faster for all users. This also increases your Lighthouse Scores, which impact your search engine ranking. Search engines prefer fast-loading websites.
We will still have the ability to embed third-party forms.
After launch we plan to add the ability to add native Sitecore forms to the site. This feature will not be available at launch.
We will not have “internal” sites or pages now. Sitecore was built to be a public internet system, not as an intranet platform. Identity management system functionality will not be available at launch.
If this is a need for your unit, we can discuss workarounds, such as linking to SharePoint content.
Migration Process
For live sites in production:
University Communications and Marketing will coordinate with units to determine a migration time frame. When migration starts, project staff will copy content from the existing system into the new Sitecore XM Cloud system and will reassemble the pages, as-is, in Sitecore XM Cloud. Units will be asked to log any changes made to the website in Sitecore XP after migration starts, as these changes will need to be replicated in the new system.
After migration, the unit can review and make changes to the new site ahead of the scheduled site launch. Following launch, unit staff can continue updating and managing the website in Sitecore XM Cloud. Training will be provided. The old site in Sitecore XP will be retired.
For QA sites:
Units should continue finishing their website in QA so that the completed website can be migrated.
The scope of migration will vary with the size and content on each website. We have taken all steps possible to keep components and data sources similar from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud, so migration should be simple relative to designing a website from scratch. Migration project staff will be doing the work of moving prod sites from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud.
Live sites will be given priority over sites in QA. Websites that can be fully built using already developed components will be given priority over those awaiting yet-to-be-launched components. University Communications and Marketing will coordinate with site owners to do our best to avoid scheduling site freezes and migrations at inopportune times for units.
This depends on the number of pages on your site and the number of complex pages (i.e., pages with many components, varying component types and a high number of images) versus simple pages (e.g., an About page).
There will not be any downtime for users. Once the new site launches in Sitecore XM Cloud, we “flip the switch” to direct URL traffic from the Sitecore XP version of the site to the Sitecore XM Cloud.
The launch process for site migrations will be the same as the launch process for new websites: The migration project staff builds the website in Sitecore XM Cloud. The unit reviews and approves the work ahead of the schedule website launch date. University Communications and Marketing works with the unit and MSU IT to transition to the new website. This will be a faster process than in the past due to the technical structure of Sitecore Cloud’s “edge” computing.
Yes. University Communications and Marketing will inform units when their site is scheduled to be migrated. Due to the volume of sites being migrated and difficulty in estimating how much time it will take to migrate, review and launch each site, we schedule migrations in batches and don’t schedule the next batch until we are confident in the schedule for the batch.
Generally, no. The work of the university needs to continue. Any pages added to a site or content added or modified within existing pages will be migrated when sites are migrated by the team handling migrations.
Unfortunately, no. Anything requiring development in the current system diverts resources from the upgrade and migration and puts that work at risk.
Timing
University Communications and Marketing and MSU IT are working with our partner agency to build the components and templates for websites, and conduct extensive testing to ensure the system works well before we provide access to campus users.
This foundational work is complete. We are actively working on department migrations while simultaneously completing the next round of component development.
Migration is ongoing. Units will be contacted when the team is starting migration of the unit's website.
Websites not migrated by Jan. 31, 2025, will be removed. MSU IT can set up a redirect URL to drive traffic to an existing live site if a site is provided. Otherwise, traffic may be redirected to msu.edu.
We face a vendor-set deadline with substantial financial consequences if we miss that date. This deadline was not set arbitrarily. There are separate contracts for Sitecore XP and Sitecore XM Cloud. As part of the transition, we were able to negotiate only paying for one of the platforms for a limited time to allow for migration. After that time, we will be required to pay for both platforms. We need to be completely out of the Sitecore XP platform by this deadline to avoid additional costs.
The overall timeline for each migration project includes the following steps:
- University Communications and Marketing will coordinate migration schedules with units.
- Migration project staff will migrate a prod site as-is to Sitecore XM Cloud.
- University Communications and Marketing will conduct an initial training and schedules the website launch.
- The unit receives access to the website and implements any necessary updates ahead of the scheduled launch date.
- University Communications and Marketing staff will conduct a process within Sitecore XM Cloud to launch each unit’s new site and then will sunset, or terminate, the Sitecore XP version of the site.
- Units are then able to manage their website in Sitecore XM Cloud and make any content updates.
We recognize this type of change can impact unit budget requests, planning for the coming year, allocation of resources and more, and, therefore, wanted to communicate the change as soon as possible.
That said, we didn’t communicate the change until we were confident in what we were sharing. This included having confirmation regarding when the platform would be available, details on what the migration would involve and our general plan for moving forward. Once we were confident that the prework was going well and would be completed on schedule, we made the announcement.
A limited number of new sites can be started and built during the implementation and migration effort and will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. Since the same team working on the migration effort is also working on new site projects, we need to ensure new projects don’t compromise our ability to complete the migrations on time.
Yes. Units provided times when it would not be convenient to migrate their site. The schedule considers when units can make time for the review and training.
Potentially. Some sites cannot be migrated until all required components have been developed and are available in the system.
Cost and Resources
Site migrations of prod sites will be completed by migration project staff.
For future site management, University Communications and Marketing will provide training (via Teams) for all content authors. We also will have a new marketing technology website with on-demand training, documentation and reference materials.
The migration from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM Cloud is centrally funded. There is no cost to your unit.
Training and Support
University Communications and Marketing will schedule training for users as their website migrations complete and their website is ready for unit review.
Yes, we have two demos available: a quick overview and a full page build.
- View short Demo on YouTube
- View Extended Page Build demo on YouTube
You will want training. XM Cloud is an entirely new interface. Training will be more broad than deep, with additional supportive resources available to meet units’ more specific, in-depth needs.
We need to retain support for Sitecore XP until all users have migrated.
However, new functionality will not be developed in the old system. Development resources will shift to Sitecore XM Cloud.
Training for new users on XP will be reduced as we ramp up training for XM Cloud users. Currently, we hold XP trainings weekly. You can expect this frequency to drop over time as more users shift into XM Cloud and more sites migrate away from XP.
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