Sitefinity 8.2 release notes

• Personalization per Widget in Pages and Templates  
  Users can personalize on widget level without having to create new personalized versions of the page or template. This speeds the creation of personalized areas across the web site, and eases the management of updates over time. Personalized widgets in page templates allow the reuse of personalized blocks across multiple pages.
  The following widget support personalization:  Content block, Image, and Card (new). Custom widgets can be personalized as well.
• Personalization for multiple segments  
  Personalization per widget empowers marketers to personalize a page for multiple segments. When a visitor in multiple segments opens a page, she sees all widgets personalized for those segments, and not only for the highest priority segment, as it was before.   
  In the backend, editors previewing personalized pages can filter by more than one segment to see how a page will display to users in multiple segments.  
• Multilingual support for personalization  
  On multilingual sites, visitors browsing a language version of a page, will see only the personalized versions for this language.  
• Card widget 
  The Card widget is a collection of content elements, which create a teaser to more detailed information or a conversion goal on a website. It can be used for content summaries, page headers, teasers, and announcements.   
  Out of the box, the Card widget contains: Heading, Text, Image, and Actions, as these can be easily customized. The content of the widget can be personalized.  

For more information, see Personalize widgets, Personalize widgets on page templates, Feather: Card widget, and Feather: Implement personalized widgets.

• Personalization analytics and reporting 
  Marketing professionals can measure the results of their Page Personalization campaigns. For each personalized page, they can track how many times it has been visited by each segment, and how that compares with the trend of non-personalized visits of the same page.  
• Custom contact properties 
  Contact demographics are now configurable. The local administrator can able add, edit or remove the key contact properties which are shown in the contact profile. The same properties are automatically enabled for audience segmentation, both as part of the general contact management functionality and part of the Conversion Tracking segments definition.
• Data connector for Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise 
  System integrators can connect to local instances of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The templates offered out of the box allow the upload of contacts and their key interactions to the Digital Experience Cloud, and utilize that data for audience segmentation. 
• Authorized applications 
  The new Authorized Applications tab allows users to grant permissions to third-party applications to use all Personalization capabilities of the system. This way, personalization by Persona, Lead Scoring or Predictive Campaigns can easily be done using custom logic, including but not limited to third-party WCM systems, custom web site widgets, or mobile applications. 
• Lead scoring event triggers 
  .NET SDK allows system integrators to consume Lead Scoring events directly from the cloud, which enables them to initiate any custom workflow based on those events in a third-party system, such as Email Marketing.  

For more information, see Personalization reports, Data center dashboard, Plug data from data sources, and Telerik.DEC.LeadScoringEventClientSample.

• Forms on Feather  
  Support for the Feather UI framework is enabled for Forms. This empowers editors to create forms in MVC mode, which leverage the look and feel of MVC websites. Frontend developers have full control of the markup and validation of form elements, and can easily extend them.  
  Feather support is added for: Form widget, Form Builder widgets (Textbox, Paragraph text, Checkboxes, Multiple choice, Dropdown list, Section header, Content block, File upload, Captcha), and Form Builder layout grid.
• Other improvements in Forms:
  • Textbox widget: Added support for setting input types: email, date, etc.
  • Re-captcha: Sample is available.  

 For more information, see Types of forms: Web forms and MVC, Feather: Form widget, and Sitefinity Feather samples.

• Microsoft Azure Apps Service
  • Multi-instance and Auto Scaling support for Azure Web Apps (via Redis Cache)  
  • Improved deployments  
  • Automated PowerShell deployment scripts for Azure Web Apps and Cloud Services
  • Database deployment to Azure SQL
  • Projects upload to Azure Web Apps  
• Amazon Web Services  
  • Load balancing support for Amazon EC2 (via ElastiCache) 
  • Configurations for Amazon S3 blob storage 
  • Configurations for Amazon CloudSearch and ElasticSearch

For more information about Azure Web Services, see  Configure Azure Redis cache, Deploy projects using PowerShell scripts, 

For more information about Amazon Web Services, see Deploy the database to Azure SQL and Publish your project to Azure Web Apps

• Application status page 
  A new status page shows during application startup or upgrade. It is a helpful resource for administrators who want to observe the status of those processes via the interface, and wish to issue a friendly message to the visitors on their sites during site downtimes or restarts. The page displays the current status, and provides a detailed log of all processes, errors and warnings as these occur.
• Database schema change log  
  Updates to the database schema done during upgrades are logged in the UpgradeTrace.log. This adds visibility into the upgrade process, and provides detailed info, which can be used for troubleshooting.
• Database upgrades improvement  
  When you connect an older version of Sitefinity project to a newer upgraded database, an exception that downgrade is not allowed is thrown. Administrators can avoid this exception using a new setting.  This mode allows for uninterrupted service during upgrades as the current version of Sitefinity still serves site visitors, while  the new version  upgrades the database in a parallel node.

For more information, see Overview: Application status page, Types of application status pages, Example: Application status page output, Log changes to the database during upgrades, and Upgrades and database.

• Performance optimization page  
  This page provides an overview of common settings that affect website performance. Administrators can use it to view the current state of the system and the overall degree to which the web site has been optimized. 
• SSL offloading support 
  By using SSL offloading, administrators can transfer the processing of SSL encryption and decryption from the webserver(s) to the load balancer or other device. Secure requests can be encrypted at the load balancer or a reverse proxy, and Sitefinity CMS can support such setup. 

For more information, see Performance optimization page and Administration: SSL offloading.

• UI for ASP.NET AJAX – upgraded to ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2015 (version 2015.3.930)
• Kendo UI libraries - upgraded to Kendo Q3 2015 
• DataAccess - upgraded to Q3 2015 (2015.3.926.1) 
• Service Stack – upgraded to v4.0.44 
• GeoIP database upgraded with latest changes since October 6th, 2015 
• FancyBox upgraded to version v2.1.5

For more information, see UI for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2015 (version 2015.3.930), Kendo UI Q3 2015, Data Access Q3 2015, Service Stack v4.0.50 Release Notes, Fancy box v2.1.5