Sitecore 8 Technical Preview: Active Commerce and the Experience Explorer

Today Sitecore released a Technical Preview of Sitecore 8 to the MVP community, and like good MVPs we are all scrambling to install the preview and write our first blog post on the beauty of Sitecore 8.

Note: This article and video is based on a Technical Preview of Sitecore 8. Features and functionality are subject to change.

Sitecore showed many amazing features of this forthcoming version during the Symposium events in Las Vegas and Barcelona. One "lesser" feature (really only in relation to the other amazing features) is the Experience Explorer. The basic idea is to simulate various visit and visitor segments in order to test personalization and other behaviors. Since Active Commerce utilizes the Sitecore Rule Engine for cart promotions, I was curious as to whether the Experience Explorer could be used to test cart discounts with Active Commerce. The answer was most definitely yes -- check it out below.

It's worth noting that getting Active Commerce running on this Sitecore 8 Technical Preview took no code changes from the POC which I did on Sitecore 7.5. Neither did getting the Experience Explorer to work with our promotion engine. This is another great example of why we built Active Commerce natively within Sitecore, and why we say Active Commerce is "Sitecore e-commerce done right."

It's worth noting that there is an Experience Explorer Module available for earlier versions of Sitecore as well.

Great work Sitecore. Can't wait for Sitecore 8 to go gold.

- Nick / techphoria414