Back to Blogs

Spring recap: What's new and what's coming for Contentstack

Nicole Quick●May 04, 2023●3 min read

Talk to an expert

about something you read on this page

Contact an expert
PULSE_QuarterlyUpdate.png

Welcome to Contentstack Pulse, your go-to source for the latest news on platform enhancements, roadmap updates and answers to frequently asked questions. Our mission is to keep you up-to-date on all the exciting developments at Contentstack and with our platform. Each month, we'll share the latest platform news to help you streamline your user experience. And every quarter, we'll offer a recap of everything that's happened, so you never miss a beat. Whether you're an existing customer or just curious to learn more about what we do, Contentstack Pulse has got you covered.

We hope you can use this information to better leverage new features, learn from success stories and discover new tools for delivering engaging customer experiences. These recaps should also provide valuable insights into strategic growth initiatives and product innovations that will help you make the most of your experience with Contentstack.

Illustration of Contentstack's composable digital experience platform with Automation Hub, Contentstack Launch, Marketplace and headless CMS.

What we've accomplished

Here’s what we released in Q1:

Contentstack Headless CMS

Search Relevancy: Improved search through stemming and word form support, accent-insensitive searching as well as the automatic ignoring of stop words for more accurate results.

Entry Editor Experience: Now updated with prominent field blocks, smarter nested fields and more flexible custom fields for seamless content creation for business users.

In-line Commenting in JSON RTE: Introducing further enhanced collaboration between teams, allowing business users and developers to collaborate and easily communicate about content.

Contentstack Marketplace

Release Preview App: View your releases in a calendar and timeline view within our new Full-Page extension location. Preview your content before a scheduled release and compare changes scheduled for your stack with upcoming releases or content you already have published. View other release details such as entries or assets that are added to a release with their specific titles, content types, and versions within your Contentstack environment.

Interstack Reference App: Reference entries between stacks, similar to referring entries between content types within a stack. Easily fetch the referenced entry across your Contentstack environments without ever leaving your current stack, ensuring the availability of content across the entire enterprise and reducing manual maintenance of managing duplicate data.

Contentstack AI Assistant: Our new integration brings the power of OpenAI ChatGPT instantly to the point of content creation through in-line UI extensions, allowing content editors and publishers to create a brand- and tone-specific content in seconds.

Contentstack Automation Hub

Conditional and Repeat Paths: Easily create complex workflows by defining multiple paths with conditional logic and repeating steps, saving time and effort for developers and business users.

Project Sharing: For improved team collaboration and efficiency, users can now invite others to view, create and modify a project’s automation steps.

ChatGPT Automation Hub Connector: Developers and business users can now leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities to unlock new possibilities in their workflows, including metadata extraction, text summarization and so much more.

Contentstack Launch

Early Access Program: General availability is scheduled for May 2023.

Support for serverless functions: Next.js, Gatsby, webhooks and more advanced features are supported to enhance user experience and performance

Where we're heading

Looking ahead to Q2, we have an exciting lineup of features and innovations designed to provide you with endless opportunities and possibilities. Here’s a sneak peek:

Assisted Search functionality will offer more accurate and relevant results when searching for content within the platform.

Teams & Taxonomy will empower businesses to create a streamlined content management system with powerful tools for grouping and categorizing content.

Content Type Visualizer App will provide businesses with a visual representation of their content types. The app's dashboard allows teams to see an overview of their entire content structure, enabling companies to manage and organize content more effectively.

Predictive data capabilities: Automation Hub will be able to leverage its access and knowledge of the Contentstack system to improve user-friendliness by doing things like automatically creating trigger payloads or suggesting the right data values to include in various fields to users.

Availability in AWS EU and Azure EU data centers will provide businesses with increased flexibility and choice when it comes to choosing their infrastructure. This feature allows users to choose from a range of data centers across Europe offered by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Contentstack's composable digital experience platform (DXP) offers a powerful and streamlined solution to achieve your digital goals. The platform provides a wide range of advanced features, from content modeling to composability to built-in integrations with services, unlocking tremendous potential for personalization, scalability and efficiency. We look forward each month to highlighting our latest enhancements designed to help you get the most out of our platform and the digital experiences you are building.

If you're an existing Contentstack user wanting to learn more about these new releases, please reach out to your Care Without Compromise™ team.

If you're curious about how Contentstack can help your brand streamline content to deliver better digital experiences everywhere, get in touch with our team here.

Chalo!

About Contentstack

The Contentstack team comprises highly skilled professionals specializing in product marketing, customer acquisition and retention, and digital marketing strategy. With extensive experience holding senior positions in notable technology companies across various sectors, they bring diverse backgrounds and deep industry knowledge to deliver impactful solutions.  

Contentstack stands out in the headless composable DXP market with an impressive track record of 87 G2 user awards, six analyst recognitions, and three industry accolades, showcasing its robust market presence and user satisfaction.

Check out our case studies to see why industry-leading companies trust Contentstack.

Experience the power of Contentstack's award-winning platform by scheduling a demo, starting a free trial, or joining a small group demo today.

Follow Contentstack on Linkedin

Share on:

Talk to an expert

about something you read on this page

Contact an expert

Recommended posts

Dec 05, 2023 | 3 min. read

Understanding the power of Contentstack Launch

This post explores the latest features of Contentstack Launch that make it easier and faster for developers to move forward. First, let’s recap what Contentstack Launch is. Contentstack Launch is a highly performant front-end hosting solution built especially for the Contentstack CMS that enables the automated deployment and hosting of headless websites. Designed with developers in mind, Contentstack Launch is engineered from the ground up to streamline development operations. Let’s see how that happens by highlighting just a few of the newest Launch features below. On-demand cache revalidation On-demand revalidation is a feature that allows for efficient and timely updates to your website or application's content. Instead of waiting for a predefined interval, on-demand revalidation initiates updates as soon as changes occur in your content. This ensures that your users always have access to the most recent and relevant information. Launch’s unique approach to on-demand revalidation is also integrated with Contentstack’s powerful Automation Hub. So not only can you revalidate the cache for given pages when content changes, but also revalidate page caches when other events happen in your composable implementation–such as when your inventory, pricing, or product review databases are updated. Examples like: Updating Content: Contentstack Launch enables real-time updates to your content. When changes occur in the backend, the system initiates a revalidation process. This functionality ensures that your content remains up-to-date across all platforms. Efficiency: Contentstack Launch enhances the efficiency of the revalidation process. You no longer need to trigger updates manually or wait for scheduled intervals. The system handles this task automatically, thus saving time and resources. Flexibility: Contentstack Launch provides flexibility in managing your content. It lets you decide when and how to update your content, giving you full control over the revalidation process. Edge URL redirects Contentstack Launch facilitates Edge URL Redirects & Rewrites, allowing you to direct traffic from one URL to another by adding a simple file to your code repository. This feature is particularly useful when migrating web pages or restructuring your website. New framework and version control support In addition to supporting various Javascript frameworks like Create React App, Angular, and Vue.js, Contentstack Launch also supports Bitbucket for version control. These features further enhance the ease of managing digital projects, providing developers with a comprehensive toolset for efficient and effective project management. Contentstack Launch is a tool that redefines how developers manage and host their projects. It simplifies the development process by supporting various JavaScript frameworks and offering Bitbucket for version control. The on-demand revalidation feature ensures real-time content updates, enhancing efficiency and user experience. Moreover, the Edge URL Redirects functionality effectively manages website traffic during webpage migration or restructuring. Contentstack Launch is a comprehensive, developer-focused tool designed to streamline operations and keep digital content current and relevant in today's fast-paced digital world. Check out Contentstack Launch to learn more or to dive in yourself.

Read the article
Nov 21, 2023 | 5 min. read

Introducing Taxonomy: Establish scalable content best practices with control and ease

The power of advanced taxonomy In today's fast-paced digital landscape, effective content organization and collaboration are crucial for businesses to stay competitive. While a headless content management system (CMS) offers increased flexibility and adaptability compared to legacy systems, it lacks the inherent structure that a legacy CMS provides. That's where Taxonomy comes in. Incorporating a taxonomy feature that integrates hierarchical structures and metadata elements capitalizes on the market demand for a more robust and well-rounded content management solution. This robust feature aims to streamline content management, enhance collaboration, and improve overall productivity at scale. The arrival of Taxonomy helps our customers scale content organization and role-based permissions, enabling users to manage large and complex data structures with ease while maintaining content security and separation. This innovative approach differentiates the Contentstack CMS and solidifies our position as a market leader in the enterprise content management space. What is Taxonomy? Taxonomy enhances content organization and enables content editors, particularly from larger enterprise environments, to handle vast and complex data structures with full control and ease. Taxonomy enables multiple ways to classify, organize and manage content, tailored to your organization’s specific needs. These classification methods can be structured hierarchically, relationally (may or may not be hierarchical), or as predefined lists based on metadata/attributes that can be applied across various use cases. Although its name, Taxonomy, implies categorization by hierarchy, it can be reused and repurposed to simplify content organization and management for large content volumes. Core features For developers Create: Create new taxonomies and terms. Developers are able to create sibling terms and child terms to establish a hierarchical structure for better content organization. Import & Export: Import one set of taxonomies and terms at a time, including nested terms, which helps save time and effort when managing a large number of taxonomies and terms. Content modeling with taxonomies: Associate specific taxonomies with content types, allowing for better organization and management of content. Developers can add a new taxonomy field, restrict which taxonomies can be tagged, and limit an editor's tagging options to the selected taxonomies. For business users List view (coming in GA): Content editors are able to view a list of all taxonomies on the Settings page, displaying relevant information such as Name, Description, Referenced Terms, Modified At, and Created At. This allows users to see an overview of their taxonomies and understand the relationship between taxonomy terms and categorized entries. Navigating entries with taxonomy structure: Content editors can navigate their content using a tree-like nested taxonomy structure. This will provide content editors with an intuitive way to browse, manage, and categorize their content based on the taxonomy. Taxonomy-based search: When searching for content, content editors have two primary methods at their disposal. A basic search involves simply typing a keyword, such as ‘India’ into the search bar, which brings up all entries categorized with that term. For a more tailored approach, the advanced search option allows you to apply multiple conditions, enabling you to refine your query and get more specific results. Key benefits Simplified content security & ownership Business leaders need a content ownership process that makes sense and is secure. Taxonomy helps stratify access to content within a content type by taxonomy term, without requiring a content type to be duplicated. This ensures the correct people on the team have access and permission to create and manage content most relevant to their respective project(s). No more content confusion and interruption as teams grow or change over time. Manage large-scale content projects Managing and organizing taxonomies of content for distinct business purposes on an aging legacy system is conducive to organizational limitations around long-term scalability and efficiency. With Taxonomy, manage and implement scalable content management processes for large-scale content projects across functions and systems with a direct line of sight. Gain full purview of content taxonomy Business teams need a way to effortlessly navigate to the content most relevant to their current priorities. Taxonomy helps provide navigation to content that spans multiple content types. It can mimic their site navigation structure or their own personalized ways of organizing content without having to understand the context of which content type their content lives in. With Taxonomy, manage and lead content projects from a single vantage point, giving you the confidence and assurance to execute. What's next? Taxonomy is a game-changer for content organization and collaboration. With its robust functionality and benefits, businesses can manage large-scale content projects, improve content security & ownership, and enhance overall content management experiences. By following best practices and leveraging the power Taxonomy, businesses can stay ahead in the digital landscape. Please note that Taxonomy is currently in its Early Access phase, and we appreciate your participation as early adopters. If you’re interested in joining our Early Access Program, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager. Your feedback will be invaluable as we work to refine and improve Taxonomy. Our goal is to roll out Taxonomy to all users in the near future, delivering a polished and valuable addition to your Contentstack experience. If you’re fascinated by the versatile options for classifying, organizing, and managing content, we invite you to dive into our Taxonomy documentation.

Read the article
Nov 14, 2023 | 5 min. read

Fall platform recap: What’s new and what’s coming for Contentstack

Welcome back to the Fall edition of Contentstack Pulse, your trusted source for the most recent news on platform enhancements, roadmap updates, and comprehensive answers to frequently asked questions. In the season of change, we are excited to share the advancements that have taken place within our platform. Our commitment to innovation remains unwavering, focusing on creating an increasingly efficient and user-friendly environment for marketers and developers. So, let’s dive into the details of our latest updates and provide insights into the future at Contentstack. New for Contentstack Headless CMS Contentstack AI Assistant: The newly launched array of AI features improves the content creation process even further. You can now harness the power of AI at the granularity of paragraphs, sub-paragraphs, sentences, and even individual words to improve your content quality. This new AI feature also provides custom prompts, ensuring you get a more personalized experience. The AI Assistant can now be powered by new models from Microsoft Azure and Amazon Bedrock, in addition to ChatGPT. And, if you’re looking to customize, Contentstack has now introduced custom icon upload, enabling you to add new icons that align more with your brand’s identity. In-platform Help Center: Contentstack understands that not everyone using our platform is an expert, so we introduced an in-platform Help Center. The Help Center provides information and assistance to users and developers alike. With this feature, Contentstack aims to help users save time, reduce clutter and confusion, ensure compliance, and increase productivity. New for Contentstack Marketplace Content Model Templates: A collection of predefined content types and global fields that can be easily imported into a stack. These templates aim to accelerate content creation, ensuring your content is created even faster and on-brand. With this feature, you don’t have to start from scratch every time. The Content Model Templates in the Marketplace provide a ready-made content model that can be quickly imported into your stack for quick content creation. Contentstack Automation Hub Amazon Bedrock Connector:  New AI offerings, such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic’s Claude, and Amazon’s Titan models, improve many Gen AI use cases, giving users and developers access to more innovative solutions. With these new AI offerings, you can create automated tasks and processes that make it possible to accomplish more without significant manual effort. Contentstack Launch On-Demand Revalidation:  This new feature ensures that content updates always display accurate information in real-time. It is ideal for businesses that want to avoid displaying inaccurate or obsolete information that can lead to confusion or loss of trust. And in the Spring, be on the lookout for: Teams & Taxonomy Users can effortlessly build streamlined content using powerful tools designed for grouping and categorizing range, enabling efficient organization and easy access to relevant information. And with the new Teams feature, we provide organizations with a straightforward approach to team management and content ownership.  Developer empowerment Provide developers with immediate, scalable application deployments using Contentstack’s hosting tool, Launch. Also, App version control and release notes allow developers to manage the rollout of new features to their users quickly. On-demand automation in the CMS Trigger automation on-demand right within the authoring interface of the CMS for things like SEO validation and other content readiness actions. Learn more With Contentstack’s latest product updates, you can now take advantage of numerous enhancements designed to improve your content creation experience. From the AI assistant to the In-platform Help Center and Content Model Templates, developers and marketers can access tools that can add value.  Want to hear more about what we are doing? Check out our product updates here for the latest. Or contact our team here if you're curious how Contentstack can help your brand streamline content to deliver better digital experiences everywhere. Chalo!

Read the article
Oct 17, 2023 | 3 min. read

Contentstack and the future of AI in digital experience platforms

Introduction The role of AI in shaping digital experiences is a subject of ongoing discussion and interest. A recent Gartner report, How to Realize Value From AI in Key WCM and DXP Use Cases, provides valuable insights into some key areas where AI can make a significant impact on Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs). In this post, we'll explore three of these areas and discuss Contentstack's approach to addressing the challenges and opportunities they present. 1. Content Generation & Experience Composition Gartner's Take Gartner emphasizes that AI can automate content creation and management, making it efficient, relevant, and engaging. However, the underlying challenge lies in stitching content together across disparate systems and maintaining the human touch. Contentstack’s response Gartner's insights pose a real challenge: How can AI be leveraged to create scalable, compelling, and brand-consistent content? To address this, we introduced the AI Assistant, now generally available from our Marketplace. It utilizes AI models to assist in various content generation tasks, such as creating summaries, outlines, and headlines. Gartner also mentions the importance of underlying content metadata and how its impact on effective content generation at scale cannot be overstated. The AI Assistant is more than just an intelligent widget that can generate prompts; it’s been specifically designed for use in a headless CMS, leveraging its understanding of and access to content models and other platform details. Moreover, our commitment to versatility stands strong. Contentstack believes in offering choice. That's why we’ve expanded our AI vendor support, offering a range of AI models to power the AI assistant beyond OpenAI’s ChatGPT. These models, including those from our recently released Amazon Bedrock integration, such as AI21 Labs, Anthropic's Claude, and Amazon's Titan, provide flexibility and choice for enterprises with unique content generation needs. Addressing Gartner's concerns about maintaining brand voice, our AI Assistant features Custom Commands. This allows users to create bespoke prompts tailored to their brand's voice and specific platform configurations, ensuring that any AI-generated content is relevant and resonates with the brand's unique identity. Building on this foundation, we’re excited to share what’s next—On-brand Generative AI—enabling the AI Assistant to not only generate content at scale but craft it in alignment with a brand’s voice and tone. 2. DX Delivery & Presentation Gartner's Take Gartner highlights the rise of new DX channels like AR/VR, mixed reality, and IoT devices, which require uniquely tailored content presentation. Machine learning-based presentation is becoming the new standard. Contentstack's response We recognize the need for adaptive content delivery and presentation, which is why we've been incorporating AI into Automation Hub. This enables intelligent automation of content workflows and other related processes. For instance, you could create an automation that automatically tags content based on its attributes and context. These tags can then trigger the content to be sent to specific platforms, whether it's social media, mobile apps, or a targeted newsletter, ensuring that the right content reaches the right audience at the right time. Furthermore, when combined with Contentstack's front-end hosting tool, Launch, it plays a pivotal role in crafting smart workflows that can automate the delivery of digital experiences to all audiences and channels, regardless of scale or complexity. 3. Personalization & Optimization Gartner's Take Gartner's report highlights that AI, particularly machine learning, is set to revitalize the field of personalization. It enhances traditional rule-based methods by offering a deeper, more individualized understanding of customer needs across the entire DX lifecycle. However, the report also notes the challenge of maintaining accurate and unbiased content classification. Contentstack's response One way that we’re preparing to advance AI-driven personalization is through our upcoming release of On-brand Generative AI. This technology utilizes retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to anchor AI-generated content within the parameters of a customizable 'brand vault.' Managed by the organization, this vault informs the content produced by both the AI Assistant and Automation Hub, supporting a host of various use cases, including: GenAI personalization: Automatically target segments with GenAI. AI prompt chaining: Create complex yet consistent AI responses. AI analysis: Analyze logs, data, or schema and send reports. Fact checking: Use external sources to fact and quality check. Multi-source augmentation: Supplement AI interactions with data from external systems. Semantic source data: Create structured data for AI to ingest & learn. Dev intelligence: Code suggestions, checking, and suggestions. Project monitoring: Track progress and predict bottlenecks with AI analysis. Smart QA processes: Use AI to evaluate incongruencies in data and send alerts. Conclusion The Gartner report serves as a valuable guide for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the integration of AI into DXPs. At Contentstack, we're committed to evolving our platform to meet these challenges and seize these opportunities. Our ongoing work in AI—from our AI Assistant and Automation Hub to the forthcoming On-Brand Generative AI capabilities—are a reflection of this commitment. As we continue to innovate, we aim to set new benchmarks in helping our customers deliver exceptional digital experiences at scale.

Read the article
Oct 06, 2023 | 5 min. read

Venus Design System 2.0: UI updates for enhanced user productivity

Introducing Venus Design System 2.0 In our relentless pursuit of delivering a seamless user experience for our users, we understand the importance of continuous improvement and iteration to achieve that goal. That’s why we’re thrilled to share our Venus Design System updates, focused on enhanced user productivity and accessibility. As you may recall, we chose Venus, like the Roman goddess of beauty and love. It is the visual expression of our love and care for our customers.  In this blog, we'll dive into the recent user interface (UI) updates for the content manager screens, taking you behind the scenes of the standardization of design components, user navigation, improved spacing, icon enhancements, and more. Buckle up as we explore these changes that will elevate your experience with our platform. UI elements & styling enhancements Refreshed cards on Stacks homepage These UI updates create a visually appealing and more informative card interface. You will find it easier to navigate and gain deeper information about each Stack. New background colors, icons, and sectioned design Improved text spacing for readability Added total user count per Stack Tooltips when hovering for truncated Stack names Enhanced accessibility Our accessibility improvements make the app more user-friendly and inclusive. Users with varying needs will experience enhanced readability, easier interaction, and consistent icon behavior, promoting a more accessible and enjoyable experience. Tooltips when hovering Updated fonts and spacing for headings (H1, H2, H3) Larger action buttons for improved navigation Standardized family of icons for greater cohesion Icons now function as buttons with primary, secondary, and tertiary states Updated user login experience These updates to our user login page introduce a more user-centric and efficient login experience, promoting ease of use, clarity, and an aesthetically pleasing interface. Updated user flow for login via SSO, now with buttons instead of tabs Validation messages are now shown below the text input fields The “Submit” buttons will be disabled until the validation passes Navigation & layout improvements Updated Entry & Asset List UIs The updated tabs components provide a more focused and efficient way to navigate through both the App's Entry & Asset List UIs, making it easier to switch between sections and find exactly what you need. New toggle navigation between Content Types and Labels tab Enhanced table filtering, which is now easily identifiable with a filter icon. Added pagination on the Entry List page Table resize functionality Added collapse/expand functionality for the left-hand side menu Table management and custom views With more organized and user-friendly table management, you can customize the table view and manipulate tables more easily, reducing frustration and errors. Improved table filtering with an identifiable filter icon Enhanced column management with functionality to freeze/unfreeze columns in table view Updated asset cards in the thumbnail view Improved spacing of asset results with a 4-grid or 8-grid view to prevent element misalignment Icon, button & alert refinements Removed icons for action buttons in pop-up modules Removing distracting icons on non-destructive action buttons allows you to focus on the task without unnecessary visual clutter, leading to a cleaner and more efficient user experience. Entry Editor These icon and text field changes enhance visual clarity and consistency, making creating and editing Entries easier, resulting in a more user-friendly content management experience. Cosmetic change of icons in entry outline from solid fill to stroke family icon Outlined border of the text field when you hover over a content block in the entry editor Alerts The defined alert colors help you quickly identify different types of alerts, reducing confusion and improving overall user communication within the app. Defined 4 new colors for different alerts  Information: blue Messaging: red, amber, gray What's on the way? In conclusion, our recent efforts to revamp our app's UI through Venus Design System 2.0 signify a pivotal moment in our commitment to delivering an exceptional user experience. The Venus redesign was just the beginning of this journey, and we're thrilled to see how this innovative design system is already making a positive impact. By meticulously auditing all app screens and implementing audit-suggested changes, we ensure a consistent and streamlined interface across the board. This initiative is more than just an update; it's a testament to our unwavering dedication to our customers' app experience. As we refine and evolve our UI, we're excited to see how these changes will empower you to navigate our app effortlessly and enjoy a more satisfying digital journey. Stay tuned for more exciting developments of our platform’s developer screens, and thank you for being part of our ongoing transformation.

Read the article