XM Apps API - Use Case for large organizations

In one of my previous blog article, I discussed about the newly introduced XM Apps API to manage XM Cloud Apps. What could be the use case for these APIs? 

I worked for a multinational confectionery, food, and snack food company client that had over 160 brands. They were using Sitecore XP, .NET-based applications, and other technologies for their brand sites. One of the pain points for the brand managers was the inability to quickly set up, build, and launch promotional sites. About 10 years ago, we proposed a solution that allowed brand managers to request new Sitecore, .NET, or other tech stack sites through a centralized portal. With the approval of IT and other stakeholders, the setup for a new Sitecore site would be ready for the brand manager and their development agency in just 20 minutes. Previously, this process had an SLA of 3-4 days due to various manual tasks. We automated everything, reducing the setup time to 20 minutes, enabling the development agency to start developing using existing reusable components and launch the site within an hour.

With XM Cloud Site management features along with the XM Apps API, large organization can make use of centralized internal portal to tie up with XM Apps API to setup, launch and destroy sites in a matter of seconds to few minutes. With automation, there is a huge impact to the speed with low/no manual errors. 

Explanation

1. Brand manager wants to launch a promotional site for an upcoming event. 
2. Brand manager requests a new site using Centralized Site Request portal. As part of the request, budget, project code to charge to manage XM Cloud and other relevant platforms to host a site, development agency details with all the developer information including email, name and other details, project sponsor information are added. 
3. IT and other stakeholders of the organization review the request and approve it. 
4. The centralized site request tool is based on Task-Oriented Architecture. Adds the list of tasks in the queue. Agent (start with a simple PowerShell scripts) takes each pending tasks and executes it in the order as configured. 
5. With XM Apps API and the availability of other APIs, these tasks can be executed in the matter of seconds to minutes. 
6. Development agency will be informed automatically and development can be started immediately. 

Can It Be Done?

Certainly. Even with Sitecore XP hosted in IaaS with no support of APIs, we were able to bring down the Site setup SLA from 3 days to 20 minutes with this kind of automation 10 years ago. With the availability of XM Cloud APIs and other APIs, large organization can be benefitted to automate and manage huge number of requests with no manual errors. 

Happy Customers!