Orchard Harvest 2024 videos, New Azure Communication Services SMS feature - This week in Orchard (11/10/2024)
Add AdminNavigationProvider to cleanup AdminMenu and the new Azure Communication Services SMS feature are the topics for this week. We started to upload the videos of the Orchard Harvest 2024! Let's see the news for this week!
Orchard Core updates
Add AdminNavigationProvider to cleanup AdminMenu
The admin menu has been optimized with significant performance improvements and code enhancements. Instead of the NavigationHelper.IsAdminMenu helper that was introduced in this version, AdminNavigationProvider allows us to clean up our code and build the navigation with less and cleaner code. When adding a navigation provider to the admin menu, it is now recommended to use the new AdminNavigationProvider class rather than directly implementing the INavigationProvider interface in your project.
Furthermore, when passing route values to actions, it's a best practice to store these values in constant variables for maintainability and clarity. Below is an example demonstrating this approach:
New Azure Communication Services SMS feature
A new feature was added to allow you to send SMS messages using Azure Communication Services (ACS). Once you enable it under Configuration -> Features (search for Azure Communication Services SMS) you will find a new tab labeled Azure within the SMS settings, allowing you to configure the service. To access these settings from the admin dashboard, navigate to Configuration -> Settings -> SMS and click on the Azure Communication Services tab. Here, you can configure the Azure Communication Services, but you can do it using any configuration provider as well via the following settings:
"OrchardCore_Sms_AzureCommunicationServices": { "PhoneNumber": "",
"ConnectionString": ""
}
You can read more about this new feature in the Orchard Core Documentation.
News from the community
Orchard Harvest 2024 videos
The 7th Orchard Harvest Conference was held in Las Vegas on the 12th and 13th of September, 2024. We recorded every session, and now we started to publish them on the Orchard Core YouTube channel. These are the videos which are already published:
- Introduction and Keynote: Orchard Harvest returns to the United States after more than seven years! Join us for the opening session by Viktória Magyar and the keynote presentation by Zoltán Lehóczky.
- Jean-Thierry Kéchichian Community Award: Jean-Thierry Kéchichian was a pillar of our community until his passing at the end of 2023. We carry on his flame through the award named in his honor to recognize members of our community with significant contributions to Orchard each year. The award is presented by Viktória Magyar.
- Authentication in Orchard Core: Telling users apart from each other and specifying what they are allowed to do are cornerstones of a robust and secure application. Mike Alhayek explains all the concepts involved with authentication, authorization, identity management (especially OIDC), and how they work in Orchard Core.
- Content Warning Module: What it's like being a relatively new member of the community and developing your first open-source module? Drew Brasher explains her journey so far with Orchard Core, as well as the purpose, and technical details of the Content Warning Module she developed.
- Panel Discussion: Why should you use Orchard Core (framework) instead of just ASP.NET Core? How does GitHub Copilot work? Can we make IntelliSense aware of Orchard and even better, the specifics of the application we're working on? These are topics (and more!) our panel - consisting of Mike Alhayek, Burke Holland and Toby Dodds; moderated by Sébastien Ros - will dissect in this session.
The rest of the videos will be published soon! If you haven't done it yet, subscribe to this YouTube channel for the upcoming Harvest videos!
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