Q2 2019 Product Updates to the Acquia Experience Platform

Twenty years since that famous HBR article formalized the idea of the post-service economy, nearly every brand, company and service entity finds itself operating in a world where their audiences, customers, partners and prospects are driving the priorities. Those priorities are based on convenience, relationships and delivering valuable experiences.

At Acquia, we strive every day to offer a universal platform that delivers the world’s greatest digital experiences. This is our contribution to the evolving experience economy, and our customers rely on us not just to provide the best Drupal hosting service on the planet, but to help deliver digital experiences that influence, reward and delight the very high expectations of their customers. We’ve set big goals to drive innovation and as a result, we continue to be recognized as leaders in open source content management and cloud technology. 

Acquia customers build, manage and optimize their digital experiences with greater efficiency. Each quarter, we deliver new and improved product features as part of our long-term roadmap, which is guided by four overarching product innovation themes: speed and agility, business results, cost of ownership and risk management. 

Here’s a summary of all the exciting new product capabilities we released during the second quarter of 2019 and how they help developers, site builders and marketers build faster and smarter digital experiences.

For Developers

Acquia Cloud Platform

Cloud API v2 was introduced in April and expands on the previous API with more than 2X more API endpoints and has feature parity with cloud UI, which provides programmatic access developers to anything customers can do in the UI. 

Among others, Cloud API v2 includes API interfaces for: 

• Self-service SSL
• Accessing stack metrics data
• Configuring log forwarding
• Managing teams and permissions

Customers looking for more information on the new APIs can read about them here. Customers currently using the Cloud API can learn more here about migration approaches to implement v2 ahead of the v1 April 2020 depreciation date.

Image

Acquia Cloud  Platform Application Tagging gives customers the ability to “tag” their applications and color-code them in custom ways. This helps operations teams and application managers categorize, search and browse customer applications and assists in administration and delegation.

New Security Alert Reports provide customers with information about security risks in a quick, easily digestible format that is displayed in a detailed pop-out window. Administrators can quickly zero in on areas for further investigation and mitigation.

“Breadcrumb” Navigation highlights Acquia’s continued commitment to improved usability by providing a clear visual structure for customers to easily navigate to applications for specific organizations, applications or environments. 

Acquia Site Factory

The Scheduled Jobs feature for Acquia Site Factory is a significant improvement in processing and resource utilization. It enables developers to add one-time, complex data processing jobs to be executed at a single, specific time in the future. Using Scheduled Jobs removes the dependency on “polling” type CRON jobs, reducing unnecessary server performance overhead and reducing the risk of failing CRON jobs. 

Acquia Lightning 4.0

The newest “dot release” of Drupal, v8.7, was initially made available on May 1, 2019. (For a deeper dive into all the updates in Drupal 8.7, check out this blog summarizing the release.) As Drupal continues to improve, we’ve likewise invested in Acquia Lightning, the open source Drupal distribution, to help users access innovative functionality earlier and get Drupal sites up and running faster than ever before.

Acquia Lightning 4.0 includes the following updates:

The industry’s only fully accessible Layout Builder in Drupal 8.7. The Layout Builder functionality replaces the Panels and Panelizer modules and comes with these out-of-the-box components:

• Google Maps
• Slideshow
• Media
• Banner
• Text

Enhanced media management features offer added functionality for using media, including quick-edit from the page, in-place image cropping, a WYSIWYG editor and a carousel widget that can be embedded on pages.

Acquia Dev Studio CLI

The Acquia Developer Studio CLI is a self-contained cross-platform package for building and deploying Drupal applications, including everything necessary to host and develop locally and subtle enforcement of Acquia's recommended best practices.

The ADS CLI enables customers to script anything they can do in the UI. Developers can use the UI or the command line as they prefer or customize their workflow. The ADS CLI Public Beta Program is currently open. Anyone can sign up now and start building version-controlled Drupal projects with built-in tools in just a few minutes! 

For Marketers, Site Builders and Content Editors

Acquia Personalization

At Acquia Engage Europe 2019 we revealed the all new Acquia Personalization, an easy-to-use personalization solution that makes it simpler for marketers to craft step-by-step personalization campaigns and launch fully personalized digital experiences without needing to write a single line of code.  

New capabilities for Acquia Personalization include:

• Brand new user interface - Improves Personalization's UI to make it more intuitive for marketers
• Three-step personalization campaign creation- Simplifies campaign creation process so marketers can quickly and easily create personalizations on their sites 
• Personalization campaign scheduling capability- Helps marketers align personalizations to events, promotions, sales and press activities

Acquia Campaign Studio

In May 2019, Acquia acquired, Mautic (now Acquia Campaign Studio), the world’s only open marketing automation and campaign management platform. Campaign Studio solves critical digital marketing problems like website tracking, audience segmentation and progressive profiling. Acquia Campaign Studio will help marketers build smarter, faster campaigns on multiple channels including email, SMS, push notifications, social media, voice and more.

Acquia Campaign Factory gives marketing teams the ability to manage multiple marketing automation accounts within a single platform. Marketers can empower new business units, regional teams or clients while maintaining full control and visibility over every part of their operations. 

Acquia is committed to continual growth and customer success. Check back next quarter for our next product update and for more info on our new product features and strategy, watch the latest Acquia Platform Update webinar.