Last year me and my team implemented small solution based on Sitecore 8.2.1. We had tremendous learning curve and gained lots of knowledge. Unfortunately there was no online training available for us at the time we have started so our knowledge was based on our own experience and help of some people from Sitecore. Documentation provided by Sitecore was not so deep-dive for this version.

I was really excited when I was given opportunity from my company to take both Sitecore Commerce 9 trainings:

  1. Sitecore Commerce 9 100: Overview
  2. Sitecore Commerce 9 200: Essentials

 

Disclaimer: I don’t work for Sitecore. I was also not paid to make this article 🙂 I am pure Sitecore & Sitecore Commerce developer/enthusiast and simply love these two trainings after taking them. Whoops a sneak peak to summary 😉

 

Sitecore Commerce 9 100:Overview

Sitecore Commerce 9 100:Overview has list price set to 750$ and approximate duration of this curriculum is 3 hours and 30 minutes. It took me a little bit longer as I was also trying lots of things by my own in my Commerce VM during taking this course. I would say that realistically this course should take you around 3 hours.

It has 4 modules (5 if you count also Training Survey at the end :-):

  • Getting Familiar with Sitecore® Experience Commerce™
    • Describe how Sitecore XC drives sales growth
    • Show you difference between retail and web shops
    • Show you differences between B2B and B2C
    • Describe Sitecore XC features
    • Overview of various Business Tools shipped with Sitecore XC
  • Managing the Catalog
    • Describe purpose of the catalog
    • What are sellable items and how to modify and add them
    • Change availability of sellable items, setting preorder and backorder of sellable items
    • Create and approve price cards and snapshots
  • Tracking Customers and Their Orders
    • Working with customers
    • Making orders from carts
    • Describe statuses of orders and how to work with them when they are on hold
  • Increasing Sales with Marketing
    • Create promotions
    • Configure and approve promotions with coupons
    • Describe different types of coupons and promotions
    • Describe cross-selling and up-selling and how to configure them

This training is definitely worth taking for marketers and merchandisers new to Commerce 9 and of course developers and solution architects. This course is great also for Sitecore Commerce 8.x developers to give an idea how things have changed and what to expect further down the implementation road.

Each module has hands on exercises that will show you sample usage of this product and its Business Tools as addition to “regular” Sitecore Experience Management capabilities..

This training will give you basic overview of the Sitecore XC and high level idea of Business tools.

At the end of this training, you will receive nice certificate:

Sitecore Experience Commerce 9 100 - Overview

 

Sitecore Commerce 9 200:Essentials

Sitecore Commerce 9 200:Overview has list price set to 1500$ and approximate duration of this curriculum is 8 hours. You can make it in around 7 hours. It took me again a little bit more because I was also trying lots of things by my own in my Commerce VM during taking this course.

It has 7 modules (8 if you count also Training Survey at the end :-):

  • Gaining an Insight into the Sitecore® Experience Commerce™ Architecture
    • Describe Sitecore XC components
    • Describe Sitecore Commerce Engine roles and which role is responsible for what type of tasks
    • Describe Sitecore XC Plugin concepts and what you should use them for
  • Developing Storefronts Using Sitecore Commerce APIs
    • Describe how to set up Postman for local development
    • Describe how to import Sample collection to Postman and how to generate security token
    • Describe how to work with NuGet package and how to reference binaries and plugins from them
    • Describe which NuGet feed to use with which Visual Studio version
  • Developing Sitecore® Experience Commerce™ Storefront Pages Using SXA
    • This was awesome module which showcased how to work with SXA Commerce components and how they are linked together
    • Describe how to create content page
    • Describe how to work with page designs, partial designs and themes
    • Describe structure of pages
  • Working with Sellable Items
    • Describe how searching for sellable items works
    • Describe Sitecore XC / XP indexes
    • Describe how to work with SOLR Admin
    • Describe how to re-index catalog items and how indexing is done by minions
    • Describe how to navigate to sellable items in Content Editor (this one was pretty easy and quick 🙂
    • Describe how to set datasources for catalogs and how to make sellable items available
    • Describe wildcard items and how to use them. It will also show you corresponding wildcard items in oppose to url
  • Testing the Checkout Process
    • Describe overall checkout process and is using Postman to demonstrate requests towards Sitecore Commerce Engine
    • Describe adding sellable items and entitlements into carts
    • Describe how to delete line items from carts
    • Describe how to add shipping and payment details into carts
    • Describe creating orders and checking their status
    • Configuring Commerce Engine, Shared Settings and Storefronts using Commerce Control Panel through Content Editor
  • Extending the Sitecore Commerce Engine
    • This will give you hands-on experience on creating components and plugins and extend default cart / order functionality. This knowledge will definitely help you creating your own extensions to Sitecore XC
    • Describe how to add plugin and extend existing one
    • Describe how to add component
    • Describe how to extend Business tools
    • Describe how to test plugin
    • Describe how to work with Braintree and how to register for sandbox account
    • Describe custom rules a.k.a. how to implement happy hour promotions
    • Describe how to create and test promotion
  • Sitecore® Experience Commerce™ Documentation and Support
    • Guide you where you can find documentation and support
    • Describe Community and Marketplace sites
    • Describe Stepstone packages
    • Describe Sitecore MVP program

This training is definitely worth for advanced ASP.NET MVC developers and solution architects. This is definitely in-depth training which expects from you to have some web development background. Great training for every developer migrating / upgrading from Sitecore Commerce 8.x and especially Sitecore Commerce 8.2.1. Lots of things will be familiar for these developers and couple of things will be finally consistent like Customer / User creation and so on.

Each module has hands on exercises that will show you sample usage of each part of the product. It will guide you on how to start developing and which tools (VS, Postman, …) you need to develop for Sitecore XC. It will show you also how to configure these tools. I just wish these information are also available in documentation by default as they are pretty helpful and could save you lot of hours or googling. Some of these things I have also find out by myself before taking this course especially regarding setting Postman and working with collections in Postman. But what would be in training then if it’s already in documentation, right? 🙂

At the end of this training, you will receive nice certificate:

Sitecore Experience Commerce 9 200 - Essentials

 

Summary

Both trainings have lot of “Get Hands-On” and “Apply it” exercises which is awesome. I always prefer learning things by doing them not only reading about them or watching some recordings. In “Get Hands-On” exercises you have step by step guide on what and how you should do. Here you will learn how to achieve certain scenarios. In “Apply it” you have only defined what you should do, not how. So they are a bit harder to finish. But they are pretty easy as you are basically doing same exercises as in “Get Hands-On” but with different products or you need to go slightly different path so mind the description what you need to achieve in “Apply it” exercises as you might get lost soon 🙂 And no worries, you can repeat exercises as many times as you need / want.

I just wish I had this kind of trainings before my first Commerce 8.2.1 implementation. It would definitely ease and speed up lots of things at the beginning of development and also during…

If you think about it, instead of using try-failure method for couple of days/weeks, you can just take these trainings in 2-3 days (counted also some re-watching) and you are prepared creating your own plugins and enhancements for Sitecore XC on your own. You will also learn all best practices on how to structure solution, how to deploy it and so on. Time well spent (and also money 😉 on these trainings.

Now I am really happy that I took these trainings and looking forward for Sitecore Commerce 9 implementation with all this knowledge.

Taking the trainings really helped me to successfully pass the Sitecore Commerce 9 Essentials Certification exam and receive this certification at the end:

Sitecore Commerce

Take a look on my study guide for this certification that will guide you through the process of preparation for this exam.

I will keep fingers crossed for you to pass this exam also 🙂