Mastering the Sitecore 10 System Administrator Certification: A Four-Part Journey Through 8 Key Competencies

As a Senior Project Manager at Oshyn Inc, a Sitecore enthusiast and acertified Sitecore 10 System Administrator, I’ve navigated the platform’s intricacies from various perspectives: as a digital marketer, a business user, and a system administrator. Preparing for the Sitecore 10 System Administrator certification is more than a technical endeavor—it’s a journey that bridges marketing, IT, and business strategy. Along the way, I discovered how each competency outlined in Sitecore's study guide connects to practical scenarios and a deeper understanding of the platform's potential.

To make this content more digestible and impactful, I’ve divided it into a four-part series, each focusing on two of the key competencies. Whether you're a technical expert or someone looking to grasp Sitecore from a business perspective, this series is designed to provide clarity, practical insights, and actionable tips to help you excel.

Here’s what you can expect from this series:

• Part 1: We’ll delve into Competency 1, which covers navigating the Sitecore Control Panel with ease, and Competency 2, which explores workflows and publishing—both crucial for efficient content management and collaboration.
• Part 2: A deeper dive into Competency 3 on user and role management, ensuring seamless teamwork across diverse teams, and Competency 4, focusing on empowering content authors with the right tools and support.
• Part 3: An exploration of the platform’s backbone with Competency 5 on Sitecore architecture and containerization and Competency 6, guiding you through installations, updates, and upgrades for smooth operations.
• Part 4: Wrapping up with Competency 7, where we’ll uncover tips to maximize performance and monitor system health, and Competency 8, which highlights leveraging Sitecore Support Services for a responsive and reliable environment.

Each blog will offer actionable advice, real-world examples, and insights to help you succeed—not just in the certification exam but in applying your knowledge effectively in professional scenarios.

Whether you're a marketer seeking better collaboration tools, a business leader optimizing content workflows, or a technical specialist refining system performance, this series is tailored for you. Join me as we unravel the layers of Sitecore 10 and the skills required to ace this certification and unlock the full potential of the platform.

Competency 1: Navigating Control Panel sections and settings effortlessly, ensuring a user-friendly experience for everyone.

The Sitecore Launchpad contains all Sitecore functionality, and it is divided into five areas (Commerce, Marketing Applications, Content Editing, Control Panel, and Access Management), in Sitecore versions 10.2 and newer you can also find a Custom Analytics Dashboard.

As part of this competence, you should be able to explain the overall purpose of each Control Panel section and the key functions it can perform.

The Control Panel section contains the Control Panel, Hotfix and Patch finder (some Sitecore 10 versions you may find it as Update Center), and Sitecore Desktop.

The Control Panel

Within the Control Panel you can find 8 sections, that enable you to effectively manage and monitor your organization’s solution: My settings. Here you can set up your personal settings, such as desktop background, change application options (here you can specify which elements show in the Content Editor and in the Drag and Drop dialog box you upload media files to the Media Library), change password, change personal information (name, email, and portrait), region and language options (here you select the preferred number and date format, and the application language), and reset your setting to default settings. Database. You can rebuild link databases (master, web, and core), move items to another database, and clean up databases (clear cache and remove invalid items from fields). Location. Export languages, import languages, add a new language, and delete a language. Administration, this section enables you to view license details or information about installed licenses, install licenses, install a package, install an update, and also provides administration tools. Administration tools contain more functionalities for performance monitoring, such asL Diagnostics and Security, here you can generate a package with support information for a support ticket opened with Sitecore; Overview of Caches; Overview of Jobs, View and download Sitecore logs; Overview Rendering statistics; Security tools for login and user management tools (Log in as a specific user, define the user password for a user, create a new user with its password and role); and Overview of the information of the logged in User (e.g. account type, roles). Database and Operations, here you can manipulate databases in a DB browser; Cleanup databases; Overview the event queue; Overview the publish queue; Search for a specific string in a database or in the file system; Rebuild the reporting database; Use connection strings to execute SQL scripts Configuration, here you can Overview the pipeline execution; Check configured services; Merge configuration files; Show Xconnect configuration. Auxiliary tools (packaging items, installing a language, removing broken links from a database, restoring items from the archive, Sitecore Update installation wizard, Serialize and revert a database, Media hash generator). Reports. You can scan the database for broken links, and scan the database for untranslated fields. Security. You can access the user manager and role manager. Indexing. You can populate Solr managed schema, and run the Indexing manager. Analytics - Deploy marketing definitions. You can deploy all marketing definitions and taxonomies from here. Marketing definitions: represent marketing activities such as campaigns and goals. Marketing taxonomies: hierarchical structures that you can use to identify and organize information. Taxonomies are represented by items in Sitecore.

More details are in the following links:

• https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/users/101/sitecore-experience-platform/overview-of-the-sitecore-launchpad.html
• https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/users/101/sitecore-experience-platform/change-your-personal-settings.html
• https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/101/sitecore-experience-platform/marketing-taxonomies.html

Competency 2: Workflow and publishing.

A Workflow is a series of predefined stages or states, that form the web content creation process, this will ensure that only approved content gets published to the website.

At a minimum, a workflow must contain two states, an initial state, and a final workflow state. Content items may not be required to go through all defined states. A workflow has three elements: States/stages, commands, and actions.

• States: States are the basic building blocks of a workflow and represent different stages in the content development process, eg. Editing is one state, and Awaiting approval is another.
• Commands: commands are defined movements of content items from one state to another. Selecting a command will determine where the content item will go in the workflow process. (e.g. Submit, Approve, Reject)
• Actions: actions are automatically performed on items when they reach a specific workflow state, or when a command is executed. e.g. autopublish once the Approved state is reached. Workflows are typically defined by developers and assigned to specific item templates. System Administrators can overwrite any workflow state, move an item through states, or publish an item at any time. To view all items that are currently in workflows you can use the Workbox tool in the XP Dashboard. It enables you to see information about an item’s editing history, the number of items on each workflow state, you can preview or open an item, or compare different versions of the same item.

Setting a Workflow to an item involves associating the item with a specific workflow and state. Here's the step-by-step process:

• Open the Sitecore Content Editor.
• Navigate to the Item: Locate and select the item in the content tree to which you want to apply the workflow.
• Open the "View" Tab: check the Standard fields checkbox.
• In the Content of the item go to the "Workflow" Section.
• Click on the Workflow field and a dropdown/content tree with existing Workflows will appear, if you want a new workflow you need to go in the Content tree to System>Workflows and create a new one.
• Click on the State field, and select an Initial State from the dropdown/content tree.
• Save Changes: Once you've selected the workflow and initial state, save the changes.
• Publish Changes: If your Sitecore instance requires publishing workflow changes, you might need to publish the item or perform a full-site publish to apply the workflow changes.

Updating content on the website is called Publishing. Publishing is the process of making content visible to visitors on the website.

• When items in Sitecore are edited and saved, they are stored in the Master database, where content items “drafts” are stored. The master database stores all versions of all data (including unapproved changes).
• For website visitors to be able to view content items, the content item must be copied to the publishing target. In Sitecore, this is the Web database by default. The target database contains only the most recently published version.
• Publishing enables you to synchronize your Master database with one or more publishing targets.
• Only items in a final workflow state can be published.
• To publish an entire website using the Sitecore publishing wizard, you must run the publishing wizard, select the publishing mode to Publish Site, then select the publishing mode: Incremental publish (only changed items, only available when publishing the entire website), Smart publish (publish differences between source and target database), or Republish; then select the publishing Language/s, and Publishing targets.
• You can also publish just an item, the same as publishing the entire site, you can select the publishing mode (smart publish or republish, and you can select to publish Subitems and/or Related items), Language (if there is more than one language, you can select which languages you want to publish), and Targets (if there is more than one target, you can select were want to publish).

As a System Administrator, you should understand how to manage roles and permissions related to publishing (more details in the following section, Competency 3). Specific permissions should be granted to roles to be able to publish, which publishing mode, and to which publishing targets.

Managing access to publishing targets. In the Sitecore XP Launchpad, go to the Security editor, and click on Account. Select the desired role or user you want to change its access/permission's management. In the content tree, go to Sitecore>System>Publishing targets. Locate Publishing targets.

• Hide a publishing target: Deny Inheritance permissions next to the desired target, this will disallow Read and Write permission and hide the publishing target for the selected role or user.
• Disable a publishing target: Deny Read permissions for a specified role, this will keep the publishing target displayed but disabled it for the selected role or user.

More details are in the following links:

• https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/users/102/sitecore-experience-platform/publishing.html
• https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/101/sitecore-experience-manager/workflow-cookbook.html

As we’ve seen, mastering the foundational aspects of Sitecore 10 System Administration requires both a strategic and hands-on approach. Competency 1 equips you with the skills to navigate the Control Panel efficiently, simplifying complex tasks and enhancing user-friendliness for all stakeholders. Meanwhile, Competency 2 empowers you to streamline workflows and publishing processes, fostering smoother collaboration and faster time-to-market for content. These two competencies set the stage for a deeper dive into Sitecore’s capabilities, bridging technical proficiency with business value.

Stay tuned for the next blog in my Newsletter My Sitecore Chronicle, where we’ll cover user and role management and supporting content authors—essential areas to ensure a well-orchestrated Sitecore ecosystem. Whether you're preparing for the certification or striving to enhance your expertise, this journey is just beginning!

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