First steps with FirstSpirit Cloud

Welcome to FirstSpirit Cloud, our Software as a Service (SaaS) environment. This document guides you through the first steps with FirstSpirit.

Sign up

During the provisioning process, we create initial users with user-manager rights for you. Moving forward, you will be able to independently create and manage new users (see User Management). For technical issues, reach out to our Customer Support.

User management

FirstSpirit Cloud utilizes Keycloak to manage users, an open-source solution from the Red Hat company, for handling digital identities and permissions.

You can create and manage accounts through the Keycloak interface within FirstSpirit Cloud. To engage in user management, a user with the role user-manager is required. If you would like to manage your users independently, please let us know.

Sign in

How to activate your account:

• Open the URL https://accounts.e-spirit.cloud/.
• Enter your email address (all lowercase), which represents your FirstSpirit user name (e.g myemailaddress@crownpeak.com).
  → You will receive an email to set your password.

• Set your password and make sure that no German Umlaut is used.

Help @ Crownpeak

If you encounter any technical issues, please contact our Customer Support Team via our Support Portal by creating a ticket. This portal allows you to checl and track the status of your tickets.

Your FirstSpirit environments

Your FirstSpirit Cloud includes three environments, which are described below.

New projects

To create a new project, open a Customer Support ticket with the following information:

• Project name (defined by you; e.g. myProject)
• In which environment the project is to be created (Dev/QA/Prod)
• Which roles/user shall have access to this project

Module development

To develop custom modules for your FirstSpirit project, you will require a module development pipeline. To request the creation of such a pipeline, create a ticket with our Customer Support. Ensure that you provide the following information:

• Build tool (Gradle by default; ask for Maven if required)
• Meaningful repository name (e.g. "CRM-Integration” or “PIM Report")

Below you find the most important URLs for your FirstSpirit Cloud environment.

FirstSpirit landing page & stages

Access your FirstSpirit environments using the following URLs:

Developer URLs

Build-Pipeline & Logging

CloudFront URLs & configuration (S3 deployment)

Development (Dev)

Quality Assurance (QA)

Production (Prod)

Default groups

The following is a list of default groups. This is best practice advice and can be used or extended according to individual needs.

Editorial groups

• Editor: can manage, edit, and request content for release.
• Chief-Editor: can manage, edit, and release content for publishing.

Administrators

• Project-Admin: has full control at project level.

Developer groups

• GIT User: has access to Bitbucket & Bamboo.
• Template Distribution User: can transfer templates (Page Templates, Section Templates, etc.) from one stage to another.

Groups for stages

Users must be added to a group to be able to access stages:

• <customer>-users-dev
• <customer>-users-qa
• <customer>-users-prod

Presently content can be published (via push strategy) in the S3 bucket from AWS. Files such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and media, i.e. everything without server-side-logic, can be stored here. The Content as a Service can be employed for the pull strategy and embedded in its own applications (utilizing a hybrid approach).

Content as a Service (hereafter referred to as CaaS) provides companies with the agility necessary for their customer communication. It facilitates the provision of content fragments, using an interface for their retrieval. This ensures that data can be reused indefinitely without requiring any additional implementation effort. Publishing to a targeted channel is no longer necessary. In accordance with the best-of-breed philosophy, the design and composition of presented content are completely detached from FirstSpirit. This approach enhances independence, flexibility, and speed in project implementation.

CaaS consists of the CaaS Platform providing a service (API) reachable from the internet for retrieval and a module (CaaS Connect) running on the FirstSpirit Server that automatically syncs editorial data to the CaaS platform.

CaaS URLs

To retrieve data for a specific project, refer to the module configuration for the corresponding CaaS URLs.

CaaS API Keys

To use CaaS, API keys are required for authorization. The API keys below provide read and write access for all CaaS projects of your Dev/QA/Prod environment. They can also be used to create additional API keys.

Additional project specific API keys will be created once you add the CaaS Connect Project App to the project. The responsible project administrator has access to these keys via the CaaS Connect Project UI in the ServerManager. Use only these API keys to access the API for querying or writing data from custom applications.

New PWA template for headless development

Crownpeak's PWA Template allows you to jump-start headless implementations. It serves as a guideline and offers best practices for developers. It provides example code and structure for you to go to market quickly and efficiently.

Navigation Service offers a solution for the headless world by seamlessly integrating a dynamic mapping between a navigation route and the corresponding content behind it. To access the Navigation Service, use the URLs provided in the UI of the Navigation Service Module (see Navigation Service: Module Documentation).

The CaaS Frontend Library includes means to communicate with the Navigation Service. This is demonstrated in the example PWA.

Development (Dev) & Quality Assurance (QA)

Production (Prod)

Crownpeak Digital Quality Management (DQM) is a unified solution to manage digital policies and standards across your entire web presence. Using DQM, organizations can improve accessibility compliance, SEO, brand equity, and the overall user experience of their websites (see Product Overview for full details).

As a SaaS platform, DQM scans a website and analyzes the content and code used on the website for quality issues. Users can access the Crownpeak DQM platform to see the results of this analysis and make the necessary corrections to improve their websites across a wide range of quality criteria.

TranslationStudio represents the next level of translation management. TranslationStudio, powered by AI, offers out-of-the-box TMS (Translation Memory System) connectors such as Across, memoQ, and many more.

As described in the TranslationStudio documentation, it is possible to configure a mail server to receive notifications, such as error messages and more. Note that this functionality is not activated by default. If you wish to enable this functionality, create a ticket with our Customer Support. Alternatively, if you prefer to use your own mail server, provide the required information as specified in the documentation in your support ticket.

Formcentric Webforms (formerly Monday) form management allows you to create a unique customer experience in almost no time and build a meaningful digital connection with your customer. This allows you to expand your web presence with professional HTML forms that perfectly fit your overall design. The form manager helps you create forms quickly and easily in an editorial interface that you are already familiar with.

You can find editorial user manuals and technical information here.

Connect for Commerce is a module that allows FirstSpirit to be connected to any e-commerce system. To facilitate a smooth beginning to your experience with Connect for Commerce, we provide a reference project.

If you would like a demo project to test FirstSpirit, contact our Customer Support.

For more information about module development, Build-Pipeline, deployment, etc. have a look at FirstSpirit Cloud Documentation.

Every four weeks, a scheduled patch day involves downtime for the maintenance and installation of new software updates in your FirstSpirit Cloud Environment. The downtime is scheduled to deploy updates. For further information see the schedule information below:

• All users are informed of scheduled down times at least seven days in advance via email.
• All users are informed once the Patch Day installation is complete.
• Urgent security patches will be rolled out immediately and can fall outside of the Patch Day schedule.
• For e-commerce customers, there will not be any Patch Days or scheduled downtimes close to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
• There are no Patch Days or scheduled downtimes in December.

Downtime calendar

Crownpeak offers a range of training programs for your team, from developers to project managers and editors. We offer standardized and customized training options depending on your individual needs. You can register online for our Product Training.

Our interactive online Product Office Hours take place every 2 months and offer exciting insights into a variety of topics. These can include live demos and presentations of new features and releases, Q&A sessions with the product management team, insights into the world of Crownpeak, industry news, customer success stories, and much more! You will receive an email invitation before each event.

Create a ticket via our Support Portak

Sign up to the Support Portal where you can create and track your support tickets.

Customer Support availability

Our Customer Support is available from Monday to Friday (except on federal holidays), between 9.00 am and 6.00 pm.

High availability - 24/7 support

Depending on your software maintenance agreement level, our 24/7 support may be accessible to you.

Priority

When submitting a support request you are able to assign a priority. This priority is to be in accordance with the service categories. The priority you choose will be checked for reasonability by the Technical Support and may be changed. If you do not assign a priority, we automatically assume an average priority.

Your Success Management Team…​

• is your first and main point of contact moving forward.
• is your advisor for all questions about FirstSpirit, such as new features, roadmaps, feedback, etc.
• will contact you regularly and proactively during and after on-boarding.
• is interested in understanding your business and therefore coordinates regular calls with you.
• is your internal advocate to address your feedback, requests, and goals within Crownpeak.
• is financially and contractually responsible and is thus your contact for questions on these topics.
• will ensure that you receive the tools and support needed to achieve your goals!
• While your Success Management Team will contact you proactively, our Customer Support will most likely react to your request. However, both teams will provide you with useful and reliable support.

If you have additional feedback or any questions, feel free to contact us at customer-success@e-spirit.com.

Our Team is always at your disposal.

We wish you much success with FirstSpirit Cloud!